August 8, 2005

Case In Point: Intelligent Design

President pushes faith into schools

By Chris Honoré
Ashland Daily Tidings

Last week, in an interview at the White House with Texas newspaper reporters, President Bush was asked about intelligent design and whether it should be taught along with evolution in the nation’s public schools.

Bush’s response, according to published reports, was that he believed that both sides ought to be properly taught. When a reporter pressed him, Bush reaffirmed his position stating that he felt it was important, “so people can understand what the debate is about. I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.”

As it turns out, in those brief remarks, Bush has framed the debate nicely, for implicit in his comments is the assumption that intelligent design and evolution are coequal theories, or, as he put it, schools of thought, regarding how life came to exist on earth and therefore should be given equal weight in the science classroom.

According to Richard Land, the president of the ethics and religious liberties commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the idea of ID finally being acknowledged as equivalent science is “what I’ve been pushing, it’s what a lot of us have been pushing. Evolution is too often taught as fact.”

However, critics of Dr. Land’s position and the position of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based leader in developing ID, were troubled by Bush’s remarks.

So what is at the center of this ongoing discussion?

The main claim of ID is that life on earth shows features that are so uniquely complex and intricate that Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection cannot explain their existence. Instead, the advocates of ID state unequivocally that only the hand of an intelligent designer can explain life as it has been observed — from the human eye to the molecule. What ID theorists do not believe is in a literal translation of the Bible. They are not saying that the world was created in six days or that the Earth is 10,000 years old. They will even grudgingly acknowledge that over countless generations there has been some evolution.

But in the end, proponents of ID believe that the exceedingly complex structure of cells demonstrates an initial programming by a highly intelligent designer. Who that designer is, or how he or she or it came to be, is not something that they ever address, though conservative Christians, who embrace ID, will happily supply the appropriate noun: God.

What Darwin poses in his “Origin of the Species,” first published in 1859, is that over billions of years, natural selection has been at work. In other words, the process of change involves random mutation, something that is, in the main, deleterious for a species. But on occasion there occurs a mutation that is beneficial, thus allowing the organism to more easily survive and adapt and so that mutation slowly becomes normative. Importantly, the mutation is random.

There is no master plan, there is no underlying design. The human eye, a marvel of design, certainly, is actually a marvel of billions of years of natural selection and refinement. It is what it has become, allowing its owner to better adapt to the environment. This is evolution. And it is a scientific theory that has been tested and studied for almost 150 years by biologists and is today accepted as true science.

If ID is a legitimate scientific alternative to natural selection, then it should be prepared to reductively prove its theory and answer the overriding question: What demonstrable evidence can be offered of the presence of an intelligent designer other than the statement that complexity, however it is defined, is evidence enough? Clearly, when we begin to speak of ID in ultimate terms, the discussion is taken out of the realm of science and into the realm of faith. We have now stepped out of the biology classroom and into the classrooms of philosophy and religion.

Though most biologists hold the opinion that ID, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, is simply “junk science,” more than 20 school districts nationwide are considering proposals for their science curricula that are hostile to the teaching of evolution. The Kansas State School Board has taken testimony on ID and is considering it as part of their mandated science program. The school district of Dover, Pa., has already included in their science program the idea that Darwin’s theory of evolution is but one explanation for life and ID offers another.

The fact that we are having this discussion points to an ever-increasing attempt on the part of some politicians and religious leaders to blur the line between church and state — something that the framers of the constitution wished to avoid. And, in truth, that is really what we are talking about when we debate the efficacy of ID and evolution.

Intelligence needed for intelligent design instruction

By Andrew Scot Bolsinger
Ashland Daily Tidings

Defending impassioned beliefs is best done when one doesn’t have to entertain the views of another.

Few subjects illustrate this more than the age-old battle of evolution vs. creation — now all dressed up with a quasi-scientific theory called intelligent design. The core of the problem is that conservative Christians are threatened by evolution undermining the authority of the Bible. They try to shut off the talk to their kids, or simply challenge it.

Equally detrimental is that many advocates of evolution are guilty of pushing the implications too far. When science pushes into a world view or belief system that targets the religious beliefs of others, it’s guilty of departing the appropriate realm of public school instruction.

The push certainly goes both ways. Whether it’s the erstwhile moment-of-silence debacle or the teaching of intelligent design as a science, faith-based organizations erode the basic foundation of the separation of church and state.

In the end, children suffer. Education suffers. Integrity suffers. More reasoned, nonpolitical, very local answers seem like the best ones.

Any educator can testify that issues of faith and personal belief are woven into most subject matters. American government courses can quickly become party affiliation meetings if not handled carefully. American history, drowned in religious ethos, can easily become a platform for or against any number of belief systems. A classic art class must deal with the influence of religion to be taught accurately.

But any responsible educator would hold themselves to a higher standard of fairness, probing their actions to eschew proselytizing for the advancement of critical thinking. Having students who think for themselves is the foremost educational goal.

To that end, acknowledgement of the religious environment that floats in the historical midst of evolution is an important aspect of teaching the science. Likewise, a classroom will not cave to religious fervor by explaining a segment of our culture that touts a concept, lacking in scientific evidence, called intelligent design.

Christians have faith-based schools to teach religious curriculum. Efforts to tout any faith violates the separation of church and state. But during the instruction of evolution, it hurts no one to offer a basic level of explanation as to alternative views of the subject that are prevalent within our culture.

Case in Point is a editorial column by Chris Honore and Andrew Scot Bolsinger that will run most Mondays. The purpose of the column is to dig into key topics in the media and try to offer critical background and analysis for better understanding of the issues at hand. Readers are invited to respond (less than 250 words please), for publication, to abolsinger@dailytidings.com.