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Column
Published in The Dallas Morning News, January 27, 2005
Here we go again. Evolution once more is under attack, this time by opponents far more sophisticated than those who push creationism. In Dover, PA the school board voted to have teachers read to their students a statement that Charles Darwin's "theory is a theory. . .not a fact." Everyone in the classroom should "keep an open mind" and consider the possibility of Intelligent Design. This is an approach developed by Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University, who argues that the "irreducible complexity" of human life would be impossible without an overarching architect.
It's an interesting avenue for exploration, but now that will take place primarily in court. The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, acting on behalf of 11 parents, have "sued the school board, contending that discussing Intelligent Design is a way to foist religion on their children."
The story doesn't end in Pennsylvania. Evolution also has surfaced an as issue in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Kansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Georgia. Creationists are on the rise. The battle is joined, again.
And open minds are everywhere. Creationists, according to one poll, have two-thirds of Americans with them in wanting competing approaches taught alongside evolution. They also have an increasingly conservative judiciary as well as an alternative better equipped to do battle in the halls of science than Genesis, an alternative that never mentions God, though critics argue that all signs in Intelligent Design point to a Supreme Being.
What is wrong with that? Nothing, except the ill considered decision, made over and over, to advance these ideas in direct opposition to Darwin. They could profitably be examined in a course on comparative religion, philosophy or contemporary thought, but not in science classes.
The problem, said Dr. Stuart Kauffman, a biologist at the University of Calgary, is that proponents of Intelligent Design "haven't understood the behavior of complex systems." When they argue that the "irreducible complexity" of human life, with organs in which every part is indispensable, couldn't possibly "have arrived through natural selection," they are ignoring phenomena by which "sufficiently large numbers of molecules -- sufficiently complicated chemicals -- will catalyze each other into complex systems without Intelligent Design," bringing natural order to chaos. Given certain circumstances, certain species could be expected to emerge.
Dr. Kauffman points out that they also are failing to heed Darwin's notions of pre-adaptation. What happens is this: an organism stumbles into an environment where an unused aspect of itself becomes useful. That aspect, suddenly essential, is selected and mutates into something new that is integrated over time into a changed being. Human lungs developed in this way, he said. They once were "swim bladders in fish."
Perhaps he should rest his case with the complexity studies and not employ Darwin to refute anti-Darwinists. But all roads in biology do lead back to the dreaded evolution. For this reason those who take on Darwin, as science, will lose every time. Even Stuart Kauffman, who has been called "perhaps the most ambitious and radical modern challenger of Darwin," does not dispute the basic supposition. Evolution is still the reigning rule of biological development. To be ignorant of evolution is to be ignorant, period.
This is unacceptable for students in Pennsylvania, or Texas, where the issue is never far away. What must be understood, if we are to have any peace, much less effective education, is that science and religion are two different ways of knowing. Both are valid. But they don't mix well in the same high school textbook. And most religious people know that the existence of God does not have to be proved. That's what faith means.
Let science be science, as the teachers in Dover who refused to read the school board's statement and left this chore to administrators, seem to be saying. And let the study of comparative religion be more rigorous, more insightful, better informed by the thinking not only of theologians but of scientists who, like Michael Behe, are themselves believers. Surely in such a setting there would be no need to go to court. |
