Intelligent design: a question of tolerance

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster appears, if you have the sense of humor for it, to have all the answers to the origins and purpose of life—which is, of course, to enjoy lots of pasta . . . I think . . . and provides a lot more fun answering those questions than its more serious counterparts.

But the theme of the linked site isn’t nearly as silly as it appears at first glance. It’s a humorous illustration of the absurdity of the current push to reform how evolution is taught in the classroom.

I’m a proponent of the Constitutional Principal of Separation of Church and State. I believe that while the Intelligent Design movement may claim its purpose incorporates nearly any religious view, the term “Intelligent Design” can’t represent all beliefs, without being boiled down into a simplistic statement that is essentially meaningless in the process of teaching science:

“Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”

I don’t believe many scientists—if any—have eliminated the possibility of intelligence from their theories. The problem is getting the leaders of the ID movement to admit that. They seem, in spite of their stated quest for objectivity, reluctant to embrace the whole truth.

William Dembski, a proponent of the movement to teach intelligent design as science, has written in The Intelligent Design Movement:

“According to Darwinism, undirected natural causes are solely responsible for the origin and development of life. In particular, Darwinism rules out the possibility of God or any guiding intelligence playing a role in life’s origin and development. Within western culture Darwinism’s ascent has been truly meteoric. And yet throughout its ascent there have always been dissenters who regarded as inadequate the Darwinian vision that undirected natural causes could produce the full diversity and complexity of life.”

But this isn’t true, and in fact, Charles Darwin wasn’t an atheist—though I contend atheism is as valid a belief as any. At one time Darwin studied theology with the intent of joining the clergy. He continued to support the church his family attended until his death, even though he lost his faith, after the death of his daughter, and became agnostic. In his autobiography, he refers to himself as a theist (two words—”a” and “theist”) and even mentions the possibility of intelligent design:

“Another source of conviction in the existance of God connected with the reason and not the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelliegent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist.”

This isn’t a question of science having refuted the existence of God. My suspicion is that this whole discussion of intelligent design is merely a watered down version of the real argument those behind it hope to push forward. They don’t like the fact that scientific evidence appears to indicate the world and humans may be much older than the Bible says. They’re having trouble explaining this disparity to their children. But since when has religion been so easy to teach that one was guaranteed to pass one’s beliefs onto one’s children? One would hope we teach our children to think for themselves rather than blindly follow any doctrine put forth by man—parental, scientific, religious, or otherwise.

I’m sure there are those who will say I’m attacking religion here. No. In fact I love religious studies and consider myself a deeply spiritual person. What I’m attacking is fundamentalists’ attack on science and, in the course of that crusade, their attack on sound education.

Before I go on, I have a confession to make. Even though I was considered a gifted student, I was awful at science. I probably did too much daydreaming and I wasn’t down to earth enough to be as disciplined as science required. Frankly all the tedious details, and especially anything that came close to the act of dissecting a frog or pig fetus, either bored me to distraction or made me feel faint. Maybe it was something to do with how science is taught. It didn’t work for a right-brainer like me. Conversely I have a great curiosity about nature, life, and how every living thing on the earth came to be. As a teenager I idolized Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. I also developed a strong interest in religion at that time, and began to pursue the theological end of the question of where we come from. I earned lower grades in science and math than in English, but I also developed a profound reverence for science and the fruit it can bear—well, most of it. I must admit, nuclear weapons, DDT and Agent Orange aren’t my favorite inventions. But the understanding of nature we’ve gained through science is priceless.

Do I think science has all the answers? No. In fact the whole point of science is to seek answers, to never assume we have all the answers yet. Science asks questions, then methodically goes about looking for answers, through collection, experimentation, analysis. The good scientist works at this until he or she has considerable evidence, and then draws conclusions, referred to as theory. Sometimes those conclusions have to be thrown out, down the line, when another scientist comes up with a whole other set of conclusions. Science is continually rethinking, restudying, reevaluating. Evolving.

Science isn’t afraid to say it may have been wrong. It isn’t afraid to say we’re only human, that we can only know for certain what is right before our eyes and what our eyes are capable of seeing at this moment.

I realize some teachers of science have made the error of stating theory as unrefuted fact. I’ve heard individuals do this. I’m sure on an individual basis some erratic ego expansion and outright arrogance takes place. Scientists are, after all, only human. But let’s not blame all of science for the actions of a few, and let’s keep in mind that fundamentalist religious leaders continue to state the Bible version of their choice as unrefuted fact, even while they attack scientists for commiting the same transgression against objectivity.

Now some people want to teach creationism (neatly renamed Intelligent Design) alongside evolution—in science classes. But the simple fact is the theory of evolution is science, while creationism is religion. These are two different subjects, and I’m amazed any intelligent person wants to teach them side by side, both as science. I’m shocked that any school board would consider it in the twenty-first century.

Then there’s this term, Intelligent Design. It seems benign. But whose version of intelligent design will be taught? The people pushing it don’t seem to want to answer that question, and that’s the question the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster asks, presenting it in the guise of an absurd new religion. Because as soon as you tell kids there may be intelligence behind the design, they’re going to ask questions. That’s what children do, after all. It’s their job. What does the science teacher say? What religion(s) will be represented in that discussion? Christianity? Judaism? Hinduism? Islam? Buddhism? Paganism? Are most public school science teachers equipped to broach that topic?

The term “intelligent design” seems to originate in a small segment of the fundamentalist community. This is the same segment that speaks out against multiculturalism, and some members of this segment want us to accept that the U.S. government was formed with Christianity as its chosen religion. Rest assured, in spite of the tolerant sound of the title they give to their mission, tolerance and religious freedom are not their goal.

Why not continue to teach the theory of evolution as science, and provide a separate course in comparative religion or theology as well? To most of us this might seem to be a tolerable alternative—until we try to decide which religions to include in that study. Until we realize there are a lot more religious views of how life began than there are scientific ones. Who teaches this course? How many years does it take to cover every religion that deserves to be included? If we start with kindergarten and continue through a four-year college program, can we even then cover every belief system? Even if we were to—unfairly—settle on Christianity, there are uncounted versions of that religion. How do we teach children about all those personal spiritual paths that have no name—like mine?

It might be more cost effective for our public schools to teach science as science and leave religious study as a matter of personal choice, to be taught at home or in church or temple, and pursued on one’s own. Then we avoid this whole pesky separation of church and state question altogether.

Perhaps the answer is to give a little more emphasis to the theoretical nature of science, and teach something in social studies about tolerance, to declare our interdependence, as historian Will Durant and others did (PDF link) in 1945. Of course that begs the question: Do we have to go back more than half a century to find religious leaders who could make any sense of this argument? Maybe that’s the best argument against the theory of evolution yet.

Or perhaps creationists need to be made aware of where science has made inroads into evidence that there’s something more, that life goes on after death. It may not back up the Bible, but the University of Arizona’s Veritas project seems to be advancing our understanding of whether spirit lives on, by providing a way of measuring something that until recently I considered unmeasurable.