The Solid Surfer.com: Intelligent Design In Schools

Intelligent design theory has been, to say the least, quite a controversy. Support for or opposition to it being taught in school has pitted teachers vs. school board members, scientists vs. religious leaders, Democrats vs. Republicans, and many others. Proponents insist that the theory is valid science, while adversaries dismiss it as a disguised method of injecting creationism into the classroom. In recent days, the clashes have escalated; last week the Kansas Board of Education passed a resolution mandating that I.D. be taught alongside evolution in classrooms, while in Dover, Pennsylvania, voters ousted several supporters of the theory from the local school board.

So where do I stand on this issue? I believe that intelligent design should indeed be taught in classrooms. Why? For one reason only - it truly is good science. This is not to say that Darwinian evolution is entirely wrong. But intelligent design certainly has enough evidence and plausibility to at least be considered a valid theory. I'm not a science writer and won't defend those particular merits here, but many excellent books and websites do just that; some popular ones are PrivilegedPlanet.com, a related blog called ID The Future, and the slightly more religious-based GeraldSchroeder.com.

Now, if intelligent design is indeed true, the implications for humanity are, of course, staggering. This alone is enough for many people to support or oppose the theory. But implications should not be involved when considering whether to teach it in classrooms; only scientific validity matters. And as the above websites demonstrate, intelligent design contains plenty of this.

Teaching I.D., in fact, is far more consistent with the scientific method than banning it. Whenever a substantiated theory arises in any area of science, it should be accepted at minimum as containing the potential of being truly valid. To dismiss this possibility due to implications would simply be poor science. Indeed, if all new theories were discarded as such, evolution itself never would have survived the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Intelligent design deserves no less consideration.

That said, some of the implication-based criticisms do raise valid questions, and I'd like to address the most common ones I've encountered:

Criticism #1: Darwinian evolution has been proven to be correct, so there is no need for any competing theories.

Answer: This may be true on a micro-level, but not on the macro-level necessary to dismiss competing theories. On the micro-level, we certainly have observed that species can both develop new characteristics and undergo natural selection. Among bacteria, for example, genetic mutations occur regularly, and when under attack from an antibiotic, only those bacteria with resistant genes will survive. Our constant need to develop new antibiotics, in fact, is a direct result of this bacterial micro-evolution.

Macro-evolution, however, is an entirely different story. We have never observed one species actually transforming into another (and certainly not doing so randomly), a la Darwin's theory. Darwinists, of course, reply that such change occurs only over many thousands or millions of years. But while this position can certainly be theorized and supported by evidence, it just as certainly cannot be definitively verified. Potential evidence is not the same as proof.

Criticism #2: Intelligent design is dangerous because it represents the imposition of organized religion onto people.

Answer: Certainly many who do wish to impose organized religion believe that intelligent design supports their reasoning. But the theory itself advocates no particular faith, and clearly can be taught without violating our public schools' church-state separation.

Criticism #3: Opposing evolution is akin to the Catholic Church's opposition of Copernicus and Galileo in the 1600s.

Answer: Actually it is quite different, on multiple levels. First of all, the Church persecuted Copernicus and Galileo on religious grounds and forced them to publicly retract their scientific findings (extremely controversial at the time) that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun. Intelligent design demands nothing of the sort with Darwinism, and advocates of I.D. maintain that it be taught alongside, and not in place of, evolution.

Secondly, unlike macro-evolution, Earth's rotations and revolutions can be directly measured. We know factually that these occur because we regularly observe them in action. This quite differs from a technically unproven theory, as discussed above in the answer to Criticism #1.

Criticism #4: Advocates of intelligent design don't seem so intelligent themselves in the eyes of mainstream America.

Answer: In fact, polls indicate that a majority of Americans support the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution.

Even with such support, though, scientific validity and not public opinion should decide the issue. Most people dismissed Einstein's theory of relativity upon its first proposal, but ultimately scientific merit triumphed and today we largely accept it.

Science is all about discovering how the world works. And since intelligent design provides a scientifically plausible and evidence-backed explanation of our planetary and biological origins, it certainly deserves to be taught as such.