‘’The Evolution Wars’’
When Bush joined the fray last week, the
question grew hotter: Is "intelligent design" a real science? And
should it be taught in schools?
Sometime in the late
fall, unless a federal court intervenes, ninth-graders at the public
high school in rural Dover, Pa., will witness an unusual scene in
biology class. The superintendent of schools, Richard Nilsen, will
enter the classroom to read a three-paragraph statement mandated by
the local school board as a cautionary preamble to the study of
evolution. It reads, in part:
Because Darwin's
theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is
discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for
which there is no evidence ... Intelligent design is an explanation of
the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book
Of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would
like to explore this view ... As is true with any theory, students are
encouraged to keep an open mind.
After that
one-minute reading, the superintendent will probably depart without
any discussion, and a lesson in evolutionary biology will begin.
That kind of scene,
brief and benign though it might seem, strikes horror into the hearts
of scientists and science teachers across the U.S., not to mention
plenty of civil libertarians. Darwin's venerable theory is widely
regarded as one of the best-supported ideas in science, the only
explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, grounded in decades of
study and objective evidence. But Dover's disclaimer on Darwin would
appear to get a passing grade from the man who considers himself
America's education President. In a question-and-answer session with
Texas newspaper reporters at the White House last week, George W. Bush
weighed in on the issue. He expressed support for the idea of
combining lessons in evolution with a discussion of "intelligent
design"--the proposition that some aspects of living things are best
explained by an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to natural
selection. It is a subtler way of finding God's fingerprints in nature
than traditional creationism. "Both sides ought to be properly
taught," said the President, who appeared to choose his words with
care, "so people can understand what the debate is about ... I think
that part of education is to expose people to different schools of
thought."
On its surface, the
President's position seems supremely fair-minded: What could possibly
be wrong with presenting more than one point of view on a topic that
divides so many Americans? But to biologists, it smacks of faith-based
science. And that is provocative not only because it rekindles a turf
battle that goes all the way back to the Middle Ages but also because
it comes at a time when U.S. science is perceived as being under fresh
assault politically and competitively. Just last week, developments
ranging from flaws in the space program to South Korea's rapid
advances in the field of cloning were cited as examples that the U.S.
is losing its edge. Bush's comments on intelligent design were the No.
1 topic for bloggers for days afterward. "It sends a signal to other
countries because they're rushing to gain scientific and technological
leadership while we're getting distracted with a pseudoscience issue,"
warned Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the 55,000-member National
Science Teachers Association in Arlington, Va. "If I were China, I'd
be happy."
As far as many
Americans are concerned, however, the President was probably preaching
to the choir. In a Harris poll conducted in June, 55% of 1,000 adults
surveyed said children should be taught creationism and intelligent
design along with evolution in public schools. The same poll found
that 54% did not believe humans had developed from an earlier
species--up from 45% with that view in 1994--although other polls have
not detected this rise.
Around the U.S., the
prevalence of such beliefs and the growing organization and clout of
the intelligent-design movement are beginning to alter the way that
most fundamental tenets of biology are presented in public schools.
New laws that in some sense challenge the teaching of evolution are
pending or have been considered in 20 states, including such
traditionally liberal bastions as Michigan and New York. This week in
Kansas, a conservative-leaning state board of education is expected to
accept a draft of new science standards that emphasize the theoretical
nature of evolution and require students to learn about "significant
debates" about the theory. The proposed rules, which won't be put to a
final vote until fall, would also alter the state's basic definition
of science. While current Kansas standards describe science as "the
human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in
the world," the rewritten definition leaves the door open, critics
say, for the supernatural as well.
•A SUBTLER ASSAULT
Darwin's theory has
been a hard sell to Americans ever since it was unveiled nearly 150
years ago in The Origin of Species. The intelligent-design movement is
just the latest and most sophisticated attempt to discredit the famous
theory, which many Americans believe leaves insufficient room for the
influence of God. Early efforts to thwart Darwin were pretty crude.
Tennessee famously banned the teaching of evolution and convicted
schoolteacher John Scopes of violating that ban in the "monkey trial"
of 1925. At the time, two other states--Florida and Oklahoma--had laws
that interfered with teaching evolution. When such laws were struck
down by a Supreme Court decision in 1968, some states shifted gears
and instead required that "creation science" be taught alongside
evolution. Supreme Court rulings in 1982 and 1987 put an end to that.
Offering creationism in public schools, even as a side dish to
evolution, the high court held, violated the First Amendment's
separation of church and state.
But some
anti-Darwinists seized upon Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting
opinion in the 1987 case. Christian fundamentalists, he wrote, "are
quite entitled, as a secular matter, to have whatever scientific
evidence there may be against evolution presented in their schools."
That line of argument--an emphasis on weaknesses and gaps in
evolution--is at the heart of the intelligent-design movement, which
has as its motto "Teach the controversy." "You have to hand it to the
creationists. They have evolved," jokes Eugenie Scott, executive
director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland,
Calif., which monitors attacks on the teaching of evolution.
•HOLES IN DARWIN?
Since the 1987
decision, a devoted band of mostly religious Christians, including
hundreds of scientists, engineers, theologians and philosophers, has
written papers and books, contributed to symposiums on the perceived
problems with Darwin's theory. The headquarters for such thinking is
the Center for Science and Culture at a nonpartisan but generally
conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute, founded in
Seattle in 1990.
What exactly is
their critique of Darwin? Much of it revolves around the appealing
idea that living things are simply too exquisitely complex to have
evolved by a combination of chance mutations and natural selection.
The dean of that school of thought is Lehigh University biologist and
Discovery Institute senior fellow Michael Behe, author of the 1996
book Darwin's Black Box, a seminal work on intelligent design. Behe's
main argument points to the fact that living organisms contain such
ingenious structures as the eye and systems like the mechanism for
clotting blood, which involves at least 20 interacting proteins. He
calls such phenomena "irreducibly complex" because removing or
altering any part invalidates the whole. Behe claims they could not
have arisen through the gradual fits and starts of evolution, which,
he says, "has been oversold to the public." Although his writing is
couched in the language of science, Behe, a practicing Catholic who
home schools his nine children, believes the hand of the designer is
self-evident. "That's why most people disbelieve Darwinian evolution,"
he says. "People go out and look at the trees and say, 'Nah.'"
Other arguments in
this new brand of anti-Darwinism focus on missing pieces in the fossil
record, particularly the Cambrian period, when there was an explosion
of novel species. Still other advocates, including mathematician,
philosopher and theologian William Dembski, who is heading up a new
center for intelligent design at Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, use the mathematics of probability to try to show that
chance mutations and natural selection cannot account for nature's
complexity. In contrast to earlier opponents to Darwin, many
proponents of intelligent design accept some role for
evolution--heresy to some creationists. They are also careful not to
bring God into the discussion (another sore point for hard-line
creationists), preferring to keep primarily to the language of
science. This may also help them avoid the legal and political
pitfalls of teaching creationism.
The Discovery
Institute and its scientists have been actively involved in many of
the recent skirmishes over evolution at local school-board meetings
and in state legislatures. In Ohio, for instance, the institute sent
representatives to the state board of education meetings last year to
push for science standards that would support teaching critiques of
evolution. "All we're advocating for is that if a teacher wants to
bring up the scientific debate over design, they should be allowed to
do that," says institute spokesman John West. In fact, Ohio modified
its standards to say that evolution should be critically analyzed,
which West regards as a victory.
Statewide curriculum
standards for science are a relatively new target for Darwin doubters,
one that has a broader impact than local school-board decisions. In
addition, by working at the state level, intelligent-design advocates
can largely avoid dealing with unpolished local activists who make
rash religious statements that don't hold up in court. (Supporters of
the Darwin disclaimer in Dover, Pa., have publicly proclaimed the
country a Christian nation, a point cited in an American Civil
Liberties Union lawsuit.) It has been only since the late 1980s and
early '90s that most states have created science-curriculum standards
as part of a national movement to bring more accountability to
education. "Savvy creationists are focusing their efforts on this
relatively new arena," says Glenn Branch of the National Center for
Science Education. "The decision-making bodies involved in approving
state science standards tend to be small, not particularly
knowledgeable and, above all, elected, so it's a good opportunity for
political pressure to be applied."
In Kansas,
conservative members of the state school board, like Connie Morris,
who represents the sparsely populated western half of Kansas, have
repeatedly injected scientifically abstruse, jargon-heavy documents
from the Discovery Institute into the debate about teaching evolution,
making the discussion tough for the average citizen to follow.
"Personally, I believe in the Genesis account of God's creation," says
Morris. "But as a policymaker looking at science standards, I rely
mostly on research and expert documentation."
Oddly enough, the
President's remarks last week promoting intelligent design made Morris
and many other Darwin doubters uncomfortable because they have a
different timetable in mind. "His support is appreciated, but I plan
to move forward on attempting to get criticism of Darwinian evolution
in the science standards, not intelligent design," says Morris.
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a leading voice on the religious
right, seemed to be reading from the same script. "What we should be
teaching are the problems and holes in the theory of evolution," he
said in an interview with National Public Radio a few days after Bush
made his comments. Santorum also said, "As far as intelligent design
is concerned, I really don't believe it has risen to the level of a
scientific theory at this point that we would want to teach it
alongside of evolution." The Senator tried to get a
teach-the-controversy addendum into the 2001 No Child Left Behind
bill.
Even scientists who
believe in intelligent design do not feel it is ready for prime time.
Many would prefer to move forward gradually, building their case, in
order to avoid a backlash. "It's premature for all kinds of reasons,"
says oceanographer Edward Peltzer, a senior researcher at the Monterey
Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. "The science is there,
but the science textbooks are not. The teachers have to be trained.
Its time will come. But its time is not now." The emphasis for now is
on dissing Darwinism, which opens the door to other explanations
without specifically invoking an intelligent creator. Many advocates
of intelligent design complain that Darwinism has become a kind of
faith in itself. "There's religion on both sides," insists David
Keller, a chemistry professor at the University of New Mexico, who
taught a seminar on problems with evolution at an anti-Darwin forum in
Greenville, S.C., last week.
•BIOLOGISTS ASK,
WHAT HOLES?
Many scientists have
been reluctant to engage in a debate with advocates of intelligent
design because to do so would legitimize the claim that there's a
meaningful debate about evolution. "I'm concerned about implying that
there is some sort of scientific argument going on. There's not," says
noted British biologist Richard Dawkins, professor of the public
understanding of science at Oxford University, whose most recent book
about evolution is The Ancestor's Tale. He and other scientists say
advocates of intelligent design do not play by the rules of science.
They do not publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, and their
hypothesis cannot be tested by research and the study of evidence.
Indeed, Behe concedes, "You can't prove intelligent design by an
experiment." Dawkins compares the idea of teaching intelligent-design
theory with teaching flat earthism-- perfectly fine in a history class
but not in science. He says, "If you give the idea that there are two
schools of thought within science--one that says the earth is round
and one that says the earth is flat--you are misleading children."
But the strategy of
disengagement may be backfiring on those who care about teaching
evolution. When scientists and science teachers boycotted the
discussion of biology standards at a Kansas school-board meeting last
May, they left the floor wide open to critics of evolution, who won
the day. "Are they wilting young maids that can't stand the heat of a
hearing?" asks Washington attorney Edward Sisson, who was a co-counsel
for the 23 academics who testified on the anti-Darwin side.
Scientists say it
is, in fact, easy to gainsay the intelligent-design folks. Take Behe's
argument about complexity, for example. "Evolution by natural
selection is a brilliant answer to the riddle of complexity because it
is not a theory of chance," explains Dawkins. "It is a theory of
gradual, incremental change over millions of years, which starts with
something very simple and works up along slow, gradual gradients to
greater complexity. Not only is it a brilliant solution to the riddle
of complexity; it is the only solution that has ever been proposed."
To attribute nature's complexity to an intelligent designer merely
removes the origin of complexity to the unseen designer. "Who designs
the designer?" asks Dawkins.
As for gaps in the
fossil record, Dawkins says, that is like detectives complaining that
they can't account for every minute of a crime--a very ancient
one--based on what they found at the scene. "You have to make
inferences from footprints and other types of evidence." As it
happens, he notes, there is a huge amount of evidence of evolution not
only in the fossil record but also in the letters of the genetic code
shared in varying degrees by all species. "The pattern," says Dawkins,
"is precisely what you would expect if evolution would happen."
Dawkins insists that critics of Darwin are wrong to say that evolution
has become an article of faith among scientists. He cites biologist
J.B.S. Haldane who, when asked what would disprove evolution, replied,
fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era, a period more than 540 million
years ago, when life on Earth seems to have consisted largely of
bacteria, algae and plankton. "Creationists are fond of saying that
there are very few fossils in the Precambrian, but why would there
be?" asks Dawkins. "However, if there was a single hippo or rabbit in
the Precambrian, that would completely blow evolution out of the
water. None have ever been found."
Mathematical
arguments against evolution are equally misguided, says Martin Nowak,
a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology. "You
cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about," he says. "We
don't have the information to make this calculation." Nowak, who
describes himself as a person of faith, sees no contradiction between
Darwin's theory and belief in God. "Science does not produce any
evidence against God," he observes. "Science and religion ask
different questions."
•WHAT SHALL BE
TAUGHT?
But for those who
read Genesis literally and believe that God created the world along
with all creatures big and small in just six days, there's no
reconciling faith with Darwinism. And polls indicate that
approximately 45% of Americans believe that. It's no wonder that
almost one-third of the 1,050 teachers who responded to a National
Science Teachers Association online survey in March said they had felt
pressured by parents and students to include lessons on intelligent
design, creationism or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution
in their science classes; 30% noted that they felt pressured to omit
evolution or evolution-related topics from their curriculum.
But some science
teachers voluntarily take alternative theories to class. Eric Schweain
has been teaching high school biology in St. Louis, Mo., for a decade.
Although he follows the district's policy of teaching Darwin's theory,
he also talks about intelligent design, an idea he personally favors.
"I teach according to fossil evidence, though I make sure to tell
students that it's important to talk to family and friends and, if you
go to a church, talk to your clergy."
The standards
movement in education has, overall, strengthened the teaching of
evolution, even as it has presented a new target for anti-Darwinists.
In 2000, 10 states had no mention of evolution in their curriculum
standards. Now only Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and
Oklahoma--states with long creationist traditions--make this omission.
In June, Alaska's state board of education was pressured by
scientists, teachers and concerned citizens to add evolution to
science standards that had avoided the topic. Other states, most
notably Kansas and New Mexico, have wobbled on whether to teach
evolution, deleting and then restoring it to state standards depending
on who was elected to the school board. The Kansas reinstatement
occurred after the state was given an F- in a 2000 report by the
Fordham Foundation, titled "Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching
Evolution in the States." Only 24 states earned an A or B for teaching
the topic well. Kansas' flunking grade was based on the fact that, at
the time, it had not only cut Darwin from the curriculum but had also
deleted all references to the age of the earth and universe. Now
evolution is back in the Kansas curriculum, but a new, more
conservative board is seeking a teach-the-controversy requirement.
The new, presumably
Constitution-proof way of providing coverage for communities that wish
to teach ideas like intelligent design is to employ such earnest
language as "critical inquiry" (in New Mexico), "strengths and
weaknesses" of theories (Texas), and "critical analysis" (Ohio). It's
difficult to argue against such benign language, but hard-core
defenders of Darwin are wary. "The intelligent-design people are
trying to mislead people into thinking that the reference to science
as an ongoing critical inquiry permits them to teach I.D. crap in the
schools," says David Thomas, president of New Mexicans for Science and
Reason. On the other hand, tinkering in that way with the standards
won't necessarily weaken instruction on evolution. "Where you have
strong science programs now, they'll ignore the [state] standards,"
says Bill Wagnon, a professor of history at Washburn University who
represents Topeka on the Kansas school board.
The new school year
is certain to bring more battles over teaching evolution, not only in
Kansas and Pennsylvania but also in the many states that are preparing
new standards-based tests in science. By raising the profile of
intelligent design, the President has doubtless emboldened those who
differ with Darwin and furthered one goal of that movement: he has
taught all of us the controversy. --With reporting by Melissa August/
Washington, Jeremy Caplan/ New York, Jeff Chu and Constance E.
Richards/ Greenville, Rita Healy/ Denver, Christopher Maag/ Cleveland,
Bud Norman/ Wichita, Adam Pitluk/ Dallas, Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles
and Sean Scully/ Philadelphia
Time magazine,
August 15th,2005
Ýstanbul - 29.08.2005
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