AAAS Board Resolution Urges Opposition to "Intelligent Design" Theory in U.S. Science Classes

The AAAS Board recently passed a resolution urging policymakers to oppose teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" within science classrooms, but rather, to keep it separate, in the same way that creationism and other religious teachings are currently handled.

"The United States has promised that no child will be left behind in the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, CEO and executive publisher for AAAS. "If intelligent design theory is presented within science courses as factually based, it is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and to undermine the integrity of U.S. science education."

American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints, Leshner noted. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, he added, science-based information and conceptual belief systems should not be presented together.

"The ID movement argues that random mutation in nature and natural selection can't explain the diversity of life forms or their complexity and that these things may be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent," said Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "This is an interesting philosophical or theological concept, and some people have strong feelings about it. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution. Intelligent design theory has so far not been supported by peer-reviewed, published evidence."

In contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a "disputed view" within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through "disclaimer" stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.

"The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry," the AAAS Board of Directors wrote in a resolution released today. "AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of `intelligent design theory' as a part of the science curriculum of the public schools."

The AAAS Board resolved to oppose claims that intelligent design theory is scientifically based, in response to a number of recent ID-related threats to public science education.

In Georgia, for example, the Cobb County District School Board decided in March this year to affix stickers to science textbooks, telling students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Following a lawsuit filed August 21 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the school board on September 26 modified its policy statement, but again described evolution as a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other family teachings. The exact impact of the amended school board policy in Cobb County classrooms remains unclear.

A similar challenge is underway in Ohio, where the state's education board on October 14 passed a unanimous, though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But, their 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."

The Ohio State Education Board is inviting further public comment through November. In December, board members 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 have reportedly been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey, and other states, as well Ohio and Georgia.

While asking policymakers to oppose the teaching of ID theory within science classes, the AAAS also called on its 272 affiliated societies, its members, and the public to promote fact-based, standards-based science education for American schoolchildren.

I wonder if Darwin’s theory when he originally offered it would pass the same bar imposed on Intelligent Design. I took your words from #395 and reversed the actors to picture my question. I wonder what Darwin’s reaction would have been if a creationist said this to him so long ago: Evolution [ID} can point to no positive evidence for evolution [ID]. Every one of its current arguments amount to saying "there's a hole in creation [Darwinian] theory here." But even if those claims are true, merely pointing out a hole in an existing theory does not prove your competing theory. There are any number of competing sub-theories or future discoveries that could fill the gap without necessarily hurting the overall theory. And if those don't show up, there are any number of possible competing theories for the "supertheory" itself.
Likewise, when evolutionists dismiss “design-centric” theories and insist on “designer-centric” theories – they are inviting the corollary: creationists dismissing evolution theories that do not incompass abiogenesis.

Hmmm... your Darwin analogy is interesting. I'll have to chew on that for a while. (Maybe a lot... :-)

Let's see if I can better explain my objection to ID as it is today:

Both evolution and ID are historical sciences. They both take fossil evidence - data points from certain points in time - and assume that they represent organisms linked to each other by common descent. From these shared premises, they both try to explain what are the most plausible explanations for how ancient species progressed from the earlier forms to the later ones.

To do this, both theories need to produce methods whereby the species can get transformed. Evolution claims these methods are random mutations of various kinds, filtered by natural selection and gene drift, with reproductive incompatibility (speciation) acting as a ratchet that keeps sufficiently separated populations diverging away from each other instead of blending back into one. Evolution claims that these methods are sufficient to have produced successful populations of organisms that changed quickly enough to get from one known data point to the next.

ID somewhat agrees with this, except they say that some kind of genetic engineering was also performed by a thinking person of some kind at several points in history.

Evolutionary biologists have positively confirmed that mutations exist, that they're random (AndrewC & one or two scientists notwithstanding :-), that selection exists, that genetic drift exists, that these all can have myriad effects on the organisms, etc. Most ID'ers agree with this much.

Where ID'ers disagree with Darwinians is in explaining the current gaps in knowledge. ID'ers claim that RM&NS alone (indeed any process that isn't guided by a person of some kind) was not sufficient to drive the transitions between all the paleospecies. They claim that there is a supernatural bioengineer who steps in sometimes to impose changes to organisms. So the task of ID'ers is to provide some positive evidence for this designer. Otherwise they're simply complaining about the current gaps in knowledge. (I mean, c'mon: Every scientific discipline has gaps in their knowledge! Simply pointing to the other theory's gaps isn't sufficient to prove your theory correct by default.)

Even when it comes to abiogenesis, naturalistic scientists have produced positive evidence on their side: Instead of saying "nobody has seen this God person zapping adult humans into existence out of thin air, therefore abiogenesis must be true by default", they came up with positive evidence for their proposed mechanisms. They've shown that complex organic chemicals form under a variety of natural conditions, they've discovered natural catalysts for both peptide and RNA formation & growth, they've discovered shorter & shorter polymers that can act as their own catalysts for replication, etc. People will differ over just how convincing these positive evidences are, but they are positive.

Thank you. But if those two statements are accurate paraphrases of Eldredge, I'm afraid I can't for the life of me see how the contradict one another.

They're definitely accurate and by themselves may not seem to contradict each other. The problem arises when one looks at the very condemning statements Eldredge first said about the same exhibit he used as a backdrop in the TV interview.

You may notice those who disagree with me keep referring to the horse exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History as a poor representation. They don't use Eldredge's extremely condemning words from the 1979 interview.

Why is that? Well, I can understand someone not using the worst case scenario to support their position. The real problem is, they haven't read the original transcripts. Since I can't find all my transcripts I'm re-ordering what I can't find, this time including the video. At least I've read the originals multiple times, even letter for letter as I put some on disk. Have you heard from anyone else that's read the original transcripts?

Eldredge was talking about some imaginary stories of evolution in school textbooks during the 1979 interview with Sunderland. Among other examples, Eldredge referred to the horse exhibit on display at the American Museum of Natural History as one of those imaginary stories.

Do you realize what he said? The horse exhibit that he's standing in front of and talking about during his TV interview is so blatantly incorrect, he refers to it as an "imaginary story."

Not just imaginary, it's "lamentable" or deplorable. So on February 14, 1981, Eldredge had his chance to make his case for evolution. He could have picked any example he wanted to support his theory.

What does he use for a backdrop and what does he discuss as evidence for evolution? The linear horse exhibit on display at the American Museum of Natural History. This is the same exhibit he said was in particular, "speculative."

This is the same exhibit he called "lamentable" or deplorable.

This is the same exhibit he referred to as one of the "imaginary stories" in school textbooks.

Eldredge said the horse is a good example of evolution while using the imaginary, deplorable, speculative linear horse exhibit as a backdrop. That in itself is deceptive. Then he referenced the exhibit in the interview and discussed how one in the linear series transitioned to another. Are you really saying you don't see a contradiction here?

It's a completely separate matter to make the statements:

The horse is a good example of evolution
The horse exhibit is deplorable, speculative and an imaginary story

If the same person made both statements, and then while standing in front of the exhibit mentioned in the second statement the same person references the linear fossils as if one transitioned to another, you've got a contradiction. And that's exactly what we have.

Great post!

If you look at the basic beliefs from naturalistic/reductionism science, they look at the basic elements that make up everything and ‘assume’ just simple rearrangements and… Voila! Life! …and beyond this all ‘life, the universe and everything. (insert Douglas Adams reference here)

Analogy time:
In a service type economy money is transferred from hand to hand much like a poker game; random chance, etc… but at the end of the night the same amount of money exists on the table, it’s just arranged differently.

In a manufacturing economy, new items are developed by engineering, money is generated by progress and the need of newly engineered products for survival. There is more money, progress, and engineered items on the table at the end of the night.

Now for this analogy (and I admit it’s not the best) I am using ‘service’ to mean mere chemical reactions i.e. just matter taking different forms, and ‘manufacturing’ to mean a new system or machine entering the picture.

OK. Both of these economies can relate to evolution and ID in different aspects. But purely naturalistic evolution must account for the newly engineered machinery by way of a service economy alone. New products are not ‘engineered’ to fill a niche they just show up in a random chance poker game by way of material service. Engineering cannot exist because of the implications to naturalistic philosophy or at least to any economic system before mankind has played his hand.

Now I realize this analogy can be taken apart but look at the whole picture and focus on ‘purely naturalistic’ causes.

I am not starting to discuss evolution here; I am talking about life’s origin. The simplest cell is a machine (and an extremely complex machine), no one denies this… The DNA molecule is the plan as well as the continuous instructions for this complex machine. Obviously purely naturalistic evolution cannot allow for engineering and there is no service to provide (DNA does not rely only on purely chemical reactions) so it’s all a poker game here with elements as the cards. The basic idea is that, with enough time, a hand will come into play so players can be present at the table – now we have machines.

But let’s step back from the poker game and look at the casino. We don’t know how the whole casino (universe) came into existence but we know from its’ beginning the physical rules of all the games started. Simple rules became more and complex as the ‘big gamble’ started to play out. But the gambling from the naturalistic perspective is just that, a big gamble. There cannot be an expected payout because that would presume ‘if this - than this – in the expectations, purpose, reason of this’. There can be no expectations except with design or engineering, but yet here we all sit and play by dumb luck alone. But I get ahead of myself. The rules of this game are a given and cannot be broken, but we know as much about how the rules started as we do the casino. The rules had to be followed but in the expectation of nothing.

So, if this – then this, and so on in binary fashion until we have forces acting upon one another in a ‘system’. These systems became sub sets of the big gamble but became games unto themselves (galaxies). For no ‘reason’ a table in one of the countless systems there arose intelligence from all this gambling and we find life playing poker for a payout; that is life’s own continuation. Now we have the service economy (if this – then this) with the manufacturing economy (purpose, survival, new machines) or do we? Well survival is purpose and we don’t attribute survival to stars, planets, and molecules. All matter can take different forms for different ‘service’ type reasons but it is not necessary for ‘matters’ survival.

The manufacturing of new machines for purpose and survival… Hmmm… How do we account for this? It appears the rules have changed or at least at our table. Beyond this, we as humans have intelligence that does not rely on purely natural animal instincts for survival.

But yet, now that we have the first machine, purely naturalistic evolution can be invoked. We now have a need for service by way of reproduction. Unless this first machine is able to live forever, it must now only reproduce to survive as a machine. (I am being generous here) DNA is not a ‘if this – then this’ function like say, the formation of a crystal and beyond this we see crystals forming all the time. “…no chemical bonds exist between the nucleotide bases along the message-bearing spine of the DNA helix, demonstrating that physical and chemical forces are not responsible for the specific sequencing in the molecule.”

So this machine reproduces now as service to itself and the poker game starts again until new information is added to make the plans for this machine make a different machine. (Yes, I used the words information and plans… There might theoretically be plans for a crystal but its not a machine and you do not see new information added or a crystal mutating for ‘its’ survival.) But how is this just service of the system and not engineering. We are not just looking at adding one card, we must add a new set and change machine into a new one for survival.

Now one might say that this is not a random occurrence but is adaptation to the environment. So is the environment not random now? Isn’t the environment all ultimately a ‘big gamble’? And this adaptation is more than oxygen forming rust, isn’t it? Rust is a service type function and not a manufacturing function. Rust is not looking to survive by forming into rust.

Where does the first ‘new’ card come from and why? We see that organisms survive due to ‘pre-existing genes’ with natural selection. Where do the new ones come from to eventually make a new organism if it does not ‘know’ it needs one? A new gene is not a wild card; it is specific and more than likely not so beneficial to the hand being played. Do we invoke service or engineering here? Well we can’t have engineering before mankind comes on the scene so this is just a machine with a purpose and forming new machines?…
There’s nothing up this sleeve, we just need to… Hey, look over there!

It seems like it would make more sense to look at life from an engineering standpoint and apply the engineering rules to biology i.e. the demonstration of how things actually work rather than an assertion as to why one might think it works this way. Currently the theory of evolution allows for demonstrations ‘without’ performance.

If biological engineering continues to progress and allows us to create new machines, the rules of engineering and intelligent design will be applied. Ironically, it is ‘only’ here that naturalistic evolution allows it to happen.

IMHO The Design Theory is more of a ‘theory of everything’ and not limited to biology.

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