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or a particular fossil, the geographical distribution patterns of extinct species, or the molecular similarity and dissimilarity of species to each other, is to question the facts of physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. In the end, the attack of the fundamentalist on evolution is an attack on all of science. Although it is easy to dismiss the notion of a flat earth, if this were the current battle cry of the fundamentalists as it was in the past, it would be a physicist writing this piece as opposed to a biologist. The examples would change, the arguments would not. What is science? When textbooks don't present it as a process, but emphasize it as a collection of immutable facts with scientists being expected to provide answers that are definitive, a mindset is created that allows for the acceptance of an alternative set of definitive solutions constructed outside of science. In fact, what we understand about the world through the process of science is continually changing, but this can be turned on its head. Because scientists may disagree on the dates of particular rocks or the importance of a particular model, creationists can use the caricature of what science is to put forward their solution that scientists (who are supposed to have all the answers) are confused and the earth is only a few thousand years old. This is despite the physical evidence unequivocally showing that the earth is well over 4.5 billion years old, life first appearing around 3.5 billion years ago, and fish first appearing 500 million years ago, to mention just a few milestones. The facts of evolution cannot be related only by common sense. To accept the reality of evolution is to accept that Homo sapiens is just another one of billions of life forms that have come and gone on the planet. The thought that we are not at the center of the universe is unacceptable to many people. If any human enterprise makes this point most clearly, it is science, and the science of evolution in particular. In addition, chance, randomness, and stochasticity are unsettling terms to many. Some scientists have trouble fitting the idea of random processes into their mechanistic world view. At the opposite end of the spectrum, religious fundamentalists and many others cannot accept the fact that fate is anything but divinely determined. I am frequently asked by students in my introductory biology class how humans will evolve. Clearly the big-brained intellect of the science-fiction movie is an emotionally comfortable vision that gives strength to the lie that even if we did evolve, there is a purposiveness to the evolution. But I am afraid that for scientists, well-understood random processes played an important role in our history, and in fact we didn't have to be here and we aren't destined to become anything. It is only by well-understood random processes (combined with well-understood deterministic ones) that we might! The uncertainties associated with the practice of science are in fact what make science exciting and enduring but not emotionally appealing to some. Religious fundamentalism appeals emotionally to many. What's even more disconcerting, fundamentalism requires no evidence, only faith. These arguments are only a few that combine to make it so easy for the "creationist" to convert so many, not to become necessarily literal interpreters of the Bible, but to become anti-science in the guise of being pro-God. This discussion of science and the importance of science education has not been an attempt to say that science is the only way of looking at the world or that scientists have all the answers. Rather the emphasis here is that science has an established methodology that needs to be taught and learned. If there are alternatives to scientific explanations they should be presented honestly. Scientists have their political, social, and religious biases. Because they are human they bring these biases to their work. But in science there is a safety net to preserve honesty. Scientists subject their work to the community of scientists who collectively find these biases and ultimately expose them. Those of us who practice science professionally know we are obliged to expose our research to our many peers who will then scrutinize it with extraordinary care. This also ensures that what we teach our students is tuned to the current consensus of the scientific community and is not idiosyncratic. Because of this methodology in science I can trust the validity of radioactive dating methods even though this is not my area of expertise.