Forrest Mims, a writer for Scientific American, recently admitted to one of the magazine's editors that he is "a non-believer in evolution." For this heresy he lost his job with the prestigious publication, even though the editors agreed that his articles, which had nothing to do with evolution, were excellent.

Mims was sent packing because his very presence was perceived as a threat to Darwin's theory of evolution. Even if he never published a word about evolution, creationists might have cited him as a well-informed skeptic. If they did, angry Darwinists would cancel their subscriptions--and Scientific American knows who butters its bread. So Mims became a casualty in a religious war.

Many Darwinists insist that people like Mims have to be kept out of science because their skepticism about evolution is inconsistent with scientific objectivity. One biology professor who defended the magazine's action reasoned that "I would be against having such a person writing a column, because at the base, this philosophy could enter everything one does in science."

The objectivity of science is not protected by imposing a religious test for admission to the profession, however, but by the rigorous program of testing and criticism that we call the scientific method. That raises the question: Is evolution one of the things scientists may criticize, or do critics risk banishment from the profession?

The key to understanding what is at stake is to know what scientists mean by evolution. Nobody doubts that a certain amount of evolution occurs. For example, bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics and bugs to insecticides. Evolution in this narrow sense can be demonstrated, and so it is uncontroversial.

Evolution, however, also stands for a much bigger idea. To Darwinists, it means an all-embracing philosophical system in which mircoorganisms evolved from non-living chemicals and eventually became plants, insects, reptiles, monkeys and humans--with no divine input whatsoever. The tree of life grew of its own accord, by random genetic changes and survival of the fittest, without guidance from any creator. As the notable Darwinist George Gaylord Simpson put it: "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind."