[Fredslist] [Op Ed] Intelligent Design

[Scott Y. Stuart]

Intelligent Design

 

By Scott Y. Stuart

 

I guess all this started in a Dayton, Tennessee drugstore awhile back.
Tennessee had just enacted an anti-evolution statute.  While the leaders
of Dayton thought little of the issue of Evolution verses Darwinism,
they did care about the publicity a trial on such an issue would bring
their town which had a rapidly declining population.  The Scopes Monkey
Trial that resulted gave Dayton all it wanted and more.  The year was
1925, and by the time the Scopes Monkey Trial started, the faithful and
the fearless had all gathered in Dayton for the showdown of the century
where the opening words at trial included '...if evolution wins,
Christianity goes.'  

 

This week, nearly a century later, the scene is not a drugstore in
Tennessee but a school board meeting in Kansas.  After a series of
hearings are complete at that meeting, devoid of any testimony from the
scientific community, a requirement that Darwin's theory of evolution
must be challenged in the classroom will become part of Kansas' science
curriculum. Sponsored by the 'Intelligent Design Movement', the goal
here is to impart the message in the secular education system, that
life's complexity cannot be explained without a supernatural creator.

 

Frankly, I thought this was all resolved back in 1987 by the United
States Supreme Court when it struck down Louisiana's 'Creationism Act'.
That law forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools unless it
accompanied instruction of 'creation science'.  What the Court found
there, among other things, was this act impermissibly endorsed religion
by advancing a theory that a supernatural being created humankind.
Reasonable as it sounded in 1987 to keep religion out of public school
biology classes, here we sit in 2005, once again watching a board of
education re-define what must be included in a secular curriculum.

 

The Kansas educators must be wise to the thinking of the high Court,
since in this version of their attempt to bring creationism back into
the state's science curriculum, they are not requiring the inclusion of
Biblical teachings per se.  This time, the Board of Education simply
wants to encourage the teachings of 'alternate explanations to the
origins in life'.  Choice as to what to teach or not to teach as the
case may be will be left to local school boards and teachers. Clearly
there is a design here, but it seems anything but intelligent.

 

The battle over biology may not be a new one.  However, in this 21st era
of conservatism, the battle has taken on new life.  Kansas now joins
Ohio, which in 2002 mandated that students be taught there is
controversy over evolution.  Alabama and Georgia have bills pending
which will allow teachers to challenge the theory of evolution and at
least twenty other states have similar local battles brewing.

 

The United States Supreme Court has time and again made it clear that
preachers and teachers (at least secular ones) do not mix.  In 1968, it
struck down Arkansas' attempt to prohibit the teaching of evolution at
all.  In 1982, Arkansas tried it again and this time the Supreme Court
voided Arkansas attempt to create a balanced curriculum between
'creation-science' and 'evolution-science', declaring that creation
science is not in fact science.  While there may be a place for the
teaching of 'Intelligent Design', it is clearly not in an elementary or
secondary school biology class.

 

The  battle here is not how we as humans were created or have evolved,
but the imposition of a highly private and personal point of view, which
even if accepted as valid must remain in the hearts of the believer in
an appropriate house of worship.  To do otherwise would not simply blur
the lines of secular education, but the most basic of constitutional
doctrines which keep our freedoms of religion and separation of church
and state fully in tact and very far apart from each other. We have
succeeded as a nation and a people for 230 years just this way.  The
question is, is there true purpose in radically changing that now?

  

May 10, 2005

 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THAT OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT
REFLECT THE VIEWS OF GOTHAM NETWORKING OR ANY OF ITS INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS.
OPINIONS REGARDING THIS ARTICLE MAY BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE AUTHOR AT
SSTUART at TRUFOODS.COM

 

 

 

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