These distinctions should be fairly easy to understand if one is intellectually honest and open-minded about the many questions that science has yet to answer completely, but distinguishing between them appears to be quite difficult for the people who are so set in their ways that they think of alternative viewpoints as sacrilegious to either their scientific doctrine or religious dogma.
What I find most ironic about the evolution/intelligent design/creationism issue is the zeal with which some evolutionists will attempt to quash any debate about the controversies surrounding the incompleteness of the work Mr. Darwin began over a century ago (Mr. Darwin passed on in 1882 but his theory of evolution is still evolving). Those who agree with the idea of teaching the controversy and contemplating the possibility of intelligent design are automatically — and unfairly — branded as religious zealots hoping to sneak Biblical instruction into public school science curricula, supposedly leading us down the slippery slope into a future in which our childrens' science textbooks are taken away and burned so that they can be replaced with Bibles.
These evolution zealots have created a straw man (ostensibly to push him down their slippery slope) and are trying to make intelligent design stand for religious fanaticism so they can debate against that easy target, thus avoiding the challenge of having to explain deficiencies in the theory of evolution or having to acknowledge that a lot of educated people who are not religious fanatics believe that some sort of intelligent design is evident in nature. And they likely also wish to avoid discussing the fact that Mr. Darwin himself believed in a Creator, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
Meanwhile, the real religious zealots are not actually relevant to the controversy — even if some of them might be laboring under the delusion that they are — because they completely reject the theory of evolution in favor of the literal Biblical explanation of creation and, by the same measure, reject the idea of intelligent design as well. Sure, they're fanatics, but at least they are honest about their closed-minded assertions with regard to evolution and intelligent design.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - td
Just because someone believes that scientific reasoning is the best way to answer questions of our origin, it does not make them a zealot. They just prefer to describe our reality using 1+1=2, not 1+X=2.
And as much as suipporters of Intelligent Design would like to seperate themselves from the strict, literal bible thumping, christian right, you can't.
You can claim that the aim of Intelligent Design is solely to explain the complex nature of our planet, and point to unnanswered scientific enquiry as proof, but in the end all this is secondary to the ego of religion.
Intelligent Design requires that some grand poobah, i'll give him a name, God, intentionally created a giant universe, so that one small little blue dot could be formed, that billions of years down the road would provide the environment for an intelligent species to exist.
What does this amount to? Not science. It's just another way of saying:
"I believe in God. And God believes in me. Therefore my life has a purpose."
Throw out all the science and it comes down to people wanting God to give them a purpose. The only difference between Intelligent Design and the bible is that Jesus didn't save you in 0 bc, he came at the beginning of time and set your salvation in motion.
If people want to have faith in a higher power because it gives them confort that's fine. Buit stop trying to justify your faith by picking on science.
If God could be proven, what's the point of Faith?
2 - Duane
I wish I had more time to make fun of your post but I have to go to work. Just a few quick things....
The Bible, which has not been updated in over 2000 years....
I doubt that very much. Any biblical scholars out there?
...the teaching of both evolution and intelligent design in schools is a way to allow for a scientific basis for the leaps of faith....
As has been discussed exhaustively elsewhere on BC, the invocation of an intelligent designer falls way outside the purview of science.
...to ease our uncertainties....
It is not the aim of science to put us at ease. It is the aim of science to gain a thorough description of Nature, then to devise underlying principles that produce the observed phenomena.
...the incompleteness of the work Mr. Darwin began over a century ago....
Well, Ms. Toigo, that's the nature of scientific advancement. It takes a long time, oh ye of little patience. Are you at all familiar with the history of science?
Charles Darwin did an excellent job....
Hehe. I'm sure he would be immensely flattered by your approval.
Sorry for that last one. I just couldn't resist taking a shot at your presumptuous tone.
Nicely written essay, however. Carry on.
3 - chipmunk stew
"...thus avoiding the challenge of having to explain deficiencies in the theory of evolution or having to acknowledge that a lot of educated people who are not religious fanatics believe that some sort of intelligent design is evident in nature. And they likely also wish to avoid discussing the fact that Mr. Darwin himself believed in a Creator..."
The problem with ID is less that it *proposes* a creator than that it attempts to undermine several thoroughly verified mechanics of evolution in the hopes that it *proves* a creator. (ID insists there is no proof of common ancestry among hominids, for example.) There is no reason to do this except to justify religious belief. To accept ID, you must discard the naturalist approach of science, at which point science itself falls apart. Faith is best left for the unknown. History is full of scientist believers who understood this.
4 - bhw
The problem with ID is less that it *proposes* a creator than that it attempts to undermine several thoroughly verified mechanics of evolution in the hopes that it *proves* a creator.
Or worse, ID starts from the position [not theory, but belief] that a creator exists, and then looks for ways to interpret the world that coincides with that position. It's not objective in the least, which is what it claims to be.
Why is it that all people who believe in ID also believe in a creator, while the same is not true for evolution: some believe in a creator and some don't.
That's the main problem right there. ID is the "science" of religion.
5 - Mark Saleski
check out today's tom the dancing bug over at salon.com, where activists propose that water frezzing at 32 degrees is "only a theory".
6 - a-[e]
Straw men?
Darwin's books, while certainly influential, are not the current state or final say in evolutionary theory. Our understanding of evolution has advanced considerably since Darwin's initial insights into biodiversity. ID-ers repeatedly draw their argument back to Darwin as means to ignore modern biology and avoid grappling with real data and issues.
Evolution is explicitly about biological diversity. The questions of the origins of life and the origins of species are not the same question. Conflating these two questions seems to be a consistent strategy of both Creationist radicals and ID "theorists." I guess it makes their work easier, though.
The biggest straw man ID-ers are publicly battling is their false image of science. They mischaracterize theory as a random guess not based upon data. The irony is, of course, that ID-ers refuse to engage in anything remotely similar to science. Where do they operationalize their "theory"? Where do they test their hypotheses? No where. Rather, they assert that the world is "irreducibly complex" and spend the rest of their time flailing about to convince the public they're right.
If they want to argue about scientific theories, shouldn't they at least *try* to do some science?
There seems to be either a fundamental ignorance of how scientific inquiry is conducted or a willful misleading of the public to score a religious goal.
The whole issue boils down to whether or not we should water down science course work with untestable religious assertions and other sorts of non-science.
I think we should not.
7 - Girl with Boots
Why is it that because science doesn't have ALL the answers right NOW, it is assumed by the proponents of ID that those questions are not answerable by science? In the arena of scientific discovery I can only assume that we are practically new borns. Scientific exploration has only been around for 200 years or so. Imagine what it will be like in another 200 years. A thousand, ten thousand. (If we are around long enough.) Do we assume that because a three year old child doesn't know how to read or do basic math at that point, that they will never learn to do those things? Of course not. We can't expect science to have all the answers now.
8 - Duane
Good point, Girl with Boots (uh, shouldn't your middle name be capitalized?). That's sort of the point I was trying to make up in Comment #2, but you've managed to expound upon the thought most agreeably. People seem to want instant answers, then, when the answers don't appear, like, yesterday, they get critical of science (i.e., scientists). "Hey, yer a trained perfessional sonteeist! Yer gittin' paid ta know these thangs! I wan' the answers, and I wannum now, galdernit!"
Democritus made famous the concept of the atom about 2400 years ago, and it wasn't until Einstein's famous 1905 paper on Brownian motion that the concept had any sort of proof. That's about 2200 and ninety eleven years, iffen ah did mah safferin kerreckly!
I blame this attention-spanless attitude on MTV as much as anything else.
-- Duane (aka, Guy with no Gun)
9 - Margaret Romao Toigo
Intelligent design does not require a "grand poobah," because if we contemplate the possibility that some intelligent agent (God, extraterrestrials or who knows what else) designed nature as we know it, then we must also contemplate the possibility that there was no intelligent agent and that nature as we know it came about via random events.
Now perhaps the "invocation" (interesting word choice, Duane) of an intelligent designer falls outside the purview of science, but since when does the practice of speculation (which is the very first step of the scientific method) fall outside the purview of science?
duane wrote: "It is not the aim of science to put us at ease."
No, it is not. Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear with regard to how it is our leaps of faith that ease our uncertainties about our religious beliefs and the limits of our scientific knowledge.
Duane wrote: "It is the aim of science to gain a thorough description of Nature, then to devise underlying principles that produce the observed phenomena."
Indeed it is. But we do not serve that aim by closing our minds to certain possibilities simply because they might not jibe with what we already know, as if our understanding of nature has not/cannot/will not evolve and change as new discoveries were/are/will be made.
Open-mindedness is an essential element of the very nature of scientific advancement. And indeed, as history demonstrates, such progress does take time and patience.
In the meantime, we employ leaps of faith to ease our impatience and keep us from losing our focus while we use our curiosity to speculate and form the basis of new hypotheses that inspire the new research and experimentation from which new theories emerge.
From a scientific perspective, the hypothesis of intelligent design cannot presuppose the existence of a creator. A thorough discussion of intelligent design must also involve the supposition that there was no creator because all of the angles must be considered in the contemplation of the many questions that don't yet have definitive answers.
And much of the scientific process is asking and attempting to answer thus far unanswered questions like, "is the apparent design of nature the genuine design of an intelligent agent or is it the product of an undirected process of random events?"
10 - bhw
then we must also contemplate the possibility that there was no intelligent agent and that nature as we know it came about via random events.
But that is specifically what ID proponents say did NOT happen. Evolutionary theory claims it was all random, and ID directly opposes that point of view: it was designed by someone or something, it is so complext that it could not possibly BE random.
That's the crux of the ID argument: it does indeed require a creator, or grand poobah, if you will.
A thorough discussion of intelligent design must also involve the supposition that there was no creator because all of the angles must be considered in the contemplation of the many questions that don't yet have definitive answers.
This will never happen because ID starts with the supposition that there IS a creator. What you're describing makes a certain amount of sense, but it's not the official ID party line.
11 - Duane
Margaret says: From a scientific perspective, the hypothesis of intelligent design cannot presuppose the existence of a creator.
No, from a scientific perspective, one can frame any hypothesis one chooses. Scientists (real scientists) would be perfectly happy to entertain the ID hypothesis, if there were testable predictions that followed from it.
But we do not serve that aim by closing our minds to certain possibilities simply because they might not jibe with what we already know....
This is a common theme among ID proponents, this notion that scientists are closed-minded. What you have to realize is that scientists have huge egos (on average). Most scientists, therefore, want to be known among their peers as being "smart." Therefore, there is nothing that scientists like better than smashing the prevailing wisdom. The greatest and most famous scientists made their marks by overturning or fixing current theories. This tendency strongly discourages dogma and the rule of authority in science. Church-oriented people don't get this. They are familiar with the rule of authority and dogma, they're comfortable with it, and they assume that other establishments, such as Science, follows a similar paradigm. But Science, particularly American Science, breeds a willingness to "question authority." If you like, this is synonomous with "open-mindedness."
12 - a-[e]
"but since when does the practice of speculation (which is the very first step of the scientific method) fall outside the purview of science?"
The question of whether or not scientists engage in speculation is irrelevant. The real difference between ID proponents and scientists is that at some point scientists are expected to *test* their hypotheses. This is the point you and the rest of the ID-ers want to ignore. Intelligent Design is just not a testable hypothesis. It is *purely* speculation and that is all it will ever be. As such, it cannot be science. Regardless of your religious beliefs, Intelligent Design has continually failed to move from speculative rhetoric to hypothesis testing.
Margaret keeps bringing up "leaps of faith." This only reinforces the notion that ID is entirely faith-driven (broad sense) and totally divorced from data, hypotheses and operationalized theory. My comments on speculation are relevant here and I won't repeat them.
"From a scientific perspective, the hypothesis of intelligent design cannot presuppose the existence of a creator."
I don't think you understand what a hypothesis is. All hypotheses presuppose their content. That is the point. They set up an argument which data are then brought to be bear upon. Data are brought to bear in formal tests that should allow us to reject or "fail to reject" the hypothesis.
Again, this is where ID-ers repeatedly fail to achieve science, thus making the inclusion of ID in science classes a moot point. The arguments they make for a creator are philosophical, for lack of a better word. The repeated assertion that the universe was created *isn't* a hypothesis test and ID isn't a scientific theory.
Duane: Excellent point about egos and the desire to overthrow old theories, though I don't think that all scientists are ego driven in their desire to generate new knowledge.
13 - td
"And much of the scientific process is asking and attempting to answer thus far unanswered questions like, "is the apparent design of nature the genuine design of an intelligent agent or is it the product of an undirected process of random events?""
----------------
What 'apparent design'? There is no apparent design. When hydrogen and oxygen particles collide to make water do you look at them and say 'hmmm, that water looks designed'.
If that's the case, then what should matter look like that doesn't display 'apparent design'. Because everything is just a combination of some particles colliding together.
14 - Margaret Romao Toigo
I understand that many people see the struggle over evolution as a wedge in the religious right's efforts to combine church and state and how the idea of intelligent design seems like a slippery slope that could lead to science textbooks eventually being replaced with the Bible.
But the slippery slope is a fallacy because it is based upon arbitrary notions about an undetermined sequence of possible future events. Talk about speculation in the absence of testable predictions!
It is a given that we cannot predict the future, but we can learn something from the study of the recent history of the evolution controversy. And that history demonstrates that intelligent design is a disincentive to diluting evolution in favor of creationism.
Or has nobody noticed that the evolution debate has evolved from the quaint old "Darwin versus Genesis" argument into a rather sophisticated discussion of the complexity of nature as it pertains to evolution and the origins of life?
The creationists now know and understand something that they had previously failed to realize, which is that bluntly dropping evolution from the science curriculum of their local public schools always causes their localities to become national -- worldwide, even -- laughing stocks.
Now, instead of evolution being diluted in favor of the religious study of biblical creationism, creationism is being diluted in favor of the agnostic concept of intelligent design, which must be taught in conjunction with evolution for it to be relevant.
That old slippery slope seems to be defying the laws of gravity these days.
15 - bhw
The US Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal to teach creationism in public schools. That is why it has been "diluted."
So ID started gaining steam because it doesn't specifically creationism. But that doesn't mean that the ID proponents will stop at injecting ID discussion into science classes. No, this is the first step.
First, you get ID included in the science curriculum. Over time, you teach less and less evolution and more and more ID until ID becomes the science curriculum.
The slope is still slippery, if you ask me.
16 - a-[e]
Margaret:
The slippery slope fallacy isn't the issue here and your continued attempt to frame the debate in terms of it seems rather disingenuous.
The real issue is whether or not we're going to teach science in science classrooms. Intelligent Design proponents--regardless of their take on either the Genesis myth, aliens or modern evolution--have failed to meet the criteria for doing science. The problem is entirely one of definition.
ID, for all of its rhetorical heat, is not a scientific theory. Proponents have failed to move beyond armchair speculation and into the realm of hypothesis testing and real data. Until ID proponents can operationalize the concepts of their theory and *test* them, their theory isn't science. Get it? Forget about building bridging arguments between data and generalization, they don't even have basic data-driven hypothesis testing under their collective belt!
Despite your claims, it is a *major* problem when we start incorporating wild, untestable assertions into science education. Why? Because it ceases to be science education. It is a disservice to students when we teach non-scientific speculation as real, honest science.
What don't you get about that?
17 - chipmunk stew
Margaret Romao Toigo: "I understand that many people see the struggle over evolution as a wedge in the religious right's efforts to combine church and state and how the idea of intelligent design seems like a slippery slope that could lead to science textbooks eventually being replaced with the Bible.
But the slippery slope is a fallacy because it is based upon arbitrary notions about an undetermined sequence of possible future events. Talk about speculation in the absence of testable predictions!"
---------------
I'm not worried about ID being a slippery slope. I'm worried about children being taught the wrong things about science. Not its conclusions but its foundation. To even propose an "intelligent designer", you have to discard the most basic function of science--to understand nature. There is plenty of room for *faith* in a designer where science has no answers, but it is not allowed in science to stop at "God (or 'some designer' in this case) did it". Built into science is the understanding that we don't know everything, but a scientific hypothesis is necessarily naturalistic. If there really are things with supernatural explanations, those things cannot be discovered by the scientific method. You can't change science (the very tool, I mean, not the body of knowledge) to suit your hypothesis.
18 - Steve S
I think one thing we might consider is that if someone on the Kansas school board or anywhere else, is a true fundamentalist who believes in Creationism and evangelicism, then that person is not capable of being open to debate. If they use the adage that this country was founded on Christian principles (principles that a lot of faiths and athiests also adhere to) and should remain on Christian principles, they can't change. They are under a mission from God to make a God-fearing society, to spread the word and save as many people as they can. This is their duty, their mission from God. How can a human 'debate' away what another person perceives as a direct order from God?
Does anybody know of any fundamentalist anywhere who's come to change their viewpoint on evolution?
19 - MDE
The question remains: how do we account for nature's affinity for 'useful' proteins and other apparently nonrandom processes affecting evolution? Looking for answers in ID is a waste of time. There's science to be done.
"...if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and ... an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws"physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109
Mark
20 - gonzo marx
ok`..my 2 drachma here once again
this is a very interesting discussion between a Theory and a Hypothesis
i believe it is perfectly appropriate for college level discussion and research and see no problem with these ideas being explored here
but , at Issue is the contents of high school biology classes
note..high school, and biology falling into the science category
NOT the place for high end metaphysical discussion, eh?
once the big thinkers in science and academia iron this all out , and gather empirical data to take ID from a Hypothesis towards a peer reviewed scientific Theory on par with "evoloution" , then perhaps we can discuss high school level curriculum being adjusted
until then, it belongs in a college level metaphysics class at best, eh?
your mileage may vary..
Excelsior!
21 - Margaret Romao Toigo
bhw wrote: "First, you get ID included in the science curriculum. Over time, you teach less and less evolution and more and more ID until ID becomes the science curriculum."
See, a-[e]? The slippery slope fallacy is the issue for some people. Just because it is a logical fallacy doesn't mean it is ineffective as a propaganda technique (sex sells, but fear persuades) or that the fears expressed by those who employ it are invalid -- even if they are somewhat unfounded.
Regardless of how it is used on which side of any particular issue (such as the silly notion that the legal recognition of same-sex marriages will lead to people suing for the right to to marry their pets), it is a flawed argument because it is based upon hypothetical supposition about the future and has no historical basis.
In fact, as I had pointed out before, recent history demonstrates the opposite in that the very idea of teaching creationism instead of evolution has become ridiculous -- and there is no going back from that.
It is also important to note that these proposals to add intelligent design to public school science curricula have only been forwarded in a few localities while the vast majority of middle and high school students have been, still are and will continue to study evolution.
Kansas and other localities make the news on this issue because they are quaint oddities, not because they are trend setters.
It is important to point out the slippery slope because it has become part of the larger discourse with regard to this controversy and, as such, it causes an unnecessary hysteria that clouds issues like, "whether or not we're going to teach science in science classrooms."
And, of course we are going to teach science in science classrooms. Get past the hysteria and the theophobia and get real about what's really at stake here, which is very little.
Intelligent design is not intended to replace evolution and it couldn't anyway because science students will not even be equipped to speculate whether or not there is an intelligent design in nature until they have actually studied what is known about its evolution.
The practice of science is a discipline in which there is little room for scientists to make wild, untestable assertions and engage in non-scientific speculation.
However, the teaching of science is not so limited because science teachers and their students have different goals than scientists. They are not seeking new knowledge or discoveries, they are teaching/learning science that is already known and documented.
When scientists use their imaginations to contemplate untestable speculation and non-scientific assertions it is a waste of resources, but when science students use their imaginations to contemplate untestable speculation and non-scientific assertions it is their first opportunity to use and apply what they have learned from their evolution textbooks.
22 - Aaman
Why study something specious like ID? there are more valuable things to do than waste their time. Of course, since the World is now Flat, if one bunch of students studies something irrelevant, another bunch elsewhere will outclass them soon enough, and anthropologists/scientists will look for advancement of science elsewhere.
23 - Margaret Romao Toigo
The thing about intelligent design is that there isn't that much to study, it's just something to think about and consider.
If any bunch is going to be outclassed, it is the one that closes its minds to new ideas because they do not jibe with old ideas.
Of course this has always been true of young Earth creationists, but there is a special sort of irony in it when this dynamic applies to the widely accepted theory of evolution.
If Charles Darwin had not opened his mind to speculate new ideas about the origin of species, maybe someone else might have or maybe creationism would still be a prevailing scientific theory instead of the quaint old notion that it has become.
24 - Aaman
Jesus on a dinosaur! That's an earnest defense of nothing much!
25 - Naadir
Steven Weinberg puts it best:
"Even though their arguments did not invoke religion, I think we all know what's behind these arguments. They're trying to protect religious beliefs from contradiction by science. They used to do it by prohibiting teachers from teaching evolution at all; then they wanted to teach intelligent design as an alternative theory; now they want the supposed "weaknesses" in evolution pointed out. But it's all the same program -- it's all an attempt to let religious ideas determine what is taught in science courses."
For atheists, science provides us with suitable replacements for supernatural phenomenon - cosmology, quantum behaviour and thermodynamics.
ID definitely steps on sciences toes, as it serves to say that the natural processes discovered by science are insufficient for complex behaviour to result.
Maybe it's because I'm a European that I feel I don't need to be sent back to the middle ages.