To help you prepare for your in-class debate: Use Infotrac
(easy to use!) that came with your text to find more information.To help you prepare for your in-class debate: Use Infotrac
(easy to use!) that came with your text to find more information.The surge of discussion and news coverage about ID began this way:
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; Posted: 7:48 p.m. EDT (23:48 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.
"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."
The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.
Christian conservatives -- a substantial part of Bush's voting base -- have been pushing for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Scientists have rejected the theory as an attempt to force religion into science education.
President Bush's remarks triggered an avalanche of editorials, editorial cartoons, news stories, and letters to the editor.
Time Magazine'story and materials, August 15th issue
Time, August 8, 2005 v166 i6 p78Let's Have No More Monkey Trials: To teach faith as science is to undermine both. (Essay) Charles Krauthammer.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Time, Inc.
Byline: Charles Krauthammer
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking creches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild intelligent design--infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schonborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schonborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schonborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
Jonathan Alter
Johnny Preston Flynn (IUPUI Religion Prof., The Alternative, Bloomington)
Creationism in the Public Schools
In a press conference this past Monday, President Bush indicated that he thought creationism should be taught in public schools alongside the scientific theory of evolution. Using the doublespeak so characteristic of this administration, the new buzz word for the program to ram Christianity down the throats of public school students is “intelligent design.”
Over the years of teaching everything from Life of Christ to Baptist students in the Bible Belt, to teaching Native American religions to American Indian students, I have encountered enough misinformation and ignorance to sometimes make me want to just sit down and weep. Spoon feeding intelligent design to public school students is not a solution but will just add to the problems of our deteriorating educational system.
Let me just take a moment to review what the problems are.
Behind the intelligent design argument lurks the idea that public school students ought to know what the majority of Americans think about their Christian roots. That a human can be born of a virgin, that two humans can give serve as ancestors to the entire human population in less than six thousand years, and that somehow two of every animal in the world can fit into a boat that would be dwarfed by any modern luxury liner.
Intelligent design is about elevating all these stories into the category of science and not one of them was ever intended to be taken as literal facts by the people who wrote them.
Take the Genesis stories of the creation of human beings. Genesis chapter one is a story of creation with the etiological purpose of explaining the Sabbath, not as literal truth of how the world was created.
As proof of that, read on to Chapter two of Genesis where there is a completely different creation story which is designed to justify the worship of one god, YHWH, and the establishment of a patriarchy where women are less than men.
So it serves the purposes of far right Christians to teach all of our children that men wear the pants in the family because women were created from the rib of a man. Teenagers are already suspicious of the science of human sexuality, why not add to the confusion by teaching them that babies come from ribs not sex?
Genesis four and five go on to tell the story of the first children of the first people, Cain and Abel. In competition for the attention of God, the two siblings get into a fight and Cain slays Abel. And then God “put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him” (Oxford Annotated Bible, Gen. 4:15).
Taking the story literally would mean the only people Cain could have encountered were his parents, Adam and Eve. So who is around to see the mark of Cain?
But it gets better.
“Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in land of Nod, east of Eden.” Cain knew his wife. . .” (Gen. 4:16-17). When I teach this part of the Jewish writings, or discuss these passages in the history of Christianity, I face the class and say simply, “Who did Cain marry?”
After the students get over the initial shock of being asked a simple but jarring question, they inevitably think that I am reading from a different book. They just cannot fathom that this illogical series of events is part of the bible they know.
But in point of fact, most college students, like most Christians, fail to address the fundamental purpose of sacred history. It is not about science, it is not about telling the story of how the world was physically created, but is about how the religious doctrine is woven out of human events and culture.
If the Genesis stories are to serve as the foundation for science teachers standing up in front of their students and teaching about intelligent design, they better do what most fundamentalist Christian preachers seem to do. Skip over the unexplainable parts with a dismissive, “you have to have faith.”
A public education is not about religious faith. It is instead about learning how to think for oneself by using the best scholarship available in math, science, history, and all other aspects of modern education.
President Bush and the supporters of this program often pine for the “good ole days” when religion was part of the curriculum of public schools. Remember, those were times when women could not vote, African Americans could not vote or hold office, and my people could not vote or practice their religion freely.
So what was intelligent about the design of society in those days?
August 2, 2005
Indianapolis Star
Sandy Sasso
Don't read Bible as science
The first two chapters of the book of Genesis have always captivated me. The poetry, the economy of words, the literary flow of the unfolding of creation characterize, as generations of readers have attested, a beautiful and compelling narrative.
It is regretful that politicians, members of school boards and religious conservatives are trying to take a theological account about the goodness of life, the dignity of every human being, the sacredness of rest and turn it into a scientific description of the origins of the universe.
Proposals before legislators across the country question the science of evolution and suggest that creationism or intelligent design be taught in schools as an alternative to the evolutionary theory regarding the origins of life. The Washington Post reported that the Discovery Institute in Seattle is spending more than $1 million a year for research, opinion polls and media promotions to promote intelligent design as a credible scientific theory.
The issue has come to the surface most recently within the Catholic Church. While the church has embraced evolutionary theory, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna and confidant of the new Pope Benedict XVI, suggested last month that "evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense -- an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection " is not compatible with Catholic faith. The vice president of the Discovery Institute had urged the cardinal to clarify Catholic doctrine on evolution.
There are a variety of ways in which one can reconcile the Genesis narrative with evolution. But attempting to turn the Bible into a science textbook misses the whole point of the creation story. There are a number of differing creation accounts in the Bible, two in the first chapter of Genesis, various references in Psalms, the prophetic and wisdom books. They were not written by scientists but by individuals who stood in awe of the universe and sought to discern the meaning of human existence. What we should learn from these narratives is not primarily how the world came into being or what is the origin of life, but rather what is the value of life and what is the meaning of human existence? Sometimes to read the Bible literally is not to take it seriously enough.
People of faith need not be troubled by the science of natural selection and the randomness of evolution. They should rather be concerned about the moral selections we make and the compassionate order we bring to life's tragic chance occurrences. Faith should care less about whether we are descended from monkeys and more about whether we act like humans in the image of God.
Science and religion need not be at odds with each other. Science can expand what we know; religion can help us decide how to use what we know for good and not for harm.
To read the Genesis account of creation through the lens of the astronomer, physicist and biologist ruins a perfectly wonderful narrative and uses it for purposes for which it was not intended. It teaches bad science and bad religion.
To read the Genesis account, as it was meant to be read, through the lens of faith and poetry, drama and metaphor, is to come to know the value of human life, the goodness of the universe and to stand in awe of the creative process that continues to renew itself.
Albert Einstein taught that "religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame." Centuries before, Galileo, whom church authorities sought to silence, provided wisdom for our contemporary debate, when he said, "The Bible teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."
Sasso is senior rabbi at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis
Lyndon Johnson liked to tell a story about a Depression-era school teacher who was applying for a job in Johnson City, Texas, the president's hometown. The school board, he said, was divided on whether Earth was round or flat, so they asked him how he taught it.
"The poor fellow needed a job so much; he said, 'I can teach it either way.'"
Henceforth,
if President Bush has his druthers - or if the school boards in Kansas,
Pennsylvania and elsewhere that have decreed equal time for "intelligent design"
in their classes have theirs - teachers will have to teach it both ways. Or
maybe no way.
School biology could be based on Darwinian evolution on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, interspersed with intelligent design or some other form of creationism on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or vice versa, depending on the political balance in the community. Then at the end of the semester, students could vote on which one they liked better.
Given the polls showing that most Americans don't accept Darwinian evolution and know little about it, it ought to be the other way around. If creationists and intelligent designers really believed in equal time, they'd demand more emphasis on evolution, which doesn't seem to be getting equal time in most Americans' heads.
By all means, teach creation in humanities classes - not just Genesis, but Norse myths, African myths, Indian myths - so, to paraphrase the president, all sides are "properly taught." (Then watch the fireworks as the parents and the clerics storm in to demand more pages in the textbook or a teacher more sympathetic to their version.)
Nobody knows how the elder Bushes feel about the money they spent to send young George to Andover, Yale and Harvard, places that seem to have taught him little science that had any lasting impact - not enough, from all signs, for him to understand scientific method or to tell science from metaphysics.
Given this president's determined rejection of the evidence about global warming, his creeping creationism isn't all that surprising. It may even explain his insistence, long after almost everyone knew better, that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program just before the Iraq war. He seems to believe that belief is itself sufficient evidence of truth.
Still, for somebody who pretends to be a moral absolutist and likes to divide the world between good and evil, there's a powerful strain of cultural relativism in his perception of the real world.
The idea of giving equal time to scientifically untestable beliefs that question established scientific principles is in effect to say that if enough people believe in something, you should not only respect that belief, but call it science. Yes, evolution is scientific theory; so is gravity.
The late Pope John Paul II recognized, as three eminent scientists recently wrote to his successor, Benedict XVI, "that biological evolution had progressed beyond the hypothetical stage as a guiding principle behind the understanding of the evolution of diverse life forms on Earth, including humans. At the same time, he rightly recognized that the spiritual significance that one draws from the scientific observations and theory lie outside of the scientific theories themselves." To mush them up is to offend both.
What worried the scientists, among them National Medal of Science winner Francisco Ayala, a geneticist at the University of California, Irvine, was a recent New York Times opinion piece by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna and a close associate of the new pope, declaring, "Evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense ... is not true." It thus "appeared to dangerously redefine the church's view on evolution." The two systems - belief in a divine origin and Darwinian science - aren't incompatible. They belong in different realms, and they're another argument why sectarian doctrine doesn't belong in public education.
There are virtually no scientific studies that even mention intelligent design. It rests largely on the argument that DNA is too complex to have evolved through random selection. To shove it into the classroom as science is an attack on science itself.
Among intelligent design's godfathers was a Berkeley professor (of law) named Philip Johnson: That alone ought to make conservatives think again.
None of this would matter nearly as much if the United States were still leading the world in the training of scientists. But by almost any measure it's losing ground to China, India and its other competitors in the global high-tech world. Teachers around the country say the president's statement will only encourage creationists and other fundamentalist activists who already have them afraid to discuss evolution.
Ever since his election campaign in 2000, the president had led the cheerleading for tougher academic standards. His showcase No Child Left Behind education law requires teaching techniques and other school programs to rest on "scientifically based research" - the law uses the phrase 111 times. But apparently, when it comes to biology or geology, equal time for something that's scientifically untestable is good enough.
About the writer:
Peter Schrag can be reached at Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852-0779 or at pschrag@sacbee.com.
From the Indianapolis Star
August 10, 2005
Only faith takes us to intelligent design
Tracy Gray's "Creation theory deserves fair hearing" (Aug. 3) makes an argument that is as old as man, to wit: It is reasonable to posit an intelligent designer -- God -- as a theory to explain the complexity of nature. Hardly anyone would quarrel with that proposition. But the question is: Can the proposition be tested by scientific method? George Will, in the July 4 Newsweek, writes, "The problem with intelligent design theory is not that it is false but that is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific, but a creedal tenet -- a matter of faith unsuited to a public school's science curriculum."
One can pile up instance upon instance from the complex, beautiful and amazing world of nature, all of which point to intelligent design, but this will not take us to the supposed designer nor to the absence of same. Ultimately, therefore, only faith can take us the rest of the way to a belief in intelligent design. Thus discussion and debate of intelligent design belong to studies in religion and philosophy, not biology and related sciences.
Philip R. Johnson
Richmond
August 10, 2005
Parents should teach their faith to children
In reading Tracy Gray's Aug. 3 commentary, "Creation theory deserves fair hearing," a number of thoughts came to mind.
As an engineer, Gray should know that science is the study of the natural world. Science can in no way validate nor invalidate theological beliefs regarding the supernatural.
Science teachers have no training in theology that could qualify them to teach concepts like creation theory. Asking them to do so is educationally unsound.
Contrary to what many people seem to believe, young people do not readily turn their backs on family beliefs. It bothers me that so many parents are fearful of having their children exposed to scientific theories. This implies an insecurity that their beliefs won't stand up to comparison with other concepts like evolution. My experience indicates otherwise.
Parents who are concerned about their children's welfare should spend more time at home with them inculcating their personal religious and philosophical beliefs and less time trying to make science education into something it cannot be.
Jim Curry
Franklin
August 10, 2005
Sasso's insightful take on humans' origins
As one who looked at recent photos of dinosaur embryos and thought, "These look a lot like prenatal impressions that obstetricians show parents, give or take 190 million years," I think Sandy Sasso (Aug. 2 column) did a sterling job of pragmatically taking differing viewpoints and reconciling them with the realities of today. I read her as suggesting that current relationships with others and with a higher power are more important than whether one's uncle was a monkey.
Hugh Jones
Bedford
From the Sacramento Bee
Re "Another wedge issue," editorial, Aug. 4: The Bee is wrong to characterize intelligent design as "the new euphemism for creationism." Intelligent design is the scientific inquiry into the nature of biological structures. Creationism is the biblical account of the creation.
Intelligent design represents a scientific challenge to dogmatic Darwinism. Michael Behe, Ph.D., professor of biological science and the author of "Darwin's Black Box," has been a leading proponent of intelligent design. His work on irreducible complexity is a serious challenge to Darwinian evolution.
Referencing
the Scopes trial is disingenuous. Edward Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Summer
for the Gods" exposed the Scopes trial as a trumped up publicity stunt by the
ACLU, in which John Scopes was exposed as a part-time teacher with no knowledge
of the Darwinian theory he was supposedly teaching. The Bee can do better than
reference frauds in its editorials.
For a serious inquiry into intelligent design, look into "Uncommon Dissent, Intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing," William Dembski. An excellent history of the theory of evolution is "Evolution," by Edward Larson.
The Bee owes it readers the kind of serious, balanced approach to the issue President Bush has called for.
- Edward Speegle, Gold River
President Bush's desire to impose the teaching of "intelligent design" in our schools is not at all driven by a search for truth.
As the Aug. 4 editorial "Another wedge issue" rightly asserts, "The singling-out of evolution is about religious belief, not science." The desire to advance a faith-based curriculum would be laughable were it not so creepily reminiscent of the Dark Ages, when scientific literacy was abysmal and free inquiry a sin and a crime. People were controlled and some, no doubt, comforted by a blinding faith that silenced scientists, persecuted unbelief. The geocentric church position led it to arrest Galileo for teaching that Earth revolved around the sun.
But maybe these dark times don't look so dark to creationists, who want to reintroduce religious thought into our public schools. They call for "teaching the controversy," but they really mean preaching the orthodoxy.
Evolution is a concept supported by overwhelming anthropological and genetic evidence and should remain the dominant construct of every science curriculum. But let's also teach critical thinking and invite Bush and his credulous ilk to sign up.
- Pat Lynch, Sacramento
The Aug. 4 editorial "Another wedge issue" dodges reasonable scientific hypotheses in Intelligent Design. Secular scientists also argue microbiological advances militate against the ability of natural selection to explain molecular machines exhibiting irreducible complexity.
Evolutionists' answer, co-option (borrowing to make machines), neither accounts for 30 of the 40 structural parts of the bacterial flagellum nor explains assembly instructions (information) required. Darwin admitted his theory breaks down if this complexity isn't formed by successive slight modifications.
Dean Kenyon, formerly leader in chemical evolution, now reasons that proteins could not be constructed without the help of genetic instructions. DNA stores instructions for sequencing of proteins, and this wealth of information cannot be explained by natural processes. Without DNA, there is no self-replication, and without self-replication, there is no natural selection. Fine-tuned apparatus in DNA represents the most complex design on Earth.
Academic freedom, not religion or wedge issues, is at stake here.
- Steven DuPre, Carmichael
Neither intelligent design nor evolution should be taught in science classes to explain the "origin of life." Both are scientifically flawed because they assume that time is linear and that everything had to have a beginning.
Of course, if you ask a creationist or intelligent design advocate: "Who created the creator or who designed the intelligent designer?" they finally must face the concept of timelessness, i.e. no beginning and no end.
It is more scientifically correct (because of the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy) to believe the universe itself is a timeless living being. Evolution is just one of its many internal processes which we cannot fully comprehend.
- Joe Camahort, Lincoln
Before schools embrace intelligent design as a legitimate scientific theory, its proponents have some explaining to do. First and foremost, its proponents need to explain how they test it, and they need to present their supporting body of evidence.
To date, however, intelligent designers have tried to sell their notion by presenting it as alternative to the theory of evolution, which, according to them, has problems because life is too complex to have formed and evolved from pure randomness.
As a geologist, I have a few questions for intelligent designers about their idea. First, did the intelligent designer design all biological life at once or does the designer tinker through time? Are extinctions evidence that the designer was unhappy? If intelligent design works for biological life, shouldn't it also apply to physical theories as well? Intelligent designers, gravity, electromagnetism, chemical bonding, matter, etc. are described by complex theories. Does ID logic apply to these phenomena too?
Theories for physical phenomena are complex, have shortcomings, and don't deal with how these phenomena originated so your intelligent designer came up with these physical phenomena as well, right?
- Rick Humphreys, Carmichael
The older I get, the more I'm amazed that anybody still believes that we have evolved from ... well, what? I have a few very simple questions that cannot be answered by evolution.
What was an eye, or the purpose of an eye, before it could see? Why are roses so beautiful? Why is a kiss so much fun? Why do we have funerals? Why don't monkeys have funerals? Why is DNA such a simple, yet powerful programming language? If life evolved, where are all the in-between steps? (One or two in-between steps like "Lucy" just doesn't make it.) What really keeps an atom together? How does one cell divide into millions such that each new cell knew to become bone, heart, liver, blood, eye, brain, nerve, etc.?
How did so many things come about that have such beautiful design, yet without a designer?
- Vic Rauch, Carmichael
No doubt The Bee faces a deluge of letters from those who imagine the genesis of life can come only from a designer. Sadly, looking at the human design, he is a poor designer indeed.
Our "designer" gave us far molars that our jaws are often too small to hold that get impacted and cause infection. We have too little body hair to provide protection, but enough to play host to a variety of disease-carrying parasites. And don't even get me started on pinky toes, offering no help to balance but a real pain when they break, or his sense of humor in giving men nipples.
Of course, all of these attributes arose and were useful to our ancestor species and now remain as a sort of evolutionary baggage.
On the other hand, if our designer should hire better engineers, I have several suggestions for the next model: tougher skin so that we don't get nicks that become infected, male genitals that are somewhat protected, elbows that bend in both directions, a back up heart when the main one needs a rest, etc.
- Jordan Magill, Sacramento
"The president should be content to leave science education to scientists," editorializes The Bee. I am no Christian, and I'm a dedicated activist opposing nearly everything our unelected leader stands for. But with his position that intelligent design should be taught in our public schools alongside creative evolution, for once President Bush has got something right.
If one bothers to read the books of Philip Johnson, he doesn't find gullible evangelism and endorsement of thaumaturgy. He finds the methodical exposé of the Darwinian religion backed with arguments employing scientific logic. It is a religion because once the "evidence" for creative evolution is carefully scrutinized, it is seen to be no more than an implausible faith. You have difficulty accepting the idea of a God who tinkers with its creation? Well, I get migraines from the twisted explications of Darwinians.
"No scientist or textbook," The Bee asserts, "claims that evolution ... answers all the questions about the origins of life." But science, the overrated authority of our modern world, subliminally bullies the populace, both educated and uneducated, to its entirely unscientific faith. Science should be content to leave the origins of life to the impartial critical display of public education.
- Tom King, Citrus Heights
I find it interesting that the proponents of "intelligent design" are all for a fair and balanced representation of magic in the science classroom, but have no such desire to introduce evolutionary ideas into Bible study.
I also find it more than a little hypocritical for those who advocate against evolutionary ideas, the foundation of modern biology, to take advantage of those insights when they go to the doctor for health problems. All of our modern medical knowledge and technology come from a science-based approach.
If you conclude that science and its method of developing and testing ideas to produce theories - and the rigorous testing that continues even after a theory is developed - is flawed, then how do you honestly reconcile 21st century medical technologies, stem cell insights, genetics, alternative fuel technologies, new drugs, computer technologies, pictures from the surface of Mars and glimpses of the edges of our galaxy?
- Kevin Cornwell, Sacramento
The Bee believes all subjects not in conformance to its beliefs are wedge issues. I don't believe The Bee can characterize the argument between "intelligent design" vs. Darwinism as a wedge issue since there are far more people of faith than evolutionists.
Also, Darwinists have never been able to answer the simple question of "origin of species." Certainly, that is a very important part of the puzzle. Perhaps to be an evolutionist one is a person of faith also, not science.
- Jeff Erkel, Loomis
Re "Bush: Treat intelligent design, evolution equally," Aug. 2: President Bush wants to treat "intelligent design" (read creationism) equally with evolution, which has been scientifically proven. Bravo! But why stop there?
Along with Galileo's accepted theories, let's also teach Ptolemaic astronomy and geography, which is based on the theory that the sun, planets and stars revolve around Earth. After all, our traditional Christian philosophy is based on it. We might throw in courses on the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy.
Seriously, when Bush's term as president is over, he should be nominated as president of the Flat Earth Society.
- Michael Biggs, Placerville
The argument to teach only evolution in the schools is to promote one religious view without considering any other. The theory of evolution is simply a view that says there is no intelligent plan involved in our world. Intelligent design is simply the idea that something as complicated as living creatures had to be planned and designed.
We are not promoting any one religion with the idea of intelligent design. To the contrary, we are simply asking that atheistic evolution not be the only "theory" taught. Many of us who believe in intelligent design consider evolution as ridiculous as evolutionists consider intelligent design.
Who is right? Simply let both ideas be presented. I look at something as simple as an automobile and think that if that had to be intelligently designed, then there is strong probability that complex living creatures probably were, too.
One side may not convince the other, but both should have the right to be expressed in schools. Let the intelligent students make their choice as to what to believe by presenting both options.
- Jim Johnston, Sacramento
President Bush says, "[P]art of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." Bush is careful not to specifically support intelligent design, but the reporters and his right-wing Christian base understand.
Intelligent design, like other forms of creationism, postulates a "supernatural designer" who can do what natural processes such as evolution can't. Science is an evidence-based activity, not a supernatural faith-based one.
There is a school of thought for each pseudoscience, and Bush would have us treat each equally. Should we teach a flat Earth, geocentrism, that the Grand Canyon was carved by the flood of Noah and that Earth is 6,000 years old? All of these areas of pseudoscience have been proved wrong by a weight of evidence.
Teaching pseudoscience equally with science is to lie to our children. Balanced treatment would be for a teacher to list these areas of pseudoscience, note that the evidence says they are false, reference the source of that conclusion and continue teaching real science.
- John Simpson, Fair Oaks
I rarely agree with President Bush and, in fact, most of the time he just plain scares me! But on this issue I do agree with him. While I am not a member of the Christian faith, I have found wisdom and comfort in many of its teachings.
Every human group has its creation story and those stories are important to cultures around the globe. The more our children know about creation "myths" the better able they are to choose their own path through life.
There is nothing to be "feared" by exposing children to the many views, beliefs and sciences of how humans came to be "human." After all, the "science of evolution" is evolving as new information is accumulated and analyzed.
- Peggy Shuchter, Sacramento
President Bush's support for "intelligent design" goes a long way in explaining his dismal record as a self-proclaimed "compassionate" leader.
After all, if it is "intelligent" to create disease, war, pestilence and starvation, it must be "compassionate" to reward war mongers, war profiteers, polluters and looters of the U.S. Treasury.
- Richard Tobias, West Sacramento
I am in total agreement with the Aug. 4 editorial "Another wedge issue." There aren't "two sides" to this issue in the scientific world, only in the political world. There is no "theory" of intelligent design, only the mere assertion that some things are too complicated to have evolved. Intelligent design is by admission a socio-cultural movement, not a scientific research program.
"Teach the controversy" is a fine concept as long as the controversy is taught for what it is: a political and religious controversy suitable for discussion in a social studies or world religions class.
We will do a serious disservice to our children if we present religious ideas in a science class.
- John Dekker, Rancho Murieta
Re "Bush adds fuel to school debate over evolution," Aug. 3: As a former teacher, I find President Bush's comment that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories very distressing. This assumes that any idea at all is a theory. In science, a theory is an explanation of a set of related observations based upon proven hypotheses and verified by multiple researchers. Intelligent design is an article of faith, and belongs only to religion.
It is dispiriting to see our nation the laughingstock of the educated world.
- Margie Metzler, Sacramento
Rex Babin's Aug. 3 cartoon calls President Bush a Neanderthal for supporting intelligent design. I found this insulting. As a physical scientist, I have learned that evolution is fatally flawed due to naïve assumptions about probability by those who cannot comprehend the large numbers involved.
Because organisms change gradually over time (except in the Cambrian Explosion), we may think that evolution also explains their formation, but it cannot produce the simplest organism in the lab or even on paper. Complex biocompounds simply cannot create themselves. It's infinitely less likely for the software of DNA to "write" itself randomly than for the newspaper to do so.
DNA contains vast information. Information equals intelligence. Randomness is the opposite of intelligence, as is the superior attitude of people like Babin, based as it is on a fairy tale theory that conforms less to reality than the Bible story does.
The facts that support my opinions are found in a superb book, "The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God," by Lee Strobel, an atheist until mathematics convinced him otherwise.
- Joe Chasko, Sacramento
Congratulations to Rex Babin on his cartoon today. His characterization of the evolution of George Bush is a classic. If they give out Pulitzers for editorial cartoons, that one is a sure winner.
- Christopher A. Kane, Grass Valley
The Bee's so-called cartoonist Rex Babin has hit another low with his cartoon of Aug. 3. Plus, he is not a very good cartoonist. I have thought of cancelling The Bee for years, but I have not found another newspaper in the area. If I find one I like, or my canary dies, I will cancel The Bee.
- W.D. Williams, Rocklin
So, the president believes "intelligent design" should be taught alongside the theory of evolution. From an administration that has shown little regard for truth, scientific or otherwise, this comes as no surprise.
Over the past five years, The Bee has printed countless articles reporting numerous instances wherein this administration has shown an unbridled willingness to skew, alter and openly falsify scientific reports before allowing them to be presented as "our government's position" on a given scientific issue.
With the president's latest pronouncement, it has become all too apparent that he has little regard for truth or science. Someone needs to tell "The Emperor" that religion only requires faith without regard to provable facts; science, on the other hand, requires provable facts without regard to faith.
And what great work of science would Bush ask us to use for the teaching of this "theory of intelligent design"? The Bible, a book that also "teaches" that the Earth rests on four pillars, that bats are birds and slavery is OK? With a "leader" like this, who can ask how it is that we are losing our position of dominance in the world when it comes to science?
- James P. Osman, Granite Bay
Rex Babin's editorial cartoon depicting the progression of an ape evolving into a man then regressing back to an ape because of the belief in "intelligent design" was an attempt at discrediting creationism. Knowing that the hand that drew that cartoon was designed so intricately and the brain that conjured it up is so complex, makes it impossible for me to believe in evolution rather than the existence of God, the Creator.
I know Rex Babin would not believe his car was put together as a result of an explosion in a factory. Neither can I believe that the marvels of nature and human existence resulted from a random cosmic happening.
Years ago I told my fourth-grade teacher, "My Dad said to tell you that maybe you came from a monkey, but I did not." You can deny the existence of God, but it makes it no less true. God created this world and everyone in it, and he knows the number of hairs on our heads, grains of sand in the sea and he cares for each of us, whether we believe or not.
- Marsha Hannon, Folsom
President Bush's endorsement of teaching intelligent design is a direct attack on responsible environmental stewardship.
Unlike intelligent design, evolution has faced scientific scrutiny for years and continues to amass significant evidence for its acceptance. Evolution also encourages humans, as stewards of this planet, to understand how things adapt (and don't adapt) to changing environments and the consequences of the changes humans have caused in the environment. Conversely, intelligent design shifts the responsibility of sustaining a healthy planet from humans to some supernatural force. This "let things go" attitude would be absolutely disastrous.
- Eric Booth, Davis
Why the mocking of intelligent design? Most Americans believe in God. What's so laughable about thinking this God had a hand in making life or setting up evolution as a creative tool? Even the most "simple" organism is far more complex than any man-made object. We have no trouble believing a car was made by an intelligence, so what's so hard to believe about DNA being made by a intelligence greater than our own?
Darwinian evolution fails to explain life's origins, the complexity of cells or even the human ability for morality and spirituality. Intelligent design is an intelligent supplement to evolution.
- April Pedersen, Reno, Nev.
I looked at Rex Babin's cartoon and all I wanted to do was puke. This guy has no shame and is totally disgusting. He is nothing more than a treasonous coward hiding behind the freedom of the press depicting the president as an evolutionary dumb ape.
Babin's cartoons are way over the top. The best thing The Bee could do to improve its image and win some points from people in this community who hate The Bee's far-left political point of view would be to flush "Rabid Rex Baboon Ravin" down the toilet.
It's OK to have a little fun and make political jokes, but Babin doesn't have any common decency or respect for the president in virtually all of the cartoons he produces. One can produce political jokes without coming off so mean-spirited, or bordering on a "hate crime" violation.
- Tom Bogetich, Carmichae
On Aug. 3 The Bee went to a new low. The cartoon by Rex Babin was disrespectful and offensive to our president, our country and all Americans who believe in God. In fact, it is downright mean. I believe The Bee should apologize for publishing this insensitive cartoon.
- Ben D. Kokteff, Citrus Heights
August 15, 2005
The Aug. 11 cartoon on the op-ed page depicting creationism as a wolf cloaked as an intelligent design sheep struck me as inappropriate and malicious. While I agree that creationists should not water down their ideologies with cleverly conceived labels, I believe that depicting creationism as the "big bad wolf" intent on preying upon innocent school children is completely wrong.
If the problem is that creationism is part of a system of faith and therefore should not be taught in public schools, then I would argue that evolution is also part of its own faith system and shouldn't be taught either. Those who believe in evolution display just as much, if not more, faith as those who believe in creationism. Creationists believe "in the beginning, God", while evolutionists believe "in the beginning, dirt." No one was around at the time to confirm the existence of either. And since there are plenty of people around now who will confirm the existence of both, I'll believe in an intelligent God over mindless dirt any day.
Ben Houk
McCordsville
|
ID proponents don't have research support
 How appropriate that a political cartoonist, Gary Varvel, comments on so-called intelligent design. Intelligent design creationism is, of course, politics, not scientific inquiry. Where are the research laboratories at Eli Lilly and Co., Roche Diagnostics, IU, Purdue or Notre Dame that use so-called intelligent design as a research principle? Nowhere. Intelligent design's most vocal proponents, such as Drs. John C. Wells, Michael Behe and William Dembski, do no such research either. Instead they spend all their time petitioning political bodies, such as boards of education, to include their unproven notions in science curricula. Even Dr. Henry Morris, the grand old man of scientific creationism from the Institute for Creation Research, has complained that intelligent design has done nothing more than recycle arguments that religious creationists used 20 and 30 years earlier, without acknowledging the debt. J. Stephen Noe Southport
Jefferson committed to scientific method
In response to the Aug. 19 letter to the editor regarding "important thinkers embraced ID theory": Yes, Thomas Jefferson referred to the "hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator" as more probable than in that of a "self-existent universe." What distinguishes Jefferson's logic from current intelligence design thinkers, however, is his commitment to the scientific method. Jefferson sought a hypothesis to explain the existence of the universe, whereas ID seeks only to deny evolution with the inherently untestable hypothesis that science cannot explain our existence. A teacher cannot teach the scientific method and preach intelligent design without violating the principles that created history's "important thinkers." Ben Crouse Noblesville
Parent chose sound education in evolution
I commend Robert King's coverage of the controversy being contrived over evolution in our community ("Evolution debate may play out in schools," Aug. 17). I have a daughter entering the Hamilton Southeastern school district this year and was chilled to hear there are people from outside our own county trying to negatively influence her later education. A sound education in evolution is just one of the reasons I chose to send my daughter to Hamilton Southeastern rather than a parochial school. "Teaching the controversy" is a cover-up for pushing bad science pedagogy. If the advocacy group's threat to sue Hamilton Southeastern becomes real, advocates of quality science teaching have my support against them. Curt Rozemboom Fishers October 9, 2005 Consider possibility of divine guidance in evolution
Evolution dialogue requires that a fourth approach be added to the three so well explained in the Oct. 2 Focus articles on "Origins." The fourth is to accept the observable and tested theory of evolution, yet to see it as God's way. The explanation of evolution was excellent but did not go on to explain the possibility of divine guidance in its execution, as this fourth approach does. Also, I have no problem with the creationist writer having his faith, but he is very confused about the history of Earth's magnetism and using the 40,000-year limit of carbon dating as evidence of his creation story. There are many dating mechanisms including other isotopic techniques that date to more than 4 billion years. Why are some of us so afraid to know how it was and continues to be done? Mic Mead Westfield October 9, 2005 Evolution, creationism, ID not created equally
I was very troubled by the way the Oct. 2 Focus section gave the impression that there is equal evidence in favor of creationism, intelligent design and evolution. While newspapers must give equal space for opinions, no matter how well supported, space in scientific journals is allocated based on the quality of ideas supported by data and assessed by peer review. In that setting, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. But this does not mean that creationism and intelligent design don't have their places. As a scientist I see no convincing data that refute evolution. The fossil record, the wonders of DNA and modern genetics, even the revolution in biotechnology all support evolution. The science of evolution is amazing and fundamental to our understanding of the world. Evolution is accepted as scientific truth because the data support it, but this does not prevent a sense of wonder at all of nature's marvels, leading to a spiritual or religious belief that some intelligent force may be involved. Evolution is not inferior, equal or superior to creationism and intelligent design. They should be judged in different ways. Treating them as if they were the same by giving them equal space, muddies the waters and leads to needless conflicts. A.J. Allen, M.D., Ph.D. Indianapolis October 9, 2005 Intelligent design criticizes, doesn't offer explanation In response to the Oct. 2 letter by Gordon B. Rose, all science researchers welcome scientific criticism. In fact, scientific criticism is the foundational cornerstone of evolution. The key word is scientific. Intelligent design offers only criticism without the science to back the position. ID proponents make no attempt to offer any scientific evidence for their observations. Rose observes that the human cell is small and too complex and organized for anything but intelligent design. That argument is not scientific. It is simply an observation (small), and an opinion (too complex). Evidence requires scientific measurements for a position, not just potshots against a scientific theory. Those arguments do not hold up to true scientific scrutiny. The processes cells perform are simple chemical reactions and physical properties that do not require anything approaching intelligence, only obeying the laws of the physical world. I hope that true science and logic rule for the Pennsylvania school children. The ability to be fluent in the scientific method is critical as our country moves forward and competes with the world in science. Paul Wood Warsaw October 9, 2005 Present all views so kids can decide for themselves With the statement that biological evolution stands alone as the only scientifically proven explanation of origin, Craig Gosling (Oct. 4 letter to the editor) demonstrates his lack of understanding of basic scientific method. While there is a lot of evidence to support evolution theory, there is also notable evidence to the contrary. There has never been an observed instance of actual evolution. Biological science has discovered the complexity of the simplest animals and mathematical science demonstrates those simple animals could not have come into existence by random selection during even the most generous estimate of the Earth's age. So evolution, intelligent design and creationism remain theories. Unlike Gosling, I want my children to be presented in public school with the nonsectarian facts, pro and con, regarding all three so they can draw their own informed conclusions. To suggest otherwise is narrow-minded censorship worthy of William Jennings Bryan. Al Grossniklaus Indianapolis October 9, 2005 Disappointed by authors in 'Origins' piece I had a short moment of excitement when I spotted "Origins" in the Oct. 2 Focus section, but reading it was a disappointment. None of the authorities was compelling. Gary Belovsky, the evolutionist, was both dry and somber while mostly burying his most important points. Jason Lisle, the creationist, argued for a point that is no longer much of an issue in schools. John West failed on two counts. First, he insisted that denying classroom access to intelligent design is tantamount to incinerating the First Amendment. Not so. Schools have never had unfettered freedom to teach whatever they liked. There is no bar to students reading books about ID or hearing of it from parents, ministers, friends or other sources. The reason why creationism and intelligent design are both banned from science classrooms is that they are not science, although they lack that distinction for a subtle reason that Belovsky did not make clear. Science is not a database full of facts. It is a method of study that is rooted in a bedrock assumption of repeatedly occurring cause and effect. If we establish that a cause creates an effect at least once, we can infer that it will do so again, and that it has happened in the past. Both intelligent design and creationism would insert a wild card into that game, a miracle that shifts the nature of the cause and effect chain, destroying the ability to predict. Science explores only chains without miracles, because miracles are, by their natures, capricious and occasional. If things happen miraculously, then they cannot be duplicated. Intelligent design and creationism feed from the vein of belief in miracles, something science cannot accept. Tim Altom Indianapolis Church did not persecute Galileo for biblical reasons I'm responding to the evolution debate in the Oct. 2 Focus section. Writer Gary Belovsky makes the statement that the Catholic Church once denied Galileo's observations and affirmed false biblical claims that the sun moves around the Earth. This is incorrect; the Catholic Church did not persecute Galileo for biblical reasons. The Old Testament clearly includes proof that the Earth rotates around the sun and also that the world was not flat. The Catholic Church was defending the "science" of the day, not the Bible. Joe Stackman Greenfield October 9, 2005 Let classes discuss all views, then decide Scientific evidence may correctly suggest that evolution of the species did occur, but it doesn't tell us if this was simply a random occurrence in nature without meaningful purpose or the result of creation or intelligent design. As we observe the mysteries of the universe, there appears a system of order. Doesn't this suggest that evolution may be part of a grand design and that perhaps intelligent design or a supreme being may have had something to do with the origin of the universe and life forms as we know today? Can't we have open discussion in the classroom about both the scientific evidence of evolution and at the same time recognize the possibilities of other explanations for our existence? R.L. Christopher Indianapolis
|
Disclaimer
The intent of this page is to make students in A-103, Human Origins and Prehistory, aware of the controversy swirling around them. Cartoons, editorials, and letters are used under fair use principles. If you hold the copyright and object to this use, please contact me and I will remove the materials as soon as possible. If you contact me because you wish to challenge the concepts or site, I will not normally respond to your e-mail and will probably just erase your it. Please do not link to this page; it will disappear soon after the Fall 2005 semester is over.