USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -To fundamentalists the theory of evolution was a scientific sham the acceptance of which would erode the moral underpinnings of society. Evolutionists, on the other hand, placed fundamentalists on a par with those who had once refused to believe that the earth revolved about the sun.

Detailed explanation-2: -Abstract. Although the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Mendel’s role in the origin of genetic theory, only one writer, L. A. Callender (1988), has concluded that Mendel was opposed to evolution.

Detailed explanation-3: -Of all the major religious groups in the U.S., white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to reject evolution.

Detailed explanation-4: -Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr were the two most important biologists in promoting, from the 1930s and 1940s onwards, a new view of species. These scientists ignored Darwin’s attack on hybrid sterility as an essence of species and rejected his character-based view of species.

Detailed explanation-5: -Fundamentalists are not interested in promoting scientific understanding. On the contrary, they want to severely diminish the voice of scientists. The pursuit of science is inherently the pursuit of knowledge through reason, experimentation, logic, and challenge of unproven postulates.