A Creationist By Another Name

The comments to an article on the Freshwater lawsuit included a post by someone who, while not supporting Freshwater and identifying himself (I suspect it was a him) as an atheist, insisted that scientific thought was ideological dogma and that scientists practiced "Copernicanism". I left a comment based on my knowledge of the region and the articles I have read, then addressed the above person's comment, saying something defending scientific method and suggesting that I didn't get the point he was trying to make.

The person responded that I didn't get it because I was blinded by my "ideological righteousness" and questioned whether peer reviewed papers would get published if they were reviewed by right-wing fundamentalists instead of left-wing liberals. Then he said I'd never learn and left a link to a website. This person appeared to have issues, but I checked out the link anyway.

The link was to an article by Richard Ryals about the "anthropic principle". Since some of the phrases were very similar to the above comments I suspect they were the same person. The article is about how there's proof that the anthropic principle is valid and people are refusing to acknowledge the evidence.

As I understand the anthropic principle, the proponents believe that the universe is evolving like life on Earth, that there is a "Goldilocks zone" in the universe that has evolved especially to develop intelligent lifeforms and that the universe was predisposed to create intelligent lifeforms as its inevitable goal.

To me it sounds like creationism without the deity, but instead of a god existing to create people, the universe exists to create people and other equally intelligent life. I might have missed an issue of "Scientific American" but I don't remember hearing about proof of extraterrestrial life or a Goldilocks zone in the universe so currently this is untestable and unobservable which would make belief in it, to quote the commenter, "ideological dogma". Nonetheless, the commenter apparently thinks that the anthropic principal should be part of the eighth grade science curriculum.

I think the most important part of science education is to teach students to use scientific method to think objectively and throw out personal biases. Only those things observable, testable and reproducible should be considered in a science class. Gods and anthropic principals can be added when objective evidence can be presented, until then, they don't belong in a science class.

If insisting on factual evidence as a prerequisite to inclusion in science class and peer reviewed publications identifies me as a left-wing liberal, so be it. I think it's a lot better than believing in 6000 year old planets or predestined aliens.