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Evolution’s
continued unpopularity with the public –
measured again in a VCU poll – is no reason the
let the religious “argument from design” into
science classrooms. That would be surrender, not
compromise.
Researchers
at Virginia Commonwealth University recently threw
some questions into their life sciences poll about
the creationism vs. evolution debate that has
consumed America for a century and a half. The
results showed it is an argument that science
continues to lose.
When
asked how the public schools should approach the
issues of the beginning and history of life on
Earth, 26 percent of respondents said only (only!)
the Biblical creation account or its
pseudo-scientific cousin “intelligent design”
should be taught. Another 47 percent want them
taught side by side with evolution. Only 15
percent of respondents said evolution should be
taught exclusively.
You
can review it for yourself here.
The Pew
Research Center summarizes similar polls.
"Those
are very startling statistics," University of
Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur
Caplan told the Richmond Times-Dispatch
Monday. "Research institutions are losing the
support of the general public for a key theory of
science. And I think the scientific community is
partly to blame for that," by not
participating more fully in the public debate over
evolution.
Maybe
that’s because most scientists think the debate
was over decades ago. It would be like fighting to
defend the ancient Greek observations that the
Earth is round or the Galilean discovery that
Earth isn’t the center of the universe.
And
maybe it is partly because scientists have long
stopped calling those facts “theories” – the
word Caplan used again. Nobody talks about
Galileo’s theory that the Earth revolves around
the sun or the ancient Greek theory that the Earth
is round. Nor after all this time and the
mountains of observation and experiment should
scientists be using the word “theory” in
connection with evolution.
That
we are now struggling with something called
“intelligent design” is not really a sign of
progress. Proponents of the openly Genesis-based
“creation science” have changed tactics,
perhaps because it is obvious that geology and
evolution have flat disproved the literal accounts
in Genesis. The demands now are for the inclusion
of “intelligent design” in the classroom.
The
poll used this definition of intelligent design:
“Biological life developed over time from simple
substances, but God guided this process.”
Call
it theistic evolution.
The
poll also used a definition for evolution that I
think is problematic. “Biological life developed
over time from simple substances, but God did not
guide this process.” Merely by asking the
question that way, the pollsters agree with the
creationists that evolution is atheism.
Using
those definitions, the public appears more evenly
divided. Of the VCU sample 42 percent identified
themselves as believing in creation, and 43
percent identified themselves with one of the two
“versions” of evolution – 26 percent
theistic and 17 percent atheistic.
But
the intelligent design argument is not just
evolution seasoned with theism. The intelligent
design argument, which has been debated since
before Aristotle was in diapers, is considered by
its proponents as an absolute proof of the
existence of God, even the necessity of God. It
goes way beyond biology and the origins of life
and addresses the deepest, most fundamental
questions of the meaning of life.
The
Pew poll used similar definitions. The very
definitions themselves give ground to the
opposition and continue to feed the underlying
premise that there is a “conflict” between
“opposing views” that needs to be either
decided or compromised.
But
intelligent design isn’t an alternate view: It’s
religion in its purest form. It should have been
defined in the poll: “The development of
biological life from simple substances is absolute
proof of the existence of God.” And with
that question it would have been clear they were
mixing the apples of science with the oranges of
theology.
The
fatal logical flaw of the argument from design has
been recognized since the Greeks fought it out
three millenniums ago. It’s circular, logical
tail chasing. You have to assume the existence of
God to prove the existence of God. (If all things
are designed, and God designed the universe, who
designed God?)
That
is a great debate for Philosophy or Theology 101.
The proper science class response when asked
whether God created life by guiding evolution is,
“We just don’t know and cannot know. The
existence of God cannot be proven scientifically
because science is about things we can measure,
observe and prove.”
Which
of course is the point: Proponents of
“intelligent design” want public schools back
in the religion business. The last thing they ever
want a science teacher to say is, “The existence
of God cannot be proved.” People who think
“intelligent design” is an acceptable
compromise in the science curriculum are their
best allies. People who ask polling questions that
mix religion and science are equally at fault.
And
students sit in classes where the teachers are
terrified of these topics, leaving school with a
cursory understanding at best of the foundation of
modern biology, biochemistry and medicine (it is,
after all, just “theory”) and a lingering fear
that science is the enemy of faith.
--
October 31, 2005
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