The Wall St. Journal reports on the efforts of "critics of evolution" to target state legislators with "academic freedom bills" designed to undermine the teaching of science in public schools:
The academic-freedom bills now in circulation vary in detail. Some require teachers to critique evolution. Others let educators choose their approach -- but guarantee they won't be disciplined should they decide to build a case against Darwin.
The common goal: To expose more students to articles and videos that undercut evolution. Most of this material is produced by advocates of intelligent design or Biblical creationism, the belief that God created man in his present form. ...
"It shouldn't be a crime for teachers to give the best evidence for evolutionary theory and then, if they want, spend a day saying, 'Some people are raising questions,'" said John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
The nonprofit institute, based in Seattle, promotes the theory that life was created by an unknown designer, possibly divine. It recently launched a petition drive to spur more states to take up such bills.
These bills are designed to give legal cover to science teachers who don't want to teach science. But is their critique about pointing out uncertainty in evolutionary theory or promoting intelligent design? Clearly ID proponents see their theory as superior to evolution but there's actually no way to verify intelligent design scientifically. Scientific theory is confirmed by empirical testing, so the only way to confirm ID theory would be to empirically prove that there exists or existed a designer. How exactly do you do that? Isn't it pretty much on par with proving the existence of God? So I'm confused as to why the ID thesis is being brought up in science class when clearly this is a theological or philosophical topic, and last I checked those weren't part of the standard public secondary education curricula.
And I wish articles like the one in the Journal would make this point more forcefully -- ID is not a scientific theory and thus can't be used as a critique of another scientific theory. (I will say, however, that I'm all in favor of students being exposed to philosophical and theological questions as long as they understand their distinctness from scientific questions and the scientific method).
--Mori Dinauer
