Wilson, Roger T.

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ColleaguesVolume 1 | Issue 1 Article 134-14-2011Faith-based Science? Intelligent Design Is NotScienceRoger Wilson Ph.D.Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/colleaguesThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colleagues by an authorizedadministrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gvsu.edu.Recommended CitationWilson, Roger Ph.D. (2005) "Faith-based Science? Intelligent Design Is Not Science," Colleagues: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 13.Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/colleagues/vol1/iss1/13FEnrunr Sronv: INrurLrcENT DnsrcNFaXe&x-k&sed m3erneffi?by Roger Wi lson, PhDHow nuny legs does a doghaue i.f yorr cnll the fail a leg?Four. Calling a tail n leg daesn'tmake it a leg.- Abrqham Lincolnhe struggle to have faith-informed inter-pretations of the origin of life become; part of the K-12 science curricula contin-i ues. Tirese interpretations have ranged from llt-, eral creationism (Genesis) to the seemingly'  more soph ist icated, .r  nd recent, intel J igentdesign (ID). But notwithstanding the appear-ance of explanatory sophistication, the inten-t ional  ambigui ty surrounding i ts "designer,"  orthe recent musings by President Br-rsh that suchexplanations should be aired in the publicschools, ID is not science and so has no place inthe science curricula of Michigan's publicschools.Presently, the Dover Area School District inPennsylvania is involved in a court casebecause last year its school board approved apolicy calling for the reading of a statement in, ninth grade biology classes promoting.r,intelligent design as a viable alternative toevolutionary theory. The result has been afawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of agroup of eight families. Interestingly, the schooldistrict is represented pro bono by the ThomasMore Law Center (TMLC) in Ann Arbor, "a not-for-profit public interest 1aw firm dedicated tothe defense and promotion of the rellgiousfreedom of Christians" (TMLC website). For itspart, the ACLU called upon MSU professorRobert Pennock to testify. Pennock, a facultymember in the Ecology and Evolut ion aryBiology and Behavior Program, is an ardent 'critic of creationist science, a nation_al}y knownexpert on the evolution/creationism.or,tr*up.ry and ID in parhcular, andfounder of Michigan Citizens for Science(michigancitizensf orscience.org), anorganization whose function is "to assistlegislators and school adminishators inmaintaining the integri ty of sciehce education."The battl-e betweei evgletion and ?reafieaisrnhas some legal history in America. The Scopeq"Monkey Tiial (Tennessee v John Scopes) in1925was perhaps the most.famous;Unlike today,Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was triedand initially found guilty for illega1ly teachingthe theory of evolution. Tennessee had passedits evolution statutes which prevented thestate's publ icly-funded schools, includinguniversities and normal schools (teachers'colleges), from instructing "any theory thatdenies the story of divine creation as taught bythe Bible." It.was not until 1968 that the U.S.Supreme Court finally considered a case(Epperson v Arkansas) chal lenging a s imi larlaw in Arkansas dating back to 1928 that madeit unlawful "to teach the theory or doctrine thatmankind ascended or descended from a iowerorder of animals." The Supreme Court ruledagainst Arkansas. It held that the "1aw's..,gffortwas confined to an attempt to blot out aparlicular theory because of its supposedconflict with the Biblical account, literally read"and ?hat the First and Fourteenth Amendmentshad been violated.Such laws and their wording were areflection of the times. Thus, biblical literalismneeded to morph, to become more ambiguous,even pseudo-scientific, to appear more legallypalatable in the present thereby drawing lessattention to itself where matters of schoolcurriculum were involved. Hence, creationscience and its offspring, intelligent designevolved. However, creation science, by the verynature of its label, connotes a marriage o{ faithor religion and science. Bdl.science, bydefinition, cannot addless expianatioirs ofchanges in the natural world derived from theconsequence of something transcendent. Yetthat has not deterred those who oppose the ,curricular dominance of evolution in science.Rather than have the theory of evolut ionprecluded from.irstruction, modem proponentsof creationjsm either seek equal expression inthe curriculum as a viable explanatoryalttirnaiive for the orisin of 1ife. This was theease again in Arkansas in 1981 (Mclean v.Alkansas BOE) as well  as Louisiana in 1987(Edwards v. Aguil lard). Both attemptsuitimately failed. Curiously, Arkansasattempt€d to argue in court that evolulion wasitself  a rel igion that violahed the Establ ishmentClause of the First Ameirdrnent. Louisiana' "t"' '?C orrE rau€9i".F all 2 005simply denied instruction of each unlessaccompanied by the other-a balancedapproach. Interestingiy, Louisiana had definedcreation science as "the scientific evidences forcreation and inferences from those scientificevidences." However, the Supreme Court chosenot to address the relationship betweencreationism and its supposed scientificevidence.Since the 1980s, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Texaseven Michigan, to name a few, have eitherentertained creationist science or ID directly, orimplicitly by mandating a critique ofevolutionary theory. Each time the attempt hasbeen confronted, though not always withcomplete success. In 2004, the Ohio State Boardof Education "rroted to change state sciencestandards, mandating that biology teachers'critically analyze' evolutionary iheory. " This isalso the tactic employed in Michigan with therecent introduction of House Bill No. 5251.Kansas, having chosen to make evolutioninstruction optional at the district level in 1999,reversed itself a year later when the state boardof education was ousted by the electorate, butnow finds itself entertaining a further reversalafter yet another electoral shift.And yet for all these curricular challenges,the scientific evidences at the heart of ID'sattempt at legitimacy remain problematic-there are none. Rather, in their place comes theconcept of irreducible complexity (not allsystems can be broken down into smallerfunctioning, thus some "designer") as well asan imprecise and piecemeal critique of aspectsof evolutionary theory that confuses the hou.with the what. The theory of evolution is notjust some conjecture or speculation as theeveryday use of the word might imply, butrather it is theory in the full scientific sense ofthe term. There is over 150 years of testedhypotheses supported by overwhelmingobservable evidence (facts). The "what" isuniversaily accepted by the scientificcommunity save for very few. l t  is theparticulars of the "how" that remain underdebate as interpretat ions continue to be testedand ref ined. As one scientist noted, " iheresponse to gaps in scienti f ic knowledge is todo niore scienti f ic work, not to postulate Godas a mechanism." @151Wilson: Faith-based Science? Intelligent Design Is Not ScienceProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 2005

Faith-based Science? Intelligent Design Is Not Science

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Faith-based Science? Intelligent Design Is Not Science

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