Anti-Evolution: It’s the New Intelligent Design
A recent article on EvolutionNews.org (a very deceptive name considering that Evolution News is part of the anti-evolution Discovery Institute) claims that “We [the Discovery Institute] are NOT seeking to have intelligent design included in textbooks or in classroom instruction. We only want factual errors corrected and legitimate scientific weaknesses of neo-Darwinism presented.” Essentially, this statement sums up the newest version of the Intelligent Design movement; it is the “teach the controversy” statement. The argument is that we should be teaching kids the controversy that exists in the scientific community regarding evolution. In other words, lets teach kids evolutionary theory and how it works, but also teach them that some scientists disagree with evolutionary theory. Let’s teach kids the strengths and weaknesses of evolution and let them decide for themselves if it is valid or not.
Although it sounds reasonable to teach evolutionary biology in this way, there are problems with this approach. First and foremost, science is not democratic. You can teach the strengths and weaknesses of a particular theory, but “deciding” if it is valid or not is not how science works. The reason that the scientific community accepts evolution is not because they “decided” that it was valid, but because the theory stands up. The evidence for evolution is VERY strong; the weaknesses of evolution are few and far between. Evolution is supported by paleontology, biology, geology, genetics, and a host of other sciences. It is the mountain of evidence supporting evolution that validates its claims. In fact, if there were ever an opportunity for evolution to be knocked down, the biggest one would have been genetics. If genetics somehow showed that heredity is non-favorable (that is to say, did not support natural selection), then evolution would have been toast. This, however, did not happen. Genetics, in profound and enormous ways, confirmed at its discover and continues today to confirm evolution.
This approach of “lets teach kids the strengths and weaknesses” is code for what they call “teach the controversy.” In other words, lets teach kids that there is a controversy in the scientific community over whether or not evolution is valid. Then these informed students will be able to make up their own minds. The trouble with this, however, is that there is no controversy in the scientific community regarding the validity of evolutionary theory. To say to students that there is a controversy over whether or not evolution is real would be to flat out lie to them. There are mountains of evidence that support evolutionary theory, and there isn’t even a mole-hill of evidence that opposes it.
I am not going to dive much deeper into this topic because I feel that what I’ve already stated above is more than enough to show that anti-evolution is simply wrong; however, I will add just one more point. The article posits: “Darwinists are fond of trying to change the subject from teaching the case for and against Darwinian evolution, and make this a debate over whether or not to include intelligent design in the curriculum. That isn’t the issue.” That is the issue, though. In science, when a particular theory or paradigm is called into question, particularly one that is considered true by the scientific community, it is not simply enough to say that the theory is wrong; one must also posit a hypothesis as to WHY the theory is wrong. If we are simply saying that evolution is wrong, we must provide a reason as to why it is wrong and, from that reasoning, propose a new theory to be tested and scrutinized through the established scientific method by the scientific community. Through careful testing and unbiased examination of the results we may establish evidence for or against the new hypothesis. For this new hypothesis to truly be valid, particularly so much as to dismantle the existing theory (in this case, evolution), the evidence must be both valid and quantifiable to the degree of displacing doubt about the hypothesis’ validity while also creating doubt of the current hypothesis, theory, or paradigm. If we are to call into question the validity of evolution, what is to be the valid, quantifiable evidence that creates doubt of that validity? That is why intelligent design is included in the discussion.
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December 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 am
Call me an optimist, but this is a good thing.
They keep retreating and changing their stance at faster faster rates. No longer demanding that there is a god… no longer asserting that there is a nondescript creator… only that the strengths and weaknesses be taught. Acknowledging strengths? That’s a good step.
All one needs to refute the weaknesses of evolution is to explain the Scientific Method. “We already have fail safes for checking our own work and we are always finding new fossils to strengthen the theory.”
From a non-crazy perspective, they basically want Science to keep doing what its doing.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
I concur, but with a caveat:
Yes, it is good that they continue to be forced to retreat. However, the troubling part is that their message is spreading. It’s not enough to ask kids to learn about the scientific method if their minds are being polluted regarding science by their parents. If a child is left to choose between what their parent tells them (i.e. “Evolution isn’t real”) and what their teacher says (i.e. “We can prove evolution with the scientific method), a child is left with the decision of who to believe? Do they believe their parents whom they have known all their life, trust, and rely on as role models? Or do the believe the teacher that is essentially telling them that their parents are wrong? The damage of leaving a choice to children is that they will, by and large, choose what their parents tell them to (i.e. children of Democrats will likely favor democrats, children of republicans will likely favor republicans). In this way, the child suffers by missing out on this educational opportunity.
So the “Teach the Controversy” is a wedge, and it is vital that this idea, too, be stopped. And soon.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[...] Re: Evolution Pros and Cons Interesting read for those following along: Reducibly Complex Blog Archive Anti-Evolution: It