III. Why creationism and intelligent design are actively anti-scientific.

Why then do some people reject the theory of evolution?

If you analyze their objections, it is not the case that they reject evolutionary theory per se. Rather they reject the very possibility of a purely naturalistic description of the universe

In this, they are rejecting science, all science.

They do not accept that the universe began in a natural event, the 'big bang', but insist that a 'creator' (an intelligent designer) of some sort initiated and directs the process.

This type of thinking is the foundation of religion and as such is directly rejects the basic naturalistic premise of the scientific enterprise.

Religion is certainly not the only force that opposes and rejects science. A wide range of political and ideological movements actively object to the underlying assumption that science offers a pathway to an objective understanding of the world we live in.

In the Soviet Union, under Stalin, geneticists were persecuted and murdered for not accepting an ideological-driven, anti-scientific position. link

Calls for a feminist or non-Western science are really calls for a non-scientific science, as anti-scientific as any mystical or religious position.

Does this mean that science is always objective? Absolutely not -- there can be bias and unspoken assumptions within any community, particularly in areas that are as complex as human genetics and social organization.

Scientists can be blinded by racist, sexist and atomistic prejudices, just like anyone else (see S.J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man as an example). They are arguably more dangerous when they are, because they can hide their prejudice behind the mask of scientific objectivity.

However, the rules of science insure that in a free society, errors and underlying assumption will be revealed, unproductive ideas abandoned and a working, increasingly accurate, useful and all encompassing knowledge of the world will be developed.

That is what science offers, what it has delivered in the past delivered, but only when allowed to be true to its own rules. Anti-scientific attacks on science, like creationism, destroy what makes science valuable.