How Intelligent is Intelligent Design?

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The state's school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time."

"Students are ill served by any effort in science classrooms to blur the distinction between science and other ways of knowing, including those concerned with the supernatural," according to the Association for the Advancement of Science, in a news release supporting the rejection by the National Academy of Science of the Kansas Board of Education's decision to a) rewrite the definition of science so that it is no longer limited to a search for natural explanations of phenomena and 2) teach Intelligent Design as a science in competition with evolution, which is presented as greatly more controversial in the scientific community than scientists themselves concede.

Dec. 20 – CNN headline
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) -- "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

The now-famous Scopes Monkey Trial pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow (the latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) in a court case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." Having already won in the academic marketplace of ideas, the theory of evolution now won its first legal battle.

In one sense, American society has not changed all that much since 1925. A recent CBS News poll found nearly 65 percent of Americans are in favor of teaching creationism (a religious assumption on which ID is based) along with evolution in schools. Thirty-seven percent favor banning evolution entirely.

Clearly, Bush had substantial public support when he recently commented on teaching ID in the schools. "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught," he said. When pressed, he managed to sidestep a direct answer rather cleverly. Asked whether he accepted the view that ID was an alternative to evolution, he replied, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

Many on the Religious Right and other ID proponents interpreted Bush's words as a blessing on teaching ID in science labs.

Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger, was quick to add, "Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Intelligent design is not a scientific concept."
(Source):

As usual, the Onion manages to put things in proper perspective:

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
August 17, 2005 | Issue 41•33

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling. (Read rest of article here)

Many Americans seem to have lost their perspective on modern science during the postmodern period, when absolutes easily fell by the wayside, scientists were seen by some as sinister technicians who wore white lab coats, conspired to do evil things to animals and create military killing machines. Postmodernism took this view a step further, claiming that science was "merely a matter of opinion." (See Science Wars)

The late Carl Sagan described science in this way:

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.

Science entails questioning assumptions and keeping an open mind. While it may not achieve that ideal to perfection, so far mankind has developed no better alternative to discovering, testing and applying knowledge about the natural world. Despite failures and setbacks, there is every reason to believe that the scientific method (or methods) is the only reliable tool for acquiring such knowledge.

Besides being both an ideal and an institution, science is also comprised of individuals who may or may not live up to the ideal or do justice to the institution.

Science as an ideal and science as an institution depend on individual scientists to do the daily grind of researching, testing and interpretating new or existing data. Like anyone else, scientists can make mistakes and be as obstinate or close minded as anyone else. They can also cheat.

While science may be less objective and dispassionate when it comes to the individual scientists, the system itself has built-in checks. Everything that individual scientists do is subject to peer review and duplication of experiments. In general, the peer-review and verification systems serve as checks on errors resulting from inadequate data, methodology or testing procedures. In the end, the scientific method is self-correcting.

Why, then, the controversy over ID if, as Sagan claims, there are no “forbidden questions” in science?

In a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, Alexander George poses the provocative question, What's wrong with intelligent design, and with its critics?

"Most critics of intelligent design seek to undermine it by arguing that the doctrine is not science. It's actually religion passing itself off as science. Hence, its teaching constitutes religious instruction. The Constitution disallows the state's establishment of religion. Therefore, intelligent design cannot be taught in the classroom."

Professor George covers all bases in his analysis of why schools should not teach intelligent design in public schools, but in my view he takes a bumpy philosophical road to reach a valid conclusion.

Besides denying the existence of the scientific method, he makes two additional, claims: "Science cannot be proved on the basis of observable data" and "Science cannot be disproved, or falsified, on the basis of observable data."

The scientific method (or methods) is so well established as a tool for acquiring, testing and replicating experiments that it hardly seems necessary to argue this point. Another professor does so skillfully in the detailed-commentary link given below.

He is right to say that science cannot be proved on the basis of observable data. That is why scientists devise sophisticated theories and models to test observable data. It is a long, steady, cumulative process of gathering, testing, replicating data and its application to the natural world. It is much like a road that leads in a certain direction. There are no guarantees that the road will not take a sharp turn to the left or the right -- or even come around full circle. But when one road fails to continue the journey towards discovery, a new one will open up.

When Professor George argues that “science cannot be disproved or falsified, on the basis of observable data, he is moving the philosophical goal posts a bit. No one makes such a claim. The criterion of falsification established by Karl Popper and widely adapted by the scientific community does not apply to science, but to scientific theory. Intelligent design, for example, assumes the existence of a “designer”. Since one cannot prove or disprove the existence of such a “designer”, there is no way to falsify this hypothesis. There are various ways to falsify the theory of evolution. Perhaps the best attempt so far has been Behe's discussion of irreducible complexity. (See comments)

Although his defense of the distinction between "good" and "bad" science seems to be on shaky ground, Professor George's First-Amendment argument is much better grounded. It is not difficult to see how these two arguments -- i.e. science vs. pseudo science and science vs. a religious doctrine -- deliver a crushing blow to those who would like to see ID taught alongside the theory of evolution.

For a detailed commentary on the nature of science, see What Pseudoscience tells us About Science

While many people seem to believe that teaching pseudo-science in the science lab is desirable, there seems little liklihood of such ideas creeping into the classroom through the back door any time soon, unless they are clearly labelled pseudo-science or religious speculation. With few exceptions, the judges who decide such things -- irrespective of their political persuasions -- are scholars and people of integrity. Their profession is steeped in the scientific method and tested jurisprudence. The men and women who occupy positions on the country's highest courts are themselves scientists, not mystics.

Having said all this, however, it is quite possible that intelligent design is not an impossible dream at all. The time may come in the not-too-distant future when ID of a different sort will be taught in the science lab.

Consider, for example, this statement by Richard Dawkins in an interview reported at Salon.com:

Dawkins: In general, evolution is a blind process. That's why I called my book "The Blind Watchmaker." Evolution never looks to the future. It never governs what happens now on the basis on what will happen in the future in the way that human design undoubtedly does. But now it is possible to breed a new kind of pig, or chicken, which has such and such qualities. We may even have to pass that pig through a stage where it is actually less good at whatever we want to produce -- making long bacon racks or something -- but we can persist because we know it'll be worth it in the long run. That never happened in natural evolution; there was never a "let's temporarily get worse in order to get better, let's go down into the valley in order to get over to the other side and up onto the opposite mountain." So yes, I think it well may be that we're living in a time when evolution is suddenly starting to become intelligently designed.

As another writer put it,

So, leaving God or gods out of this, let's say it: human beings are the Intelligent Designers. That might seem sacrilegious to some, but it's true to others, and real to the world.

Tags: Evolution, Intelligent_Design, Science, Education, Politics