"One may, of course, retain religious faith in a designer who transcends natural processes, but there is no way to dust for his fingerprints."
-Robert Pennock, Michigan State University
Fundamentalists were patient in enacting reprisal after being disgraced in the Scopes trial of 1925 (in which John T. Scopes was acquitted for violating state law by teaching evolution). Susan Jacoby informs, "Between the Scopes trial and the early 1930s, science-proof fundamentalists pressured publishers into excising discussions of evolution -- and often the word itself -- from biology textbooks." Today, they strive to reproduce their efforts, but creationists only cheapen science by disparaging evolutionary theory.
Creationists espouse a new term today -- intelligent design -- in an attempt to portray their "theory" of origination as scientific. The premise of ID is that the advent and expansion of species on Earth is far too intricate for scientific enterprise to explicate. Some in academe actually rally around ID, but they are few and directionless, connected only by select conservative think tanks, such as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC). Incredulously, a law professor founded CRSC, whose religious conversion spurred him to seek "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies," according to an early mission statement.
Recently, a federal judge sensibly reversed a ruling issued by Georgia's Cobb County school officials that required science books to include this disclaimer inside the cover (to appease ID activists): "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
This disclaimer camouflages insidious criticism: It depreciates the vast amount of empirical evidence for evolutionary theory and hashes the meaning of "theory" as regarded in scientific literature. As Frank Wolfs of the University of Rochester affirms, scientific theories are carefully constructed frameworks for explicating a vast array of phenomena and are not "easily discarded."
Theories must be refined, fit current evidence, be testable/falsifiable, and derive predictions. ID does not parsimoniously fit any of these criteria. (Incredibly, in some Pennsylvania schools, ID is mentioned as a competing theory to evolution.)
Moreover, as Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, pointedly says, ID activists insofar "have no empirical research program and, consequently, have published no data in peer-reviewed journals (or elsewhere) to support their intelligent-design claims. But they do have an aggressive public relations program," comprised of cursory books and articles, student conferences sponsored by campus ministries and alliances with influential political figures.
Leading expositors of ID even bewail that they have "few research workers, no biology texts and no sustained curriculum to offer educators," reports the New York Times. Forrest elucidates, "At heart, proponents of intelligent design are not motivated to improve science but to transform it into a theistic enterprise that supports religious faith."
Including ID in science curriculums is untenable. ID would be better consigned to religious studies or philosophy. Evolutionary theory is a veritable scientific theory, thus students should study it in a science course, as well as develop critical thinking skills so that they might "carefully and critically" consider everything they learn in and beyond their tenure in academia.
For the layperson skeptical of evolutionary theory, I recommend geneticist Steve Jones's book, "Darwin's Ghost."
Write to Russ at rjwebster@bsu.edu
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