Throughout our nation's history, there have been many differences on many important issues -- not to mention a civil war thrown in there -- but at the end of the day, we have always been able to resolve these differences and sit back down at the dinner table with one another. I like that about this country. I dislike it, more often than not, when men who have differences resort to pettiness and name-calling rather than debate and compromise. There are, however, some issues which are nonnegotiable and leave little room for compromise. The recent uproar over "intelligent design" is one such issue.
Essentially, "intelligent design" boils down to the claim that empirical evidence points to the conclusion that one or more intelligent entities deliberately designed all of life on earth. Lately the debate over it has been focused in school districts around the country. Recently a Georgia judge decided not to allow stickers in the state's science textbooks claiming evolution is a "theory, not a fact," put there by intelligent design supporters to promote their cause. Elsewhere, school administrators in Harrisburg, Penn., have begun to read statements that had much the same content as those stickers to biology classes before they went on to learn about evolution.
Mandating that students be forced to learn about intelligent design is wrong. It is not an issue to be debated and it has nothing to do with respecting a religious person's beliefs. One of the many problems with intelligent design is that it is essentially the religious community's reaction to evolution (and its apparent atheistic inferences). Parents and citizens who believe fervently in a higher being, whose right it is to do so, find it appalling that their children are taught in school a theory that requires no such architect. This nation was founded on the principle that while many of its citizens shared similar religious beliefs, nobody in the public sector would have religious views forced upon them. The fact that certain people in our society are uncomfortable that there are legitimate scientific theories out there which may imply the nonexistence of a God, to put it harshly, is just too bad.
The push for intelligent design in schools is part of a poison in the United States today. Entirely apart from the "separation of church and state" argument is another one which is perhaps more important and fundamental. It has to do with our education system. For millennia until after even this College's founding, religion had a monopoly on education in the world. Then the Enlightenment happened. Since then, we have moved away from an education system influenced by religion and moved toward one routed in observable fact and testable theory. Evolution is a part of that education system. It was begun by Charles Darwin in the 19th century, and has continued to this day, when scientists around the world continue to refine it -- which brings us to another facet of this debacle.
Professor Marcelo Gleiser of our physics department said last spring in a class I took, "scientists are happy when their theories are wrong." It leads to progress. Science, whether evolution, Big Bang theory, or special relativity, is a body of conclusions and predictions based off of observations. Theoretical inadequacies are part of the scientific process. Intelligent design hides itself behind this faade. It claims to be a scientific alternative to a scientific theory, when in reality those alternatives are built into the existing framework. Those who push intelligent design do not do it to perfect evolution and science, they do it because they are upset that their beliefs are excluded from a scientific system routed in supportable theory, not blind faith. All that this body of pseudoscience accomplishes by being taught to students in this country is to poison the attempt to teach the objective truth by trying to convince children that faith is science.
Today's world is increasingly competitive in terms of education. China and India are teaching their children increasingly effectively in math and science, while American children are threatened by pseudoscience. During the Cold War, we feared Russian children were surpassing us in math and science, so we beefed up our education system and won the space race and the Cold War itself along the way. Centuries ago, such an education consisted of learning Aristotle and Aquinas; today, it means drawing divisions between such things as science, philosophy and religion. Education is the backbone of our nation's greatness. In the coming decades, we Americans will be challenged by an increasingly educated world, and we need to measure up. Drivel like intelligent design impedes that progress and threatens that which makes this nation the wealthiest, greatest and freest on earth.
