Dr Chuck Pearson

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August 05, 2005

How to send me running into the waiting arms of the Discovery Institute

Unbridled arrogance should just about do it. That's pretty much what that Washington Post editorial on "intelligent design" and its newfound presidential acclaim boils down to.

Now, I'm not going to speak to the quality of the W's comments on this debate; last I checked, he wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and probably hasn't been reading Thomas Kuhn's philosophies on scientific paradigms. But the Post's response might be even more clueless and maddening.

I'm going to go sentence-by-sentence through the key paragraph, by my reading:

Of course the president is right that, in the context of a philosophical debate, it would be appropriate to discuss both sides of an issue before arriving at a conclusion. In the context of a religious discussion, it would also be very interesting to ponder whether the human race exists on Earth for a purpose or merely by accident.

This is reasonable enough, although I hate how the reasonable point is spun to have the look and feel of a subtle dig at Christian theology. "Yeah, discussion is nice. Let's discuss this: Is there really a point to your existence, as a human being?" People answer that question for themselves daily, as a faith decision. Even that very question would be offensive enough to some people.

I'm not opposed to offending people, mind - but if you're interested in being fair-minded with what you're about to say, you'd probably choose a different example.

But the proponents of intelligent design are not content with participating in a philosophical or religious debate. They want their theory to be accepted as science and to be taught in ninth-grade biology classes, alongside the theory of evolution.

This is the standard line of argument that starts to raise my hackles. "ID people are subversive. They want in the classrooms. They want to undermine the good and proper science with their pseudoscientific ideas." And I'm not going to sit here and say that there isn't a group of people out there who aren't subversive - but to say that every last person who struggles theologically with the implications of the evolutionary synthesis is out to have creationism taught on an equal scientific level as evolution is to paint with too broad a brush.

The whole Intelligent Design movement is doing one thing right now very well. It is criticizing the evolutionary synthesis. It points out details that are not satisfying about the current theory, and it acknowledges that men are not going to very easily let go of the idea that they were put here by a power more intelligent than themselves. I don't see the problem putting this in front of young thinkers.

In fact, I think we insult their intelligence by not saying anything about it; by so thoroughly separating the religious thought from the scientific thought in the classroom, we may think that we're being respectful to kids who have a different belief system than the majority, but it's not like high school students haven't figured out that some people believe one way and others believe another.

Bottom line: telling students that intelligent design ideas are out there does not equate to putting those ideas on the same scientific plane as the evolutionary synthesis. (And those people who do want to do such things, I have different issues with them.)

For that, there is no basis whatsoever: The nature of the "evidence" for the theory of evolution is so overwhelming, and so powerful, that it informs all of modern biology. To pretend that the existence of evolution is somehow still an open question, or that it is one of several equally valid theories, is to misunderstand the intellectual and scientific history of the past century.

And this is where I make like my grandfather and say "Just a cotton pickin' second."

To pretend that ANY scientific question isn't, at some level, an open question, is to misunderstand the entire history of science. The modern advances of computing and personal technology would have been impossible if the atomic theory of John Dalton had been considered not been considered open for debate in 1900. The ideas of Einstein that are so widely celebrated today were considered in large part heretical when first proposed. For crying out loud, if everything that was understood about motion through 2000 years of history had not been considered an open question by Galileo, would simple words like acceleration and force be understood today?

Simply put, to put evolution on a pedestal that is beyond any question and critique is to fall into a trap that stagnates proper scientific thought. The best thinkers are those that can rigorously filter through all ideas, not just those ideas that are most comfortable or satisfying to you.

None of this is to suggest that I don't want to teach evolution. Frankly, given the fact that there are no other viable scientific descriptions working right now (again: Intelligent Design right now works best as a criticism, not an alternate scientific theory), we pretty much have to. But I'd hope it would be taught for what it is - the scientific idea that best explains the available evidence right now. As "overwhelming and powerful" as that evidence appears to be, all it takes is the right piece of evidence that doesn't agree for the whole thing to tumble like a house of cards, and sends everybody struggling to build something totally new.

Besides, I'd argue that the Post's obsessing about how awesome the science behind evolution is misses the real point:

We are in favor of basic scientific education that reports the consensus of scientists on questions of scientific fact while carefully avoiding disputed theological or philosophical claims. But really, what does it matter what the president thinks about evolution or how it should be taught? There are no national standards that require evolution, or any other subject, to be taught in a certain way in the public schools. Nor should there be. (The most common argument for a national standard is that math in Oregon isn't different from math in New York. But scientific facts and mathematical relations are also the same in Kiev, which does not mean we need binding international standards in education.)

That evolution is a national issue is almost entirely the result of mistakes by the Supreme Court. It has first set itself up as the regulator of all local governmental practices that have religious overtones. Compounding the error, it has decided to try to figure out the motivations of all those practices. So a local school board's failure to teach evolution becomes, literally, a federal case: a violation of the Court's version of the separation of church and state.

...those who wanted more federal control over education should have been more careful what they wished for, because they just might have gotten it.

Posted by Chuck at August 5, 2005 08:28 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Celestia at August 5, 2005 11:42 AM

Posted by: Dr Chuck Pearson at August 5, 2005 02:18 PM

Posted by: Celestia at August 5, 2005 02:30 PM

Posted by: Catie at August 5, 2005 05:23 PM

Posted by: Jeff Eaton at August 8, 2005 12:18 PM

Posted by: Celestia at August 8, 2005 02:20 PM