Why does Stephen H. Webb use the word "Darwinism"?

We know why the IDiots use the words "Darwinist" and "Darwinism" to describe evolutionary biologists and modern evolutionary theory. There are three main reasons.

1. They want their flocks to believe that modern scientists worship Charles Darwin and his 150 year-old theory so that when they discredit him—as they are constantly trying to do—it reflects on evolution.
2. They want to link modern evolutionary biology to social Darwinism and it's easier to do so if they refer to evolutionary biologists as Darwinists.
3. They are too stupid to realize that there's a lot more to modern evolutionary biology than natural selection.

Every time you challenge creationists on this point they find some way to defend their use of Darwinism rather than just say "evolutionary biology" or "modern evolutionary theory." There's a reason for this (see above).

Stephen H. Webb is the latest example. Apparently his use of "Darwinism" was challenged so he wrote a blog post on Evolution News & Views (sic) defending it The Strange Mental World of Darwinian Fundamentalists. I hope you appreciate the irony in the title.

In an earlier discussion he said, "You know that when I say Darwinism I mean the current state of his theory." In the latest post he defended this by saying ...

I just Googled it, and the first three entries use it to refer to the contemporary theory of evolution, and talk about it in terms of its origin in Darwin and its later developments. Those cites are: Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. So I don't know why you are nitpicking about this except to exhaust me and distract us from substantial issues.

Let's look at excerpts from those three Google references.

Darwinism - Wikipedia

While the term has remained in use amongst scientific authors when referring to modern evolutionary theory, it has increasingly been argued that it is an inappropriate term for modern evolutionary theory.[5][8] For example, Darwin was unfamiliar with the work of Gregor Mendel,[9] and as a result had only a vague and inaccurate understanding of heredity. He naturally had no inkling of yet more recent developments and, like Mendel himself, knew nothing of genetic drift for example.[10] ....

The term Darwinism is often used in the United States by promoters of creationism, notably by leading members of the intelligent design movement, as an epithet to attack evolution as though it were an ideology (an "ism") of philosophical naturalism, or atheism.[15] For example, Phillip E. Johnson makes this accusation of atheism with reference to Charles Hodge's book What Is Darwinism?.[16] However, unlike Johnson, Hodge confined the term to exclude those like Asa Gray who combined Christian faith with support for Darwin's natural selection theory, before answering the question posed in the book's title by concluding: "It is Atheism."[17][18][19] Creationists use the term Darwinism, often pejoratively, to imply that the theory has been held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his followers, whom they cast as dogmatic and inflexible in their belief.[20] In the 2008 movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which promotes intelligent design, Ben Stein refers to scientists as Darwinists. Reviewing the film for Scientific American, John Rennie says "The term is a curious throwback, because in modern biology almost no one relies solely on Darwin's original ideas... Yet the choice of terminology isn't random: Ben Stein wants you to stop thinking of evolution as an actual science supported by verifiable facts and logical arguments and to start thinking of it as a dogmatic, atheistic ideology akin to Marxism."

Darwinism - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

a theory of the origin and perpetuation of new species of animals and plants that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen and may continue to arise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors [i.e. Darwinism = natural selection]

Darwinism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In a recent monograph entitled Natural Selection: Domains, Levels and Challenges in the Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution, George C. Williams has vigorously defended Darwinian selection theory against a variety of challenges that have emerged over the last few decades. Those challenges can be placed into two broad categories: [i] proposed limitations on natural selection as an evolutionary force; and [ii] expansions of the scope of natural selection to include new ‘targets’ and ‘levels’. It will be noted that in neither case is it obvious that the theory itself requires modification in the face of such challenges—in principle these might be nothing more than challenges to the theory's range of application. However, if it turned out that most evolutionary change could be explained without recourse to natural selection, this would be grounds for arguing that evolutionary biology was no longer Darwinian. And if it turned out that the theory of natural selection could only be integrated with our new understanding of the processes of inheritance and development by a wholesale modification of its foundations, it might be best to see the new theory as a modified descendent of Darwinism, rather than Darwinism itself.

The typical IDiot may begin his or her study of evolution by believing that classical Darwinism is the appropriate word to use for modern evolutionary theory. However, once that belief is challenged, they have a duty to investigate further. When they do so, they will learn that there are a great may evolutionary biologists who object to being called Darwinists because that does not represent their view of evolution.

In this case, Stephen H. Webb actually did a Google search to see if he was right. What he found was three references that discussed why it is wrong to refer to all of modern evolutionary theory as Darwinism. But, like a typical IDiot, he misrepresents what he reads on the internet and pretends that he was right all along and those evolutionary biologists who challenge him must be wrong. (Stephen Webb is a theologian.)

If he really wants to learn about modern evolutionary theory—which I very much doubt—he could read a science textbook or the relevant papers in the scientific literature that discuss "Darwinism" and modern evolutionary theory.

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