From a New York Times editorial, 1/23/05:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/opinion/23sun1.html
The Crafty Attacks on Evolution
Critics of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution become more wily with
each passing year.
Creationists who believe that God made the world and everything in it
pretty much as described in the Bible were frustrated when their
efforts to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools or
inject the teaching of creationism were judged unconstitutional by the
courts.
But over the past decade or more a new generation of critics has
emerged with a softer, more roundabout approach that they hope can
pass constitutional muster.
One line of attack - on display in Cobb County, Ga., in recent weeks -
is to discredit evolution as little more than a theory that is open to
question.
Another strategy - now playing out in Dover, Pa. - is to make students
aware of an alternative theory called "intelligent design," which
infers the existence of an intelligent agent without any specific
reference to God.
These new approaches may seem harmless to a casual observer, but they
still constitute an improper effort by religious advocates to impose
their own slant on the teaching of evolution.
The Cobb County fight centers on a sticker that the board inserted
into a new biology textbook to placate opponents of evolution.
The school board, to its credit, was trying to strengthen the teaching
of evolution after years in which it banned study of human origins in
the elementary and middle schools and sidelined the topic as an
elective in high school, in apparent violation of state curriculum
standards.
When the new course of study raised hackles among parents and citizens
(more than 2,300 signed a petition), the board sought to quiet the
controversy by placing a three-sentence sticker in the textbooks:
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory,
not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material
should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and
critically considered."
Although the board clearly thought this was a reasonable compromise,
and many readers might think it unexceptional, it is actually an
insidious effort to undermine the science curriculum.
The first sentence sounds like a warning to parents that the film they
are about to watch with their children contains pornography.
Evolution is so awful that the reader must be warned that it is
discussed inside the textbook.
The second sentence makes it sound as though evolution is little more
than a hunch, the popular understanding of the word "theory," whereas
theories in science are carefully constructed frameworks for
understanding a vast array of facts.
The National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious
scientific organization, has declared evolution "one of the strongest
and most useful scientific theories we have" and says it is supported
by an overwhelming scientific consensus.
The third sentence, urging that evolution be studied carefully and
critically, seems like a fine idea.
The only problem is, it singles out evolution as the only subject so
shaky it needs critical judgment.
Every subject in the curriculum should be studied carefully and
critically.
Indeed, the interpretations taught in history, economics, sociology,
political science, literature and other fields of study are far less
grounded in fact and professional consensus than is evolutionary
biology.
A more honest sticker would describe evolution as the dominant theory
in the field and an extremely fruitful scientific tool.
The sad fact is, the school board, in its zeal to be accommodating,
swallowed the language of the anti-evolution crowd.
Although the sticker makes no mention of religion and the school board
as a whole was not trying to advance religion, a federal judge in
Georgia ruled that the sticker amounted to an unconstitutional
endorsement of religion because it was rooted in long-running
religious challenges to evolution.
In particular, the sticker's assertion that "evolution is a theory,
not a fact" adopted the latest tactical language used by
anti-evolutionists to dilute Darwinism, thereby putting the school
board on the side of religious critics of evolution.
That court decision is being appealed.
Supporters of sound science education can only hope that the courts,
and school districts, find a way to repel this latest assault on the
most well-grounded theory in modern biology.
In the Pennsylvania case, the school board went further and became the
first in the nation to require, albeit somewhat circuitously, that
attention be paid in school to "intelligent design."
This is the notion that some things in nature, such as the workings of
the cell and intricate organs like the eye, are so complex that they
could not have developed gradually through the force of Darwinian
natural selection acting on genetic variations.
Instead, it is argued, they must have been designed by some sort of
higher intelligence.
Leading expositors of intelligent design accept that the theory of
evolution can explain what they consider small changes in a species
over time, but they infer a designer's hand at work in what they
consider big evolutionary jumps.
The Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania became the first in the
country to place intelligent design before its students, albeit mostly
one step removed from the classroom.
Last week school administrators read a brief statement to ninth-grade
biology classes (the teachers refused to do it) asserting that
evolution was a theory, not a fact, that it had gaps for which there
was no evidence, that intelligent design was a differing explanation
of the origin of life, and that a book on intelligent design was
available for interested students, who were, of course, encouraged to
keep an open mind.
That policy, which is being challenged in the courts, suffers from
some of the same defects found in the Georgia sticker.
It denigrates evolution as a theory, not a fact, and adds weight to
that message by having administrators deliver it aloud.
Districts around the country are pondering whether to inject
intelligent design into science classes, and the constitutional
problems are underscored by practical issues.
There is little enough time to discuss mainstream evolution in most
schools; the Dover students get two 90-minute classes devoted to the
subject.
Before installing intelligent design in the already jam-packed science
curriculum, school boards and citizens need to be aware that it is not
a recognized field of science.
There is no body of research to support its claims nor even a real
plan to conduct such research.
In 2002, more than a decade after the movement began, a pioneer of
intelligent design lamented that the movement had many sympathizers
but few research workers, no biology texts and no sustained curriculum
to offer educators.
Another leading expositor told a Christian magazine last year that the
field had no theory of biological design to guide research, just "a
bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions."
If evolution is derided as "only a theory," intelligent design needs
to be recognized as "not even a theory" or "not yet a theory."
It should not be taught or even described as a scientific alternative
to one of the crowning theories of modern science.
That said, in districts where evolution is a burning issue, there
ought to be some place in school where the religious and cultural
criticisms of evolution can be discussed, perhaps in a comparative
religion class or a history or current events course.
But school boards need to recognize that neither creationism nor
intelligent design is an alternative to Darwinism as a scientific
explanation of the evolution of life.
__________________________________________________________
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke
miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into
the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to
abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon
distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to
characterize the ideas of their opponents."
Stephen Jay Gould
Harry
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
.
|
