Re-Defining Evolution

Recently, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) made a small, accommodating change to their "official" definition of evolution.  The previous definition went like this:

The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and others objected to a couple of words that were eventually removed.  As people debate the relationship between science and religion, many others in science education hope to find a common ground between the two to allow us to teach without completely offending religious students.  The NCSE sits in the middle and takes its lumps from both extremes.  

One of my favorite evolution cartoons.

In this case, the NCSE lobbied for the removal of the terms "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from the definition.  While the original definition upset the religiously inclined, the new definition has fed the attacks from the atheists.  Jerry Coyne posted a response to the news on his blog Why Evolution is True defending the materialistic meaning behind such words.  

First of all, we all agree on 95% of the definition of evolution.  As described by Charles Darwin, evolution occurs by descent with modification.  As genetic material passes from parent to offspring, some individuals mate more often and minor mutations accumulate over time.  Natural selection and genetic drift act as environments change.  These mechanisms account for the massive biodiversity we see in the world from the remarkable, yet imperfect, human body to the oddities of life.  

Does "unsupervised" or "impersonal" really affect a person's ability to understand evolution?  Not really. There is no evidence for or against a supervised process as evolution.  Many Theistic Evolutionist simply view natural selection as the tool God used to guide evolution.  But regardless, supervision or unsupervision is not a requirement of understanding the processes of  evolution.  The mechanisms of mutations and selection can still be taught without an outright attack on the religious students in the class.  

Removing the words, may help more students accept learning about evolution and make no change in the understanding of the science.  Evolution is still natural and unpredictable.  If we rewound the history of life and tried again, we have no certainty that humans would show up again.  Yet we constantly search for signs of intelligent life as far as our telescopes will listen hoping the evolution stumbled upon the same design elsewhere in the cosmos.

University professors have far more leeway in this regard than high school teachers which makes Coyne's objections rather predictable.  This small change to the definition of evolution will upset the atheists for a short while, but will have very little impact on the actual teaching of evolution in schools.   The NCSE and the NABT will still fight for quality science education for all students.  We teachers will still teach the mechanisms of evolution and the wonders of life.  And we will still debate the compatibility of science and religion.