insurgent49
  updated weekly
 home - contribute - donate -  message board - events - links - contact us - archive
August 12, 2005
The Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford

Designing Creationists

     On August 1, President Bush told reporters in Texas that school children should be taught about intelligent design, saying “both sides ought to be properly taught ... so that people can understand what the debate is about.” These remarks support the current campaign by proponents of intelligent design, who argue that the public schools should “teach the controversy” by having both intelligent design and evolution presented side by side in the classroom. While that pitch has a certain superficial appeal, a review of the history of the theory of evolution, and of the untested hypothesis of intelligent design, shows why it is a terrible idea.

     Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, his theory of evolution, in 1859. When it was first published, it was only a hypothesis that still needed to be critiqued, tested, challenged, debated and refined by other scientists. Since that time, his theory has been subjected to rigorous scientific testing by many thousands of scientists. Thousands of peer-reviewed articles have been published in scientific journals. As the evidence came in, and was compared with the predictions of the theory, it gradually gained acceptance until it was elevated to the honorable position of theory, like the theory of gravity. Although in common parlance we talk about a theory like it is just someone’s spur of the moment idea, in the world of science a theory is a hypothesis that has been thoroughly confirmed with rigorous testing, and has become widely accepted as the consensus position by knowledgeable experts. Today, Darwin’s theory of evolution, as refined by subsequent generations of scientists, is considered to be the analytical framework which holds together all of the biological sciences.

     Intelligent design, on the other hand, is the bastard grandchild of biblical creationism by way of “creation science.” In the 1968 case of Epperson v. Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law that mandated the teaching of biblical creationism in public schools, on the grounds that it was a government effort to support a particular religion, which is prohibited by the separation of church and state. Creationists then turned to the idea that “creation science” should be taught in schools along side of evolution. An Arkansas law that mandated the balanced teaching of scientific creationism with evolution was struck down by a federal court in 1981, on the grounds that scientific creationism was a religious teaching. That case was not appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently struck down a Louisiana law mandating the teaching of creation science any time evolution was taught in public schools. In a 7-2 court decision in 1987, in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court held that Louisiana’s law endorsed a particular religion, and was unconstitutional. It was then that the creationists turned to the name “intelligent design” as a way of getting around the restrictions on teaching religion in the public schools.

     So how much scientific work has been done to verify the hypothesis of intelligent design since 1987? Little to none, depending on what you are willing to include in the phrase “scientific work.” Certainly there is no consensus in the scientific world that intelligent design is a worthy contender to replace evolution as a scientific theory. In fact, with only a small handful of exceptions, evolution remains the consensus position of all reputable scientists in the life sciences. There are no articles published in peer reviewed science journals that conclude that intelligent design is supported by their research, or that evolution is ruled out by their research. Instead, intelligent design is primarily supported by a well-funded public relations campaign, and not by actual scientific investigation.

     When creationists say that they want the public schools to “teach the controversy”, they are saying that they want to skip the part where they show that there is a solid scientific basis for their hypothesis. The creationists’ public relations machine has created a “controversy” and they think that is a valid basis for teaching their ideas to students in
public school. The truth is that intelligent design is nothing more than the biblical story of creation, which has been gussied up in an effort to circumvent the separation of church and state. Like their fundamentalist counterparts in other parts of the world, some religious reactionaries in this country will never be happy until they can use the power of the government to transmit their religious beliefs to everyone else. In his comments on August 1, George Bush was providing political cover for those religious reactionaries




Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area.  He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.