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.
This would seem particularly strange. What you are saying is that all of these life forms existed over large parts of the world, but that East Africa was the place where the "evolutionary step" was made at every stage of evolution. If what you are saying is true, then I would have expected a little more randomness to this development.
As in: Ramapithecus first appears in East Africa, and spreads out over some area of the world over thousands of years. The group that lived in an area now known as France evolved into australopithecus, who then spread out over thousands of years. The "austras" who lived in Southeast Asia evolved into homo habilis, etc.
What is it about East Africa that made it the location of every major step of human evolution? If anything, I would have expected humans to "evolve" in areas where harsh factors such climate would require them to evolve simply to survive.
Among other things, interestingly enough...there's a natural nuclear reactor spitting out a constant stream of neutrons and gammas.
The modern international free market economy is a marvelous, interconnected system. Yet if you remove only the electrial switches, the system will collapse. Or if you remove only the rubber products. Or if you remove all the receptionists. Or if you remove all the capacitors.
Or if you remove just one industry among the hundreds that make up the economy: Remove just the stockbrokers. Collapse. Remove just the package delivery services. Collapse. Remove just the gas stations. Collapse. Remove just the farms. Collapse.
The modern free-market economy is irreducibly complex. And yet, despite our great intelligence, no one person - indeed no one committee or soviet or economic design bureau - was ever responsible for designing the modern economy as it exists today. This in spite of the fact that several Communist countries destroyed themselves by trying to do just that. The modern free market economy evolved into its present IC state.
I don't believe that's true now.
Why is it that there are numerous species that share all of these characteristics (eyes, gills, legs, etc.) living today, but for the characteristics that specifically define a human being (a bipod that walks upright, thinks rationally, shows emotion, etc.) there are no other species that share them?
What makes Intelligent Design so shaky as a theory isn't that it requires a deitic or non-deitic intelligence, but that there is no connection between the data and "intelligence". Until someone comes up with a mathematically rigorous algorithm for discerning "intelligence" in data, it is a worthless hypothesis. The very existence of an automobile in now way proves that it is the consequence of intelligent design. There are other unrelated scientific reasons we would probably find any other hypothesis to be statistically improbable, but those reasons are specific to the properties of the automobile which don't necessarily apply to anything else.
I personally am skeptical of ID claims for our universe and existence not because it is not possible that this is the case, but because there is no discernable separation of design or intelligence from everything else as a point of mathematical fact, so it makes anyone who claims to have such things a snake oil peddler or ignoramus.
When you can develop an objective algorithm for discriminating "intelligence" and "design" in an arbitrary set of data, then ID can become a solid theory. Since I can tell you right now this is mathematically impossible, you are left with demonstrating the existence of a Creator that is capable of what the ID theorists claim as that is the only avenue to theory-hood available to ID theorists.
False. There is such a thing as "convergent evolution" -- Insect wings and bird wings are physically different, and have different origins within the organism, but they are functionally similar. This is true of bat wings, pterosaur wings, whatnot. The eye may have developed independently in several different lines of evolution -- however, as the common ancestor of eagles and humans had eyes human and eagle eyes can be considered to be products of the same evolutionary line.
Ironically, I could use East Africa as a perfect supporting argument in favor of human evolution, but in reverse. If humans evolve over time, I contend that they are more likely to evolve in areas where adverse conditions require a substantial adaptation.
A place like East Africa would never have required such adaptation. It is located in an area that won't have seasonal extremes because it is on the equator, and (surprisingly) much of the region doesn't even have harsh summer heat because of the higher elevations. Uganda probably has the most "perfect" climate in the world -- it is something like 70-75 degrees there every day of the year.
If I were to look at East Africa today in terms of its vital statistics, social order, etc., I'd say that humans have evolved there less than anywhere else on the planet.
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