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Posted on Tue, May. 10, 2005


OTHER VIEWS: INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE

Nearly five years into the 21st century, the Kansas State Board of 
Education has begun an earnest discussion of whether schools in the 
state should teach science that was obsolete by the end of the 19th 
century. The board is holding hearings into proposed changes to its 
model science standards, changes intended to cast doubt on 
conventional evolutionary biology and inject into classrooms the 
notion of "intelligent design" -- the idea that the complexity of 
life can be explained only by some conscious creator's having 
designed it. Proponents say they mean merely to ensure that 
schoolchildren are given a full sense of the scientific controversy 
over evolution so that they can make up their own minds. Who can 
object to that?

But there is no serious scientific controversy over whether Darwinian 
evolution takes place. Intelligent design is not science. Whatever 
its rhetoric, the public questioning of evolution is fundamentally 
religious, not scientific, in nature. That is not to say that wonder 
is illegitimate; it is a perfectly reasonable response to the beauty 
and enormity of the universe to believe that it could not have 
happened without a divine hand. But the proper place to discuss such 
belief is not the public schools. Biology classes need to be taught 
with sensitivity to the religious sensibilities of students but not 
by casting doubt on evolution.

Evolution is a reality, no matter how much people may object to it. 
And denying or downplaying its importance to any serious examination 
of the biological sciences ill serves students who may wish to know 
how bacteria become resistant to drugs, how birds and dinosaurs are 
related, or why dolphins and sharks share certain morphological 
traits. How people reconcile their religious convictions with 
scientific reality is a matter for places of worship, not for science 
classrooms -- or state boards that set standards.

-- The Washington Post

-- 
Martin Weiss, Ph.D
Vice President, Science
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111 th Street
Corona, New York 11368
718 699 0005 x 356

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