Friday, August 19, 2005
Intelligent Design for an unintelligent future
Our president and our senate majority leader both think we should teach intelligent design as a competing theory to evolution in public school science classes. They posit that schools are a marketplace of ideas, so having more theories on the table does not constitute a state endorsement of religion, nor does it require kids to believe.
Well, I suppose there's some tiny speck of merit to their argument. Yet, it leads to a real gatekeeper problem. Once we start allowing theories that have no scientific proof (and that are, in parts, demonstrably false) equal time with rigorously established scientific theories backed by massive accumulations of evidence, where do we stop? I would certainly have enjoyed learning astrology in my high school science classes. More than physics, anyway. I think our history classes would have been more fun if we'd discussed the role of aliens in building the pyramids. Why don't we get to taste some of the green cheese the astronauts brought back from the moon? Are they hoarding it for themselves?
I'm starting to develop the theory (a term I use with as much rigor as do the proponents of intelligent design) that President Bush is actually a plant by the Chinese or Indian government. They'd like to get ahead of the current superpower, and it sure would be a heckuva lot easier if the United States would just stop teaching its kids science, and the boring details of the scientific method.
If the president would let me put that theory into the social studies curricula of our public schools, where it might compete in the marketplace of ideas, then I'd be glad to see intelligent design taught alongside actual science.
Our president and our senate majority leader both think we should teach intelligent design as a competing theory to evolution in public school science classes. They posit that schools are a marketplace of ideas, so having more theories on the table does not constitute a state endorsement of religion, nor does it require kids to believe.
Well, I suppose there's some tiny speck of merit to their argument. Yet, it leads to a real gatekeeper problem. Once we start allowing theories that have no scientific proof (and that are, in parts, demonstrably false) equal time with rigorously established scientific theories backed by massive accumulations of evidence, where do we stop? I would certainly have enjoyed learning astrology in my high school science classes. More than physics, anyway. I think our history classes would have been more fun if we'd discussed the role of aliens in building the pyramids. Why don't we get to taste some of the green cheese the astronauts brought back from the moon? Are they hoarding it for themselves?
I'm starting to develop the theory (a term I use with as much rigor as do the proponents of intelligent design) that President Bush is actually a plant by the Chinese or Indian government. They'd like to get ahead of the current superpower, and it sure would be a heckuva lot easier if the United States would just stop teaching its kids science, and the boring details of the scientific method.
If the president would let me put that theory into the social studies curricula of our public schools, where it might compete in the marketplace of ideas, then I'd be glad to see intelligent design taught alongside actual science.
