Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
And yet dolphins only exist because of humanity's good intentions -- all the second-order alliances in the world can't keep them out of the nets of a Japanese trawler fishing for tuna.
Or explain why the evidence isn't there, which is kind of what punctuated equilibrium is all about.
Monkeys and apes have been known to use tools -- a rifle is simply a much more complex tool. Lower animals also use tools: sea otters use rocks as hammers and anvils to crack oyster shells, some birds fashion [1] twigs to dig out insects from trees, etc.
[1] The word "fashion" was used on purpose. Not only do they select the stick for the function, they also modify the stick to more closely suit their needs.
My guess is that human evolution will no longer be taught in schools when rational people start to point out that Darwinism was one of the foundations of Nazism. A committed evolutionist can never explain why one human race cannot be subjagated to another.
You completely misunderstood my point. I would not expect Darwin to have the ability to predict specific changes in an ecosystem (that IS nonsense), but if his theory that the complexity of species increases over time is correct, then he would have to conclude that zebras, for example, would be more "complex" (perhaps in some unspecified manner that Darwin could not foresee) in 2002 than they were in 1830.
I once asked an evolutionist to explain why the Holocaust was wrong. His inability to answer that question in a rational manner (it's amazing how quickly a person with a sharp scientific background engages in muddied social discourse at a time like that) led me to question his credibility.
Actually, engineering isn't science and isn't the scientific method. Science is about developing and testing new hypotheses. Engineering is the application of science, a very different discipline. So this comment is nonsensical.
You completely misunderstood my point. I would not expect Darwin to have the ability to predict specific changes in an ecosystem (that IS nonsense), but if his theory that the complexity of species increases over time is correct, then he would have to conclude that zebras, for example, would be more "complex" (perhaps in some unspecified manner that Darwin could not foresee) in 2002 than they were in 1830.
This comment by you only reinforces that you are grossly misrepresenting the scientific method and evolution.
The reality is that Intelligent Design is not science. At best, its a criticism of a scientific theory but it is not a scientific theory itself.
Another false claim, many species do something "for the hell of it". Just as an accessible example, cats will toy with prey they have no intention of eating.
I'm not disputing that -- What you didn't mention is that the entire free market economy is a human construct and therefore can't be compared to a single organism. The fact that humans alone among all the species on the planet have the capacity to create a "free-market economy" tells me that human ingenuity is not the result of a random process.
If you can find any evidence of monkeys in Africa buying and selling bananas on a futures market, I'll gladly concede the argument. Since you probably can't even imagine something as nonsensical as that (due to the inherent, permanent place that monkeys have as a form of life lower than humans), you'd have to say I've got a point.
No, that's not the point. The point is that even with our intelligence, nobody actually sat down and designed the economy. It just evolved. In fact, nobody can even predict the future structure of the economy with any specificity. This evolving system has "a mind of its own", so to speak.
Oh, OK.
But don't let your mind fret with ancient poetry, we have evolved so much since then haven't we ?
Yes - we have antihistamines! :-)
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