'Intelligent design' theory threatens science classrooms

In Cobb County, Ga., controversy erupted this spring when school board officials decided to affix "disclaimer stickers" to science textbooks, alerting students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things."

The stickers were the Cobb County District School Board's response to intelligent design theory, which holds that the complexity of DNA and the diversity of life forms on our planet and beyond can be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent. The ID movement -- reminiscent of creationism but more nuanced and harder to label -- has been quietly gaining momentum in a number of states for several years, especially Georgia and Ohio.

Stickers on textbooks are only the latest evidence of the ID movement's successes to date, though Cobb County officials did soften their position somewhat in September following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. In a subsequent policy statement, officials said the biological theory of evolution is a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other, religious teachings.

Surely, few would begrudge ID advocates their views or the right to discuss the concept as part of religious studies. At issue, rather, is whether ID theory, so far unproven by scientific facts, should be served to students on the same platter with the well-supported theory of evolution.

How the Cobb County episode will affect science students remains uncertain since, as the National Center for Science Education noted, the amended policy statement included "mixed signals."

But it's clear that the ID movement is quickly emerging as one of the more significant threats to U.S. science education, fueled by a sophisticated marketing campaign based on a three-pronged penetration of the scientific community, educators and the general public.

In Ohio, the state's education board on Oct. 14 passed a unanimous though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But the board's ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."

In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."

Undaunted by tens of thousands of e-mails it has already received on the topic, the state's education board is now gamely inviting further public comment through November. In December, Ohio's Board of Education will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels.

Meanwhile, ID theorists reportedly have been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey and other states as well as Ohio and Georgia.

What do scientists think of all this? We have great problems with the claim that ID is a scientific theory or a science-based alternative to evolutionary theory. We don't question its religious or philosophical underpinnings. That's not our business. But there is no scientific evidence underlying ID theory.

No relevant research has been done; no papers have been published in scientific journals. Because it has no science base, we believe that ID theory should be excluded from science curricula in schools.

In fact, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world, passed a resolution this month urging policy-makers to keep intelligent design theory out of U.S. science classrooms.

Noting that the United States has promised to "leave no child behind," the AAAS Board found that intelligent design theory -- if presented within science courses as factually based -- is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and undermine the integrity of U.S. science education. At a time when standards-based learning and performance assessments are paramount, children would be better served by keeping scientific information separate from religious concepts.

Certainly, American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints and the scientific community is no exception. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, science and conceptual belief systems should not be co-mingled, as ID proponents have repeatedly proposed.

The ID argument that random mutations in nature and natural selection, for example, are too complex for scientific explanation is an interesting -- and for some, highly compelling -- philosophical or theological concept. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution, and it isn't based on science. In sum, there's no data to back it up, and no way of scientifically testing the validity of the ideas proposed by ID advocates.

The quality of U.S. science education is at stake here. We live in an era when science and technology are central to every issue facing our society -- individual and national security, health care, economic prosperity, employment opportunities.

Children who lack an appropriate grounding in science and mathematics, and who can't discriminate what is and isn't evidence, are doomed to lag behind their well-educated counterparts. America's science classrooms are certainly no place to mix church and state.

Alan I. Leshner is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science; www.aaas.org

(Gen 1:1 KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

(Gen 1:2 KJV) And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

(Gen 1:3 KJV) And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

(Gen 1:4 KJV) And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

(Gen 1:5 KJV) And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

(Gen 1:6 KJV) And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

(Gen 1:7 KJV) And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

(Gen 1:8 KJV) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

(Gen 1:9 KJV) And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

(Gen 1:10 KJV) And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:11 KJV) And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

(Gen 1:12 KJV) And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:13 KJV) And the evening and the morning were the third day.

(Gen 1:14 KJV) And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

(Gen 1:15 KJV) And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

(Gen 1:16 KJV) And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

(Gen 1:17 KJV) And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

(Gen 1:18 KJV) And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:19 KJV) And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

(Gen 1:20 KJV) And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

(Gen 1:21 KJV) And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:22 KJV) And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

(Gen 1:23 KJV) And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

(Gen 1:24 KJV) And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

(Gen 1:25 KJV) And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

(Gen 1:26 KJV) And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

(Gen 1:27 KJV) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

(Gen 1:28 KJV) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

(Gen 1:29 KJV) And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

(Gen 1:30 KJV) And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

(Gen 1:31 KJV) And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

(Gen 2:1 KJV) Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

"evolution is a theory, not a fact .... So is Gravity, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Chaos, ....

So9

Excellent,, Servant of 9! The word "Theory" is like the word "tap." You can "tap" someone on the shoulder, which is very different than to "tap" someone's bank account. Same word, different meanings. According to my dictionary, the popular usage of the word "theory" is "a mere hypothesis, conjecture, guess."

Natural selection (i.e., "evolution,") is an observed scientific phenomenon, and I have read much about the subject. The word "theory" in the application of evolution, as it is in mathematics or music, refers to another meaning of the word "theory," to wit: "that branch of art or science consisting in a knowledge of its principles and methods ..."

I've taken music "theory" in college, and it is NOT hypothesis or conjecture, it is classic "theory," the definition of working principles, as is "evolution" as pertains to the phenomenon of natural selection.

Natural selection has been observed again and again in flora and fauna, where certain traits that were successful in one environment, became a liability in a changed environment, and the plants/animals that had those characteristics died or were eaten before they matured to have offspring; the ones without the liable characteristic survied and had offspring, whose liklihood of inheriting that characteristic was greater -- hence their "evolution" from having one trait to having another.

Personally, I think that evolution itself is Intelligent Design, and very very much in line with God and His miracles. The New Testament speaks in parables -- for Pete's Sake, SO DOES GENESIS!!! In a nutshell, natural selection's bottom line is: adapt or perish. In God's spiritual world, we as human beings either adapt our societies to His wise laws, or we perish.

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