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How biology teachers can respond to Intelligent Design

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 40; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057640903567039

1469-3577

Jim Mackenzie,

Religion, Ecology, and Ethics

Abstract Teachers of biology and related subjects are increasingly meeting objections from students and their parents to the teaching of evolution and the exclusion of what is called the theory of Intelligent Design. This paper attempts to draw together arguments and evidence which may be used by such teachers. Four lessons are drawn from the 1982 judgement against Creation Science in Arkansas for those opposing attempts to introduce the theory of Intelligent Design into school science programs: that a wide definition of science is the most useful; that religion is not the enemy; that science teachers should trust their own expertise; and that alternative theories should not be excluded. Keywords: creationismscience educationreligious educationphilosophy Notes 1. As Taylor explains: ‘Every baby… must have had a father, but that father must also have been a baby before he was a full‐grown man. Hence the perpetuation of unchanging species must be without beginning and without end. And it is implied that all the various processes, within and without the organism, apart from which its life could not be kept up, must be equally without beginning and without end. The “cosmos”, or orderly world of natural processes, is strictly “eternal”: “motion” is everlasting and continuous, or unbroken’ (Taylor, Citation1955, pp. 56–57). 2. That is, the church known in England as the Church of England and in Australia as the Anglican Church. 3. The largest grouping of Christians absent from this list is the Orthodox tradition. It has very little presence in Arkansas but no conflict with modern science, perhaps for the reasons suggested by Nesteruk (Citation2003). Theodosius Dobzhansky, an important contributor to the development of evolutionary theory, was a life‐long and devout member of the Orthodox faith. Nor is opposition to evolution Christian in the sense that only Christians support it. Islamic creationist literature by Harun Yahya (pseudonym of Adnan Oktar) is available from www.harunyahya.com (accessed 14 June 2006). Adnan Oktar is reported to have been charged and convicted with creating an illegal organisation for personal benefit, but is appealing (Grove, Citation2008). See also the (American) National Center for Science Education, at: http://ncseweb.org/news/2008/05/harun-yahya-sentenced-to-prison-002289 (accessed 5 May 2009). 4. Stephen Jay Gould said, ‘Judge Overton’s brilliant and beautifully crafted decision is the finest legal document ever written about this question – far surpassing anything that the Scopes trial generated, or any document arising from the two Supreme Court cases (Epperson v. Arkansas of 1968, striking down Scopes‐era laws that banned evolution outright, and the 1987 decision banning the “equal time” strategy)’ (Citation1991, p. 431). 5. The later decision of Judge John E. Jones III in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case was even more focused on the question, irrelevant except in the context of US law, of whether Intelligent Design is religious. The judge (Jones, Citation2005) cited the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and Article I, § 3, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, both of which deal with relations between the state and religion. He did, however, discuss (§ E4) whether ID is science and ruled that it is not, noting the ID proponent Michael J. Behe’s astonishing testimony in which Behe dismissed 58 peer‐reviewed articles, nine books and several textbook chapters. 6. Larry Laudan (Citation1982) criticised Judge Overton’s Opinion, taking it to rely on five essential properties of science: guided by natural law, explanatory, empirically testable, tentative and falsifiable. Michael Ruse (Citation1982) replied, pointing out that the Opinion was not an undergraduate essay on ‘What is science?’ but the adjudication of a particular case under constitutional law. Neither of these philosophers mentioned Wilson’s evidence even though Overton himself had called it persuasive. 7. The major churches have large memberships, and the faithful themselves hold a variety of views. Confident assertions about what is believed by all Christians, or by a majority of Christians, require documentation. Even senior clergy may stray temporarily from the official position of their denominations. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna seemed to give some support to ID in an op‐ed piece in the New York Times of 7 July 2005. The Cardinal’s views were hastily clarified by Catholic scientists and by the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Paul Poupard, and three months later by Cardinal Schönborn himself in a lecture at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna (Donnelly, Citation2005; Menon, Citation2005). 8. It would also make science impossible, as Thomas points out: ‘If effects be produced not by the act of creatures but only by the act of God, the power of a created cause cannot possibly be indicated by its effect: since the effect is no indication of the cause’s power, except by reason of the action which proceeds from the power and terminates in the effect. Now the nature of a cause is not known from its effect except in so far as this is an indication of its power which results from its nature. Consequently if creatures exercise no action in producing effects, it will follow that the nature of a creature can never be known from its effect: so that all knowledge of physical science would be denied us, for it is there that arguments from effects are chiefly employed’ (1264, bk 3, cp. 69, 18/1924–9, Volume 3, p. 169). Thomas was concerned to combat a strain in Muslim thought which denied any necessary connection between a cause and its effect, and attributed causation only to God; al‐Ghazālī has been thought by some to have held such a view (Goodman, Citation1978; Dutton, Citation2001). It is curious that a position once attacked by Christians as characteristic of Islam should now be adopted by some Christians. 9. Augustine, relying on the eternity, i.e., atemporality, of God and on an old Latin translation of Sirach 18:1 which used the word simul (Taylor, Citation1982, bk 4, nn. 6, 7, and 9, vol. 1, pp. 252–4), even suggested that God created all things simultaneously (0415, bk 4, cc. 3–5, §§ 51–6 = 1982, vol. 1 pp. 141–145; cf. bk 6, c. 9, § 16 = 1982, vol. 1, p. 189 and bk 6, n. 37 = 1982, vol. 1, pp. 264–265). That an omnipotent being should not need so long as 144 hours for any task is a question not addressed by modern creationists. 10. ‘Since the human mind, through its weakness, was altogether unable to come to God if not aided and upheld by his sacred word, it necessarily followed that all mankind, the Jews excepted, inasmuch as they sought God without the Word, were labouring under vanity and error’ (Calvin, Citation1536, bk 1, ch. 6, § 4). 11. The possibility that some of the stars might in fact be bigger than the moon, or even than the sun, and appear smaller to us because of their greater distance had been discussed by Christians more than a thousand years before Calvin wrote. It was not regarded as posing a problem for faith (Augustine, Citation0415, bk 2, c. 16, §§ 33–4 = 1982, vol. 1, pp. 69–71). This conflict between Genesis and science is not discussed by modern Creationists. 12. Thomas Aquinas recalled: ‘Augustine teaches [De Genesi ad litteram 1: 18, 19, 21 = PL 34: 260, 261, 262 = Citation1982, vol. 1, pp. 41–45] that two points should be kept in mind when resolving such questions [scil., the Firmament on the Second Day of Creation]. First, that the truth of Scripture must be held inviolable. Secondly, when there are different ways of explaining a Scriptural text, no particular explanation should be held so rigidly that, if convincing arguments show it to be false, anyone dare to insist that it still is the definitive sense of the text. Otherwise unbelievers will scorn Sacred Scripture, and the way of faith will be closed to them’ (Thomas Aquinas, Citation1272, 1a, q. 68, art. 1, resp. = 1967, pp. 71–72). From the point of view of Christian apologetics, the promoters of ID seem to be naively taking a path long ago identified as unwise. 13. More recently, see Bridgham et al. (Citation2006) and Adami (Citation2006). R. Williams discusses ID, and in particular Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity (Citation2008, pp. 48–60) but is apparently unaware of Muller’s work, let alone that of Bridgham et al. 14. See Thomas Aquinas (Citation1272, 1a. q. 70, art. 3, ad 3 = 1967, p. 125, and q. 72, ad 5 = 1967, p. 137). 15. It could be argued that accounting for origins in terms of an artificer was introduced to western thought with Plato’s Timaeus: ‘The Timaeus is a document of great importance in the history of European thought. Earlier Greek speculation about the origin of the world had, if mythical, been largely in terms of sexual reproduction or growth, or, if philosophical, been evolutionary in the sense that it accounted for the world in terms of undesigned development from material origins. In the Timaeus, the world is created by a divinity, variously described as father, maker, or craftsman’ (Lee, Citation1971, p. 7). 16. As O’Leary remarks, ‘The image of the earth gradually showing through a limitless expanse of water under the horizon of a firmament would ring true to people brought up in the floodplains of Sumeria, the birthplace of Abram. … Genesis neglects to mention that God might have separated the ice from the waters and gathered the ice into the polar regions’ (Citation2003, p. 311). In volcanic neighbourhoods, God might have been thought to confine fire rather than water beneath the earth. 17. Work for this paper was assisted by criticisms by C.L. Bunn.