August 11, 2005

Joining the Debate

For those of you who may be wondering, I’ve been pointedly ignoring the comments that Bush made the other day about intelligent design and evolution. However, over the past few days, I’ve seen a LOT of conservatives writing about it. I’m sure there are a lot of liberals writing about it as well, but I don’t read them.

It seems that nearly everyone who is talking about this issue falls into one of two camps. There is a group that thinks that there is a conflict between intelligent design and evolution and another group who thinks that they could co-exist and be taught side-by-side. However, I propose with this post to start a third group. As far as I know, this group consists solely of me, so I’m probably so far off base with this that it’s not even funny. However, this is my proposal.

Neither.

That’s right. Neither of these two methods should be taught as fact in any school system. Here’s why:

No matter how you slice it, the theory of intelligent design, at its core, is based on God as the creator of the universe. Granted, some ID’ers may not call Him the God of Christian and Jewish faith, but God, in whatever guise you wish to place him HAS to be at the core of any ID argument. That’s kind of the whole point of ID. And with that in mind, it has no place in our school system. I am NOT a separationist. I do not believe that the Constitution has any phrase or clause that requires the “separation of church and state.� I believe that that is a completely misrepresented and misused statement from a private letter that has been twisted out of all proportion. However, separation notwithstanding, religion is a big deal to me, and as such, I am VERY particular with whom I place my children’s teaching. Just as you wouldn’t want a home economics teacher teaching your son’s Calculus class, I don’t want a biology teacher (and possible Hindu, Muslim, insert-the-name-of-your-alternate-faith-here) teaching my child about religion. And if they were teaching ID, then that is exactly what they would be teaching.

However, evolution being taught as fact within the school system is a complete and total farce. Before all the scientists out there have an apoplexy, let me explain.

The theory of micro-evolution describes minor changes that can happen to a species in order for it to adapt to survive within a current climate. This includes body hair getting thicker and males of the species getting stronger so they can protect their families. Yes, this happens. We see it in different breeds of dogs and cats. We see it in various changes in humans and other species.

What we do not see are these amazing “leaps� of evolution. Or at least any evidence of them. There are large gaps between similar species, but no indication that there was ever anything alive to fill in those gaps. What’s more is that the theory of evolution itself, when applied over too broad an area simply falls apart. After all, according to this theory, the complex machine that is a human being (or an ape, or a dog, or cat, etc) developed in full, by complete random chance from a single celled organism. Now, if nothing else about this theory presents any problems for you, consider the fact of sexual reproduction. Single celled organisms reproduce asexually by splitting. Even if you accept the fact that a large number of these asexually reproducing cells could randomly cluster together and produce some sort of higher life form, you would have to accept the fact that two different clusters of cells did this at the exact same time and one of them produced male organs and one produced female organs. If they didn’t happen at the exact same time, and produce two perfectly working sets of reproductive organs, which they would instinctively know how to use, then that new species would immediately die out. How is this possibly any less of a leap of faith than asking you to believe in God?

Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular question “If man descended from apes, why are there still apes?� Evolution still just has too many unanswered questions to be taken as hard scientific fact and taught to our children as the definitive way that the world was created.

So what should they be taught? They should be taught that we don’t know. They should be taught that there are two schools of thought, but we, as humans do not currently possess the capability to know exactly what happened at the beginning of the world. We can make intelligent guesses, but they should be labeled as such. But as long as lies are taught as scientific fact, I feel that we are doing a grave disservice to our children.