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 I told you I forgave you for your unclear writing.
Fair enough. :-)
That could well be, but it is not an axiom of formal science, as it is an opinion whose relevance to science is as tits to a bullfrog.
When it comes time to form an opinion, make sure you have enough understanding about the important things in life -- like human nature, especially one's own -- to form the right one.
Well, I agree again.
Your adamant refusal to follow an argument about combinatorial computation is not a measure of my clarity of presentation.
When it comes to forming an opinion about science, make sure it is specifically NOT about "human nature, especially one's own".
When it comes to form an opinion about the things that are important it's about human nature.
When it comes to a discussion about the nature of science and the status of evolutionary theory, opinions about the nature of science and evolutionary theory are sort of what one expects, not patronizing asides suggesting one can't seem to focus on what's really important. Just an opinion, of course.
Look at gravitation. newton's theory held as "true" until Einstein showed it was not fully general. measurements based on einstein's theory showed newton was incomplete, so Einstein was "right". But that doesnt make Relativity the last word.
Except, of course, that that isn't true; many creatures have much simpler eyes than ours, all of which function well enough for those creatures to exist.
Ironically, Steven Jay Gould himself was driven to abandon his earlier notions of gradual evolution because even he couldn't quite explain how a human eye could have evolved if 99.9% of an eye couldn't see, how a mosquito wing could have evolved if 99.9% of a wing wouldn't lift it off the ground, etc. He came up with his theory of "punctuated equilibrium," which states that individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety. Interestingly, it should be pointed out that there is no more evidence of "punctuated equilibrium" than there was of Darwin's "pure" evolution.
"Puctuated equilibrium" does not say anything like "individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety." Not even remotely close.
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