http://www.reason.com/rb/rb052505.shtml
May 25, 2005
Unintelligent Design
Science is on the side of evolution
by Ronald Bailey
Who needs to make monkeys out of the Kansas Board of
Education when its members are doing such a good job of it
themselves?
Members of the Kansas board convened hearings this month to
hear testimony from proponents of the theory of intelligent
design that the theory of evolution is bunk. How deliciously
wacky of the board to hold their kangaroo court on
evolutionary theory on the 80th anniversary of the arrest of
Tennessee high school teacher John T. Scopes for illegally
teaching biology to his students. And like the Tennessee
court back in 1925, the Kansas education officials in the
21st century have found evolutionary theory guilty again.
Intelligent design claims that life and the universe are too
complex to have happened by accident. "Evolution has been
proven false. ID (Intelligent Design) is science-based and
strong in facts," declared board member Kathy Martin before
the hearings began. And nothing Martin heard at the
proceedings evidently changed her mind, saying at their
conclusion that evolution is "an unproven, often disproven"
theory.
Based on these hearings, the Kansas Board of Education will
consider modifying the science curriculum in its public schools.
At the Scopes trial, when William Jennings Bryan was asked
what the purpose of the trial was, Bryan magisterially
replied, "The purpose is to cast ridicule on everybody who
believes in the Bible, and I am perfectly willing that the
world shall know that these gentleman have no other purpose
than ridiculing every person who believes in the Bible." In
those days that was enough to convict Scopes.
Today, opponents of evolutionary theory know that they can't
teach religion in public schools. If they're going to
smuggle religion in, they need to be sneakier. So they strip
off any part of their "intelligent design" theory that might
sound like it is religious and pose as simple scientists
asking "hard" questions of narrow-minded evolutionists.
The anti-evolutionists affect not to know who or what the
"intelligent designer" of their theory might be. He, she,
it, or they could be little green men or purple space squid
or a race of intelligent supercomputers -- or maybe, just
maybe, an omnipotent God. Who knows? We're all just
innocently asking "scientific" questions here.
But away from the glare of media attention, this pose of
scientific objectivity cracks. "ID has theological
implications. ID is not strictly Christian, but it is
theistic," admitted board member Martin. The intelligent
design proponents in Kansas ask: Why not let children in
public schools hear arguments for intelligent design in
biology classes? Schools could "teach the controversy."
Biologists retort by asking, "So it's OK then for high
schools to teach astrology, phrenology, mesmerism, tarot
card reading, crystal healing, astral projection and water
witching, too?"
Intelligent design theorists aside, the people who want
intelligent design taught in public schools hope the theory
will undercut the corrosive effects of evolutionary biology
on the religious beliefs of their children. They don't know
and couldn't care less about the scientific details of the
evolution of species or the origin of life -- they just want
Darwinism kept away from their kids.
What they don't understand, however, is that religious
belief and evolution are compatible.
In 1996 no less a religious authority than Pope John Paul II
declared, "New knowledge has led to the recognition in the
theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis."
In response to Bryan's assertions about the purpose of the
Scopes monkey trial, defense attorney Clarence Darrow
retorted, "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and
ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United
States, and you know it, and that is all." As the hearings
in Kansas showed, they are still trying.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book
Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Defense of the
Biotech Rvolution will be published in June by Prometheus Books
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