Dissing Science - Part 3

I was fortunate enough to have studied biology in the 60s - both in high school and in college - during the golden age of science education in this country. I absolutely loved it. And I remember my biology professor in college saying very simply on the first day of class that faith was not the province of science and nobody ever challenged anything he taught for the duration of the course. I also remember seeing Inherit the Wind in those days and being truly grateful that we, as a nation, had moved beyond the misconception that evolution somehow contradicted religion. I can hardly believe that here I am in my 50s, here we are in the 21st Century, and science is doing battle with the fundamentalists once again.

The LA Times has published an article entitled, "Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science" on the so-called "intelligent design" theory now gaining a lot of attention. Here are some passages:

...[P]roponents of intelligent design are careful to never specify the true, religious nature of their theory and to insist that what they are doing is science. For example, leading ID scholar William Dembski wrote in his 2003 book, "The Design Revolution": "Intelligent design is a strictly scientific theory devoid of religious commitments. Whereas the creator underlying scientific creationism conforms to a strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible, the designer underlying intelligent design need not even be a deity."

But let's be clear: Intelligent-design theory is not science. The proof is in the pudding. Scientists, including scientists who are Christians, do not use IDT when they do science because it offers nothing in the way of testable hypotheses. Lee Anne Chaney, professor of biology at Whitworth College, a Christian institution, wrote in a 1995 article: "As a Christian, part of my belief system is that God is ultimately responsible. But as a biologist, I need to look at the evidence…. I don't think intelligent design is very helpful because it does not provide things that are refutable — there is no way in the world you can show it's not true. Drawing inferences about the deity does not seem to me to be the function of science because it's very subjective."
...
If intelligent design is not science, then what is it? One of its originators, Phillip Johnson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article: "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of God versus the nonexistence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.' "

So the objective is to get religious fundamentalism into the schools through the back door. This needs to be fought with all the fervor we can muster.