Since Evolution versus Intelligent Design is in the news again, I went looking for this article and discovered that I did not move it into WordPress when I switched from Geeklog. It was originally posted on February 07, 2005.
After much reading and careful consideration, I find myself on the side of the religious right on one issue, even though I firmly believe that this ambiguous group of fundamentalists, evangelicals and fanatics has, through their political machinations and incessant meddling into numerous other matters of secular public policy, brought the injustice of Selman v. Cobb County School District upon themselves — and the rest of us.
In Selman v. Cobb County School District, the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled on January 13, 2005 that a sticker placed into science textbooks is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The sticker in question reads, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” In determining whether the government-sponsored message is in violation of the Establishment Clause, the court applied the “Lemon test,” provided by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which asks whether the message: 1) has a secular purpose; 2) advances or inhibits religion in its principal or primary effect; or 3) creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion.
Now, call me crazy, but the text of the sticker appears to easily pass the Lemon test because it has the secular purpose of encouraging critical thinking, which should be considered essential to any sort of education. And since the sticker doesn’t even mention religion, it cannot advance or inhibit it. Thus it cannot not create any excessive entanglements of the government with religion.
Those who believe in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution without question might be offended by these assertions, but please lower your defenses ( I am quite sensitive to the deteriorating condition of that proverbial wall that is supposed to separate church from state), keep an open mind and remember that the theory of evolution is based upon empirical evidence and observation which cannot be completely verified which means that evolution is indeed a scientific theory, not scientific fact. Therefore, belief in evolution (and many other scientific theories and hypotheses which are still being studied) requires more than a few leaps of scientific faith, even if some of the faithful cannot accept that uncomfortable truth.
The theory of evolution is still a scientific work in progress and there are several big questions that it does not answer such as how evolution adds information to a genome to create progressively more complicated organisms, how evolution brings about drastic changes so quickly and — most pertinently — how the first living cell arose spontaneously to get evolution started. As more study and research are done, the theory of evolution will either become complete, answering those questions which are currently unsolved, or it will be replaced by a new theory that better explains nature’s phenomena.
That is how the scientific process is supposed to work. As new discoveries are made, new theories are created and expounded and existing ones are modified in order to explain that which was previously misunderstood or unexplained. For example, Newtonian physics answered many types of problems — and still does — but it did not explain the many things that were eventually answered by Einstein’s theories of relativity.
And yet, there are many disciples of Darwin who insist that evolution is a fact, sometimes with a closed-mindedness which is not unlike that of which they readily accuse creationists who believe that the Biblical accounting is the absolute truth. To these believers, this talk about critical thinking with regard to the questions still surrounding the theory of evolution is nothing but religiously motivated nonsense. Can you smell the irony?
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I’ve blogged and blogged on this topic and I cannot see one reason why God couldn’t utilize evolution to advance life forms. I see no clash here. God is powerful enough to use evolution as a means to create and refine / redefine life. Where some see two “sides”, I only see one. It’s obvious that evolution exists. People and things are constantly evolving. It is one of God’s laws in much the same sense of gravity – it’s no longer a “theory”, it exists. So since we KNOW evolution exists, those of us who want to believe in God can logically conclude that God invented evolution as a way and means to create the human, animal and plant forms of life we have on Earth now.
That is just MY theory on it.
I’m gonna go with gun toting liberal on this. It is an endless debate…I don’t want to get involved in.
Beware of any group that is so agenda-driven that
it fears having people use critical thinking skills.
I guess for me, the difference between evolution theory and creationism theory is that with one you have tangible evidence that can show the progression of change through species and with the other, you simply have to trust in the omnipotence of a greater being.
While both may have value, one fits the definition of scientific instruction and the other fits the definition of religious instruction.
And while I firmly believe that all people should be exposed to religious instruction (which would explain the differences between religious thought instead of pure dogmatic indoctrination) in the same way that we are taught math or science, the two topics here, (evolution vs. creationism) belong in different curriculum and should not really be comingled.
The problem with so many people in this debate is that they misunderstand the word “theory.”
When used by scientists, theory is not untested and unproved or an opinion.
A scientific theory is a collection of facts that have already been tested and
proved. That’s exactly what the Theory of Evolution is. For example, gravity is
just a “theory.” The concept of flight is a “theory.”
But ideas like creationism and intelligent design don’t even rise to the level of
“theory.” Because there are no scientific facts in those collections.
cube wrote: “Beware of any group that is so agenda-driven that
it fears having people use critical thinking skills.”
To which group are you referring? Because it seems to me that there are some evolutionists out there who are just as closed-minded as young Earth creationists who want nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Darwin.
I’m with Gun-Toting Liberal on this one. Why does it have to be “evolution versus intelligent design” when the idea behind teaching the controversy isn’t really an either/or proposition? It isn’t that Mr. Darwin got it wrong, just that he didn’t get it all (which is why belief in the theory of evolution requires a few leaps of scientific faith).
Sure Mr. Darwin made evolution and it is the most widely accepted scientific theory about the origin of life on Earth, but the question of who or what made Mr. Darwin (and the rest of us) remains.
Shouldn’t Einstein’s Theory of Relativity include the same sticker being that the science of Quantum Physics somewhat refutes Einstein’s theory? There’s a difference in the term “theory” in our world as compared to the sceintific world. In science the term theory bears much more weight as compared to the literal interpretation.
Denny and Scott have both hit the nail on the head in that the problem is with the definition of “theory”.
The phrasing of the sticker implies that theory is the opposite of fact, thereby the reader infers that
evolutionist theory is just a whacko idea that someone came up with. Most in the scientific community practically
look at scientific theory nearly on the same level as scientific law. They’re not saying it can not be updated
or that more can’t be learned, but that there is so much repeatability and substantiation, one would be absolutely
foolish, yes foolish, to simply throw it all out.
As for GTL’s comment, I applaud you for saying you believe evolution occurs. Those who believe in intelligent
design though tend not to support evolution. That is the whole point of intelligent design. The intricacy, the
whole systems, etc are so complex that they believe it is impossible that evolution could bring about such
detail. It seems mind-boggling, but mathematical statistics and some of the algorithms that have been put forth
to test such concepts have shown it’s so very possible. Anyway, that’s why intelligent design folks don’t
support any aspect of evolution. The other issue is, and always has been, what created god. That question
is inconceivable to theists as it would throw many of their beliefs into question, and that is where faith
kicks in.
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