Evolution has various mechanisms and one of them is natural selection. While most religious people have no disagreement with science overall, Biblical literalists contend man cannot have changed or evolved.  Some confusion about evolution is understandable - evolution is darn complex - and the disagreement with evolution does not fall strongly into any demographic except the religious. In America, we hear more about 'the religious right' but primarily we hear about them from the secular left - while noting that 39% of Republicans don't accept evolution they fail to mention 30% of Democrats don't either.  Religious people vote for both parties - you don't see candidates on either side debunking religion and because of that, as I have said in the past, atheists are one of those minorities it seems perfectly okay to stereotype.

Young Earth Creationists aside, a more recent religious idea is termed "Intelligent Design" and unlike simple Young Earth Creationism, they don't deny all evolution but claim scientific evidence for a guiding force that has brought man to where we are today. Yes, evolution happened but not due to a random walk like genetic drift or natural selection or mutation. It was basically part of the plan. I have no problem with anyone wanting to believe that, just a problem with claiming scientific evidence - their scientific evidence has no science, it basically just tries to debunk aspects of evolution - science breakthroughs do not occur by trying to poke holes in existing science, that is what postmodernists do. Science is understanding the world according to natural laws and Intelligent Design does not do that, it only seeks to confuse people about evolution.

Covering cultural controversies, like a recent law in Tennessee that makes it okay for teachers to "teach the controversy" about evolution and climate change, is likewise difficult because journalists are supposed to be fair - well, old journalists have to be fair.  People expect modern journalists to be doing progressive good works and sometimes when they don't do that, fellow progressives get upset.

William K. Black, writing at New Economic Perspectives, gets a little conspiratorial fringe-y, contending that Rupert Murdoch, founder, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, is now walking up to writers at The Wall Street Journal and demanding they contend religion is science. Well, they don't actually do that, if you are anywhere other than the kooky left.  But the WSJ article shows how difficult it can be to cover news objectively when it comes to science.

 The Wall Street Journal is not going to get every article right - I have been wrong too and even Elvis had bad albums - and if I ask an Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City what he really knows about adaptive radiation, he is going to give me a blank stare and mumble something about accepting the scientific consensus.  In other words, he believes and, if you read his piece, he believes because the belief is the opposite of religious people, Republicans and the guy who runs the parent company of WSJ. In other words, he is agenda-based and not factual.

But he should be factual even if he is an economist. America is not about blindly accepting a consensus, America is about critical thinking - that's why Americans don't trust economists, it is also a quasi-religious belief system that uses the past to make guesses about future raptures and apocalypses but being right is really just a matter of luck and people know it.  John Maynard Keynes was a progressive who also believed in social Darwinism and eugenics and all three of his big beliefs have been debunked - so the proponents of a warmed-over Keynesian 'Modern Money Theory' aren't creating anything new.

Wait. They call it a theory?

But...but...he writes 

Biology and “intelligent design” are not rival scientific theories. Biology’s central proposition is evolution. Intelligent design does not rest on the scientific method or scientific evidence. The Discovery Institute is not a “think tank.” It does not engage in hypothesis testing. It does not make testable predictions of “intelligent design.”

All true, except Intelligent Design sounds a lot like economics.

In seeking to enhance biology, he diminishes it by noting what a theory is and then using it colloquially, which is the reason the term 'theory' has so little meaning outside science today.  He wants to debunk ID - fair enough, if he knew what he was talking about - and he wants to try  and invoke science legitimacy for his cultural woo.

Someone claiming to love science screws the pooch scientifically again...

Thinking about WSJ reporters’ business expertise caused me to ask a question about Tennessee’s law (similar to laws adopted in six other infra-red states) and the WSJ’s reporters approach to a faith-based series of “propositions” advanced by another discipline that calls itself a “science.” 

Infrared state?  What is that?  He seems to think that is some super deep red, with even more evil Republicans, which is not science at all.  It's silly. But that is creative license - so is the Bible.  Why would he say something so stupid when attempting to make The Wall Street Journal look like they are promoting pseudoscience because The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about a goofy law in Tennessee and never once mentioned the Flying Spaghetti Monster?   Even if we were just talking economics, there are only a few states doing well in the USA - all of them are red states.  So if he actually knows any economics he would be using red as a positive thing but, no, he is determined to be a political kook first and an impartial economist only after slamming people he happens not to like while he endorses real science (wink, wink). And he just happens to include the nonsense he promotes.

The UMKC economics blog (New Economic Perspective) is an excellent source of alternative, highly interdisciplinary theories that have repeatedly demonstrated superior predictive abilities and praxis. My colleagues’ work on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and job guarantees are two examples. 

Wow - an 'excellent source' - it's how homeopathy companies describes their wares, and with just as much science. Then he uses that word theory again.  It doesn't mean what he thinks it means. 

He can get away with it because economics, like Intelligent Design, has no accountability - only the faithful believe in each and when either is wrong, their high priests dismiss it as some higher power and lay blame everywhere else.  So if you want to believe his 'theory' can guarantee employment and is experimentally repeatable, you deserve the financial disaster you will get, just like if you believed Harold Camping's rapture was coming in 2011 and gave away all your money. It's numerology of a different color but you will still lose all of your green following it.

Nothing is more tired than conspiratorial hints that if something is on Fox News, or now apparently The Wall Street Journal, it must be dismissed by card-carrying progressive academics.  Poisoning the well is common but science, and even faux science like economics, should leave it to the weird humanities types. This is the same apparently evil WSJ that just held a data transparency weekend to encourage keeping data private.  I haven't seen The Nation sponsoring any of those.

What Tennessee did is goofy - but it is no more goofy than enacting the economic flavor of the week or using a WSJ article to go on some rant about real science and then claim a woo economic proposition is in the science camp. The Tennessee legislature passed their crazy bill by a wide margin and Tennessee. Gov. Bill Haslam let House Bill 368/Senate Bill 893 pass into law without signing it because a veto was pointless.

“I do not believe that this legislation changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools or the curriculum,” Haslam said, adding “I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything,”...

I got that quote from the "anti-science" WSJ. Maybe if economists read more than one article over there, they would have a better opinion of it. I bet they never find any flaws in what Paul Krugman writes at the New York Times.  Even economists can do the math on why that is.