Intelligent Design: The need for an Intelligent Dialog

Here at Gather, as in many corners of the "blogosphere", the media, our street corners and School Board meetings, a debate is raging about "Intelligent Design" (ID).  This debate is currently charged with emotion, ideology and political needs and is often crippled by bias, prejudice, intolerance and political fears. Given this, it is easy to have the main issue clouded by irrelevant side issues.  The issue at hand is not whether there is a God, how and whether he works His creation, or the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

The issue at hand is the quality of the public education we, as a nation, provide for our children. In the face of limited educational resources and the critical need to develop creative and critical thinking skills in all of our youth, we must choose what we include in the finite curriculum we make available in our classrooms; and what do we choose to exclude?  (Note: in the face of limited education resources, with everything we add to the curriculum, something else must be removed). Regarding "Intelligent Design", the curriculum area under discussion is, of course, Science.

When I think about public education and the curriculum we must provide, I picture a high school graduate reaching out for her diploma.  At that moment, what does she need to know and understand? What does she have to be prepared to further know and understand? In the area of science, she certainly must have the basics to understand the physical world well enough to answer the following questions: "What is happening now and how it affecting what is valuable?",  "What is changing and how will the trends of these changes affect what is valuable?" and "What can I (and/or others) do to affect the trends of change in order to protect and advance what is valuable?" Our science curriculum must support our graduates in their being prepared to answer these questions.

How? By instilling in them a firm understanding of how scientific methods are used to explain our physical world,  By teaching them how to apply these methods in their own investigation and  by teaching them to demand that others apply and document  these methods when providing information regarding  their physical world.  Every aspect of our science curriculum must support our students' development in these areas.

Now, does the inclusion of the theory of Intelligent Design meet this criteria? Well, I don't claim to be an expert in this theory by any stretch but, by my research to date, I feel it is lacking some significant aspects that must be included for it to be a serious candidate. Some of the significant weaknesses in this theory (as a curriculum candidate) are:

• There is a serious lack of definition of the terms used in the literature of Intelligent Design.  Example: the The Center for Science and Culture states "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.". I cannot find, anywhere, a discussion of how one objectively determines when something is the result of 'an intelligent cause'.  I believe, intuitively, that the Taj Mahal is probably the result of an 'intelligent' process while Mount Everest is probably not.  But I can't say why I believe this.  Unfortunately, the theory of Intelligent Design offers no help in this matter.  Without objective criteria regarding phrases such as "intelligent cause", this theory can have no scientific foundation.
• There are unsubstantiated claims in the ID theory that demand critical explanation. Example: ID proponents claim that the earth is about 10,000 old. This, of course, flies in the face of the results of the carbon dating of (hundred of?) thousands of fossils in the past few decades.  Is carbon dating flawless? Possibly not. But it is science!  It is a theory that has been explored by documented experiment and, to my knowledge, has yet to be refuted by other critically documented experiments. Any theory that will conclude earth's age to be only 10,000 years old has the burden of scientifically refuting the theory of carbon dating. Proponents of ID have yet to face this challenge.

There are certainly other areas that ID has fallen short of proving itself a legitimate scientific theory. I, for one, won't fault its proponents for this  It deals with a incredibly complex subject and a theory that attempts to cover it entirely must take time.  But, to the point at hand, it doesn't belong in our Science curriculum until it successfully meets some of the challenges facing it.

And, for the rest of us...We MUST be far more demanding in what we accept as legitimate material for the debate of what is accepted into our curriculum.  This discussion is frequently obfuscated by political agendas, defensive posturing and the advancement of ideological positions. What we are tackling is the question of what our future citizens will know and understand, what will make them effective, critical thinkers in the area of science.  We should be wary (and, frankly, intolerant) of discussion that merely discusses the faults of the pro-Darwinism's criticism of Creationism (see The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design) without offering any positive, scientific bases for countering the theory of evolution directly.

Our children, our future, depend on a responsible, rational dialog concerning the inclusion of Intelligent Design in our classrooms (again, at the expense of something else). Our children, our future, depend on our being vigilant in our demanding that this dialog not be polluted by careless thinking and emotional manipulation. 

Tony Close, a Gather Inc. employee