by Jennifer Umbehant
Should Intelligent Design be taught in the Science
Classroom?
by Jennifer Umbehant
Intelligent Design is not science and therefore should not be taught as an alternative to evolution, which is science, in the science classroom.
I. Introductory paragraph
A. Russell quote
B. What people used to believe before science
C. Conclusion – Intelligent Design should not be taught in public
schools
II. What is science?
A. Evolution as fact – evidence – fossils, etc
III. ID is basically just creationism with another name
A. Dover Case and Judge Jones quote
IV. Conclusion
A. ID is based on faith – it is not science and should not be
taught in a science classroom
Should Intelligent Design be taught in the Science Classroom?
According to Bertrand Russell, “…science has been the chief
agent in dispelling primitive superstitions.” (5) People once
believed in witchcraft; that the earth was flat, the center of the universe
and that the sun revolved around it; that comets were portents of extraordinary
things; thunder and lightning were caused by angry gods; bad things
happened to people because of supernatural means, etc. Some of these
beliefs are still held true today. As science brings new evidence to
light and as humanity learns to think more rationally, we leave superstitions
by the wayside. Russell also said that “…some things are
believed because people feel as if they must be true, and in such cases
an immense weight of evidence is necessary to dispel the belief…When
Galileo’s telescope revealed Jupiter’s moons, the orthodox
refused to look through the telescope, because they knew there could
not be such bodies, and therefore the telescope must be deceptive.”
(11) There are those who believe that teaching the science of evolution
will dispel the belief in a god who created mankind. They have a right
to be concerned; there is after all, no scientific evidence for a god,
and plenty for evolution. The concept of Intelligent Design, or as I
will sometimes refer to as ID, states that there is a supernatural entity
– a God – that created our universe and everything inside
it. I will show that ID is not scientific, and therefore should not
be taught as science in any public science classroom.
We are on the matter of teaching science in public schools and should
define what constitutes as science. First and foremost, science insists
upon observation. “Respect for observation as opposed to tradition
is difficult and…the source of the most desperate battles between
science and authority.” (Russell 11) Science aims to explain our
reality – what we experience through our senses of the natural
world. The natural world is made up of matter and energy; science attempts
to understand it through the scientific method. By using the scientific
method, science must draw conclusions based on observations and experiments
– ones that can be recreated and tested by other scientists. (Wolfs)
If it cannot be explained using empirical evidence, then it’s
not science. Science has given us medicine and the ability to cure disease;
it has explained weather and seasonal changes; it has provided us with
the technological advancement of computers, cell phones, x-rays and
even easy-bake ovens; it has explained the structure of the smallest
particles – the inner workings of the small world of matter –
and explained, by way of biological evolution, how we came to be. “The
concept of biological evolution is one of the most important ideas ever
generated by the application of scientific methods to the natural world.”
(Alberts viii)
Evolution is a fact, and by fact I mean, “…something that
has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a
compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples…Scientists
no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because
the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.” (National 28)
You might ask – if evolution is a fact, then why is it called
a theory? Because, when scientists refer to something as a theory, they
are not using the common definition of theory – such as assumption
or guess, they are referring to the definition of theory as “…a
well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that
can incorporate facts, laws, inferences and tested hypotheses.”
(National 2) You can see that there is an enormous difference between
these two definitions.
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Because ID has no strong argument or evidence, supporters are often
left with their only tactic – that a strong offense is a good
defense. They use this tactic to attack evolution. So let us take a
look at the evidence for evolution. And by evolution, we mean biological
evolution – the evolution that has affected all biological life
on earth, including humans. Darwin put it neatly – “…descent
with modification.” (331)
At this point in time, there is absolutely no scientific evidence against
evolution. After this fact, the most obvious line of evidence is the
fossil record. A bumper sticker comes to mind, it says, “We have
the fossils, we win.” I can hear it now. Some of you are almost
screaming – “Where are the transitional fossils?”
and “The fossil record is imperfect.” I will have to agree
that these arguments were valid in Darwin’s day – 150 years
ago, but they are far from valid now, and I’ll get to that shortly.
Currently we’ll address what is typically known as the geological
column. The geological column is given as a visual representation of
our earth’s history through various levels of compressed rock,
shale, dirt and other such sediments. The lower layers of earth are
obviously older, due to the fact that new layers would come after the
layers on the bottom. In every part of the world where fossils have
been found in levels of the geological column, simple life forms have
been on the bottom and have gradually increased in complexity the higher
you travel up through the rock, and up through time. You do not find
human bones with dinosaur bones, no whale fossils found with fish from
the Devonian age. (Morton)
Let’s take a closer look at those fossils being found in the rock.
In Darwin’s day we didn’t have many fossils, but he assumed
more would be found with time. They certainly have; “…we
now have transitional forms linking major groups, including fish with
tetrapods, dinosaurs with birds, reptiles with mammals, and land mammals
with whales.” (Coyne 12) We started looking at the evidence with
fossils, but Richard Dawkins almost dismisses them out of hand. He tells
us in The Ancestor’s Tale, “Fossils are a bonus. It is worth
remembering this when creationists go on about the ‘gaps’
in the fossil record. The fossil record could be one big gap, and the
evidence for evolution would still be overwhelmingly strong.”
(Dawkins, Ancestor’s Tale 13) For a bonus, we have “…tens
of thousands of hominoid fossils in museums around the world supporting
our current knowledge of human evolution…all myths involving the
singular, instantaneous creation of modern humans fail in the face of
the evidence…[these myths] are all interesting and important,
but these anthropological perspectives belong in the context of religious
studies, not in science classrooms.” (White 79)
We’ve got the fossils. Barring any irrational argument, we can
move on to further evidence of evolution. There is the obvious fact
of DNA – if you compare the DNA of humans with that of chimpanzees,
you will note that we are very closely related. This would certainly
support the belief in a branching tree of life based on evolution. You
will also notice that “…our genome is a veritable farrago
of nonfunctional DNA, including many inactive ‘pseudogenes’
that were functional in our ancestors.” (Coyne 8) If this Supreme
Being had designed us – why would there be non-functional genes
in our DNA? On that note, why would there be any non-functional anything?
We can live without our appendix and no one is really sure just what
its function is, if it currently has one. On another note, embryonic
birds and anteaters have teeth buds – these teeth never erupt
because they are not needed, and evolution can explain that at one time
they were. Why would a creator design teeth buds in the embryo of a
bird that doesn’t need teeth? (Coyne 7) You may say to me that
one cannot know the mind of God, but I admonish you to know your own
mind. What does it tell you?
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more of Nick Anderson's art, CLICK HERE.
There are other evidences for evolution and we will look at two more:
the fact of biogeography and cases of natural selection. Biogeography,
according to the handy Encarta dictionary in Microsoft Word, can be
defined as the study of the geographical distribution of plants and
animals. Islands have unique abilities in biological creation –
on islands that were never connected to mainlands, you can find species
that aren’t found anywhere else on the planet. Most of you will
have heard of Darwin’s Finches. Darwin made note of several birds
on the Galapagos Islands, first attributing them to various kinds of
birds, but realizing later that they had originated from the same ancestor
and that completely different species had evolved due to their environment
on the specific island they were located on. (Sulloway 113) If we look
at our Hawaii, we will notice that it “…has no native terrestrial
mammals, reptiles, or amphibians but has a rather large radiations of
fruit flies and silversword plants. One third of the world’s 2,000
species of fruit flies are found on the archipelago although it makes
up only about 2 percent of the land on Earth.” (Coyne 9) The plants
and animals that found it easy to travel to nearby islands started their
own families, as it were – they started off as immigrants but
became the ancestor’s of their own line. This line involved evolutionary
change due to the environmental challenges of living on an island.
Let’s consider the evidence for natural selection. Some of you
may desire clarification: natural selection is the idea that organisms
born with more favorable traits for survival in their environment are
more likely to survive and pass on their genetic material. (Wikipedia)
We are all privy to evidence for natural selection. I’m sure that
by now you have heard of the epidemic of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Doctor’s are no longer handing antibiotics out so freely and the
media has been talking about it for years…bacteria have become
resistant to antibiotics. This is due to natural selection. Remember
DDT? By introducing pesticides into our environment, we are teaching
insects how to become stronger and more resistant to pesticides through
natural selection. For the doctors in HIV research, there has been evidence
of natural selection due to the resistance of HIV to antiviral drugs.
(Coyne 10)
Okay, so now that we’ve taken a look at the evidence for evolution,
what about the evidence for Intelligent Design, and what is it? Intelligent
Design is backed by the Discovery Institute and is basically a form
of creationism that holds the belief of irreducible complexity. It states
that there are certain biological items that are so complex, there is
absolutely no way they could have evolved over time and that this points
to the fact that they must have been created by a designer – God.
(Carroll 180) Upon further inspection you can see that this is circular
reasoning; if complexity, in and of itself, shows intent of design –
then who designed the complex designer? The idea that something changes
from a very simple thing to a very complex thing is not hard to grasp.
Look at agriculture – we started out as gatherers, and now we
have innumerable fields of genetically engineered crops. Look at weapons
– we started out killing each other with clubs or rocks and now
have weapons of mass destruction that can be controlled with only the
push of a button. On a lighter note, consider the video game system.
Children of today’s video game market would laugh at the original
Atari. Look at the books that have been written over the centuries.
The Bible was written almost 2000 years ago and does not contain any
current scientific facts, if any at all. If a book containing all the
scientific knowledge we had today had been written 2000 years ago, we
would be amazed. But such a book does not exist because we follow a
natural path from simple to complex. We start as an egg and sperm coming
together in the womb and after nine months we are born a human child
– simple to complex. The pattern is everywhere you look. “If
incontrovertible evidence of intelligent design were ever discovered…this
could only be evidence of a designer that was itself the product of
natural selection or of some other as yet unknown escalatory process.”
(Dawkins, Intelligent Aliens 106) George Gilder, a cofounder of the
Discovery Institute, has said, “Intelligent Design itself does
not have any content.”(Dennett 49) Ideas with no content do not
need to be taught in science classes. If you assume that there is no
evidence for evolution, ID still has no evidence for their argument.
They cannot make a case, even in the absence of evolution.
By now, you should realize that Intelligent Design should
not be taught in the science classroom because it is not science. There
was a recent case in which supporters of ID tried to implement the belief-system
into the public classroom in Dover, Pennsylvania. For scientists, the
outcome was optimistic. Judge Jones writes in his decision, “ID
violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting
supernatural causation…the argument of irreducible complexity,
central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism
that doomed creation science in the 1980’s…ID’s negative
attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community…we
have concluded that [intelligent design] is not [a science], and moreover
that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious,
antecedents.” (Brockman xi)
I believe in religious tolerance, but religious tolerance
is one thing, religious indoctrination another. You cannot teach in
a history class the knowledge that the Greek gods were mythological,
and then turn around and teach in a science class that a God has created
us. There is a contradiction there. Why were we created by our God,
and not by the Greeks’ god(s), or by Allah? Education is about
facts, as we know them, and to the best of our rational knowledge.
In closing, I would like to describe how powerful science is when compared
to religion, using the words of Bertrand Russell, “We were told
that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it; we are now
told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains and everyone believes
it.” (18) Things that can be measured and give results belong
in the science classroom, not things based on faith. What would a classroom
that teaches ID look like? “Thankfully, we need not tax our imaginations,”
according to Douglas Baynton. “All we have to do is look inside
some 19th-century textbooks.”
Works Cited
Alberts,
Bruce. Science
and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences
Washington, DC. National Academy Press. 1999
Baynton,
Douglas. “'Intelligent
Design' Déjà vu.”
Washington Post. December 17, 2005. Page A23.
Brockman,
John. “Introduction.” Intelligent
Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
New York. Vintage Books. 2006
Carroll, Robert
Todd. The
Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions,
and Dangerous Delusions
Hoboken, New Jersey. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003
Coyne,
Jerry A. “The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name.”
Intelligent
Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
New York. Vintage Books. 2006
Darwin,
Charles R. On
the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation
of
favoured races in the struggle for life.
London: John Murray. 1st edition, 1st issue. 1859. 3 Nov. 2006
Dawkins, Richard.. “Intelligent Aliens.” Intelligent
Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
New York. Vintage Books. 2006
Dawkins, Richard.
The
Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
New York. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004
Dennett,
Daniel C. “The Hoax of Intelligent Design and how
it was Perpetrated.” Intelligent
Thought: Science versus
the Intelligent Design Movement
Morton,
Glenn. “The
Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood.” 5 Nov.
2006
National Academy
of Sciences. Science
and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences
Washington, DC. National Academy Press. 1999
Russell,
Bertrand. Impact
of Science on Society
1951
Sulloway, Frank J.
“Why Darwin Rejected Intelligent Design.” Intelligent
Thought: Science versus
the Intelligent Design Movement
Wikipedia “Natural
Selection.” 10 Nov. 2006
Wolfs, Frank.
“Introduction
to the Scientific Method.” 11 Nov. 2006
Works Consulted
Campbell,
John Angus and Stephen
C. Meyer.Darwinism,
Design, and Public Education
(Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series)
Dennett,
Daniel C. Breaking
the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Viking, The Penguin Group, 2006
Haught,
John F. God
After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution
Lehrer, Jim.
“Intelligent
Design.” PBS Newshour Transcript
Miller,
Kenneth R. “The
Collapse of Intelligent Design: Will the Next Monkey Trial be in Ohio?”
Video by CASE Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Deamer, David.
“Should
Intelligent Design Be Taught in the Schools?” Forum video.
Pierce, Kenneth M. “Putting
Darwin Back in the Dock.” TIME Magazine. Mar. 16, 1981
Sanders, Alain
L.“Memories
of The Monkey Trial: The Supreme Court reaffirms the barrier
between church and state.” TIME Magazine. Jun. 29, 1987
Scott,
Eugenie C. Evolution
vs. Creationism: An Introduction
California Press, 2005.
Wallis,
Claudia. “The
Evolution Wars: When Bush joined the fray last week, the question grew
hotter: Is "intelligent design" a real science? And should
it be taught in schools?” TIME Magazine. Aug. 15, 2005
Wikipedia. Entry: “Intelligent
Design.”
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