The View From 1776

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Conservative Pages takes a second look at Darwinian evolution’s claim to explain how species differences occur.

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Intelligent Design or Intelligent Education?
by Antonio Mendez 10/01/2005

It’s official. The debate between Intelligent Design (ID) proponents and those of Evolutionary Biology (EB) is over according to Leonard Rosen who recently posted this article in The Boston Globe. According to The Globe Leonard Rosen teaches at Bentley College. No mention of exactly what Rosen teaches at the university, but my guess is that it’s not science, philosophy, logic or mathematics.

Rosen suggests that it is impossible to have a debate concerning ID and EB because as he argues, ID seeks to answer why a natural phenomenon occurs whereas EB seeks to answer how. Rosen’s argument is logically flawed as it stems from two dependent assumptions. The first assumption is that ID is Creationism in disguise which leads to the second assumption which is that ID theories seek to answer why natural phenomenon exist as we observe them today rather than how they came to be.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Evolutionary biologists are more likely to seek to answer questions such as why does a bengal tiger have stripes? What are their function? Do they help the tiger’s species survive? These are the answers that Darwinian natural selection lays claims to with respect to why one species survived over another through the ages.

Despite the fact that answers of why questions versus how questions are more complexly interrelated when it comes to seeking answers to natural questions than Leonard recognizes, ID does not seek to answer why questions any more than Creationism did. ID just like EB both seek to answer the questions of how we came to be. They study the origins of man and nature and both seek answers the question of how did we arrive where we are today.

Therefore, it is indeed very possible to have a debate about ID and EB and it is happening in our nations courts. What most people like Rosen don’t seem to understand is that ID proponents simply seek to enforce teaching standards that any minimal quality educational institution should employ. Logic dictates that in order to truly understand what something is, you must fully understand what something is not. ID accurately suggests that until now, schools have only been focusing on what is believed to be true about EB without discussing what is not known about it. These shortcomings, or gaps as ID proponents call them, in biological theories are the missing links that would truly end the ID versus EB debate once and for all if they were properly filled in. ID does not pretend to fill in those gaps, it only proposes one possible alternative to many that might exist.

Though Rosen is indeed correct to state that science needs testable hypotheses, he fails to comprehend the notion that in order to discover what we can learn through science, we must first admit and accept what we do not know. Only the acknowledgement of gaps in our current theories can lead toward developing the proper testable hypotheses and experiments that will fill in those gaps. And, if the answers to those gaps cannot be found by any form of a testable hypothesis than EB falls short of its goals in the same fashion as ID opponents claim ID does.

It would benefit EB more if opponents of ID acknowledged the primary strength of the ID debate which is that EB cannot currently answer all of those how questions that Leonard suggests EB seeks to answer. Instead of focusing energy on combating the teaching of those gaps in classrooms in America, scientists should leave the politics of science to the politicians and focus on teaching all aspects of our knowledge of science.

True science is pure discovery that comes as a result of not only reinforcing our theories with which we have the most information about, but also from attempting to answer questions with which we have the least amount of information about. Throughout all of history the most amazing discoveries have come from answering the latter rather than the former. Consequently, we should emphasize what is known as much as what is unknown about any given subject in a classroom. If the students don’t know what is wrong with a theory, or what must be added for it to become a natural law, how are they going to develop that law?

A problem cannot be solved until it is acknowledged. Therefore evolutionary biologists should acknowledge the ID debate on its merits and give the future generation of scientists a head start on discovery. Since ID only seeks to implement a sound method of education that covers all aspects of evolutionary biology rather than the current incomplete model, ID should more appropriately be called Intelligent Education.

I hate to continue with an article that is already complete and finished, however there is one more point about Rosen’s article that is just too ironic not to address. It is evident from the piece that Rosen is in favor of EB. However, in his final paragraphs he stresses and emphasizes a point of conclusion that supports contentions of ID proponents.

Rosen says, “We want … to know that those stripes, and our lives, are not accidents of matter colliding in the void. Until scientists, the masters of how, can give us that, we will ask why.” Evolutionary biology suggests just that our lives are mere accidents of matter colliding in the void, why would they come up with an answer to a question that contradicts the major premise for which their whole science is based upon, thus rendering it faulty?

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