I made a comment on a YouTube video yesterday that I liked so much I am recording it here. “They” refers to Christian apologists who are trying to discredit evolution. (Edited slightly to correct an autocorrect error.)
I find it telling that they refer to evolution as “Darwinism”. There were many scientists working on evolution and Darwin was not even the first to publish. But when he did publish, he was the most thorough. That’s what made him the poster child for evolution and painted a big target on his back. His observations and conclusions were so well researched that they were difficult to answer, so they demonized him instead. But evolution has moved on well beyond Darwin so “Darwinism” is long obsolete as term for evolution. It also evokes social Darwinism, which has been discredited and in any case has nothing to do with Darwin himself. Relativity is not “Einsteinism” and neither is evolution “Darwinism”.
As I think further about it, I have a similar problem with the term “atheism”. Christian apologists frequently talk about atheism as a doctrine in and of itself, while atheists describe it as an absence of belief, without any implications about what any given atheist does believe.
I suggest that part of this misunderstanding might stem from the word itself. Wikipedia defines “-ism” as a construction “used to create abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine”. If we don’t want a lack of belief to become an abstract noun, to represent something rather than the absence of something, perhaps we shouldn’t consent for it to become an ism.