Friday, December 17, 2004
Intelligent design merits equal time with evolution
From the RoundTable blog
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Whitlock, of Salem, is a literacy instructor for TAP and an adjunct English instructor
at Virginia Western Community College.
So a "rural Pennsylvania school district has become the first in the nation to require that 'intelligent design' be taught alongside evolution to explain the origins of life" ("Testing the God 'theory,'" Nov. 13 Roanoke Times editorial). Well, good for the Dover Area School Board.
The district's students will be better off for hearing the scientific evidence that, according to a recent Associated Press report, has convinced even the noted atheist AnÂtony Flew that "[a] super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature."
The case against teaching intelligent design, as laid out by The Roanoke Times, rests on two assumptions: first, that the scientific inquiry process mandates the exclusion of a supernatural creator and, second, that evolution is a satisfactory explanation for the diversity of living things. Neither assumption is warranted.
Although the scientific community now insists that legitimate scientific inquiry must begin with the premise that the natural world is all that exists, thus ruling out a priori the possibility of a supernatural creator, the founders of modern science would have been astounded at that notion. Modern science got its start only because men such as Copernicus, Galileo and Newton believed a rational (supernatural) creator had created a rational world that, as a result, could be observed, studied and understood.
As far as evolution's being a satisfactory explanation for the diversity of living things, microevolution - or variation within species - is accepted by design theorists and evolutionists alike.
Macroevolutionary theory, on the other hand, postulates that the same mechanism that accounts for limited variation within species can also account for all the differences between species.
Far from being a "principle supported by the known evidence," however, macroevolution is, as biochemist Michael Denton put it, a theory in crisis. The evidence Charles Darwin assumed would appear to support his theory hasn't turned up, and, whether willing to admit it publicly or not, many scientists have come to doubt that Darwin's theory is sufficient to account for the diversity of life forms.
Even such committed evolutionists as the late Stephen J. Gould and Francis Crick have recognized problems with Darwin's modification with descent and natural selection mechanism, which purports to explain how organisms developed into different species.
A paleontologist, Gould was troubled by the paucity of fossil evidence for evolutionary change and so came to support a theory called "punctuated equilibrium," which hypothesizes that after long periods of stasis, new species suddenly came into existence. No one has yet proposed a mechanism that can adequately account for how that might have occurred.
Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, went even further and surmised that life on Earth had been "seeded" by extraterrestrials. And Gould and Crick are far from the only scientists who recognize problems with evolution, but who, for ideological reasons, refuse to entertain other possibilities.
As Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin put it, to admit the possibility of nonmaterial causes would be "to let a divine foot in the door."
Although design theory leaves room for that "divine foot," William Dembski, a leader in the intelligent design movement, writes that "[p]roponents of intelligent design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes ... and not intelligent causes per se."
According to Dembski, "intelligent design holds that a designing intelligence is required to account for the complex, information-rich structures in living systems. At the same time, it refuses to speculate about the nature of that designing intelligence."
Clearly, while intelligent design opens the door to the possibility of a supernatural creator, design theorists don't necessarily assume that door leads to the God of the Bible. They do believe, however, that when "complicated things ... give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose," as Richard Dawkins wrote, scientists would do well not to dismiss the possibility of design out of hand.
The Roanoke Times editorial concludes that "[a]s scientific theory, thus far, [intelligent design] does not deserve equal weight. As deeply held belief, it does not need it - but public schools should not teach it."
Even if we grant the contention that intelligent design requires a belief in God, the assumption that, in the well-known words of the late Carl Sagan, "the universe is all there is or ever was or ever will be," differs little from the Bible's assertion that "[i]n the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Each is a statement of faith that can't be scientifically proved.
Sagan's faith statement directs scientific research in one direction, the Bible's in another. At one time, the Bible's faith statement ruled public education, and evolutionary teaching was shut out. Today, Sagan's faith statement is in control, and it's the evolutionists who refuse to allow any challenge to their orthodoxy.
Regardless of which faith statement scientists start from, however, they should, as Antony Flew has done, "[f]ollow the evidence, wherever it leads."
Since Flew can't be accused of starting from the "God" premise, as intelligent design theorists frequently are, his "conversion" provides strong support for making intelligent design theory a part of a comprehensive biology course.
