Is it immoral to be mistaken and persuasive?
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.
Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one.You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.
All of which probably co-evolve. If there's any co-dependency, then they're going to evolve together...
Right... In other words, you've got some dinosaur who never thought about flying and for some mystical reason, flight feathers with their complex matrix of interlocking barbules, the system for pivoting flight feathers, wings, light bone structures, and flowthrough hearts and lungs are all going to evolve at the same time.
That what you call logic there, Reep?
I have to disagree to some extent on this. If you are saying only to the level that 'these different types of wings allow them to fly through the air', then you would be correct.
However, the aerodynamics involved does differ, the extreme example being that of your typical bird wing and the wings of a bumblebee, which, up until recently, was thought to have violated the basic principle of aerodynamics.
I'm sorry, this takes the insult of the day prize. Engineering not only requires a solid grounding in the scientific method, but also involves formulating hypothesis, and testing it( just attend some classes in heat transfer, fluid dynamics, or electrodynamics ). ACtually, most of what I hear representing the arguments of the 'soft science' folks here is a very cavalier application of the scientific method.
But if man is not spiritually different than any other animal why should this be the case? Other creatures survive without our Western Judeo-Christian, property respecting, life respecting, take-care-of-the-old-and-ill ethics. Why should we need them to survive?
Is it immoral to be mistaken and persuasive?
This is a rather blatant misstatement of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory makes no predictions about the evolution of any species. Likewise your time scale is far too short. Such short times are not predicted by evolutionary theory.
Time to invoke Godwin's law. A the first user of the term "Nazi" in an internet discussion, you are declaried the loser.
We don't, outside of an inclination against cannibalism.
Yet man seems to prefer moral explanations. Why do you suppose that is?
Good question. I would say it’s a matter of heart – that is, ‘is it intentional?’ Beyond that, it’s not to say that one has ‘never’ questioned the existence of some kind of Intelligent Designer. It becomes a problem when the question is not allowed.
Well said.
Then how can your sincerely mistaken, watch-finding scientist be immoral?
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