HERE are some hard truths that each of us has to learn and come to accept at some point in our lives. Sooner or later we all discover, much to our chagrin, that Santa Claus is actually Uncle Bob wearing a big red suit. When we flew in a plane for the first time, we realized that there actually aren't any Care Bears frolicking in the clouds. We came to realize that unicorns and dragons would exist only in our imaginations.
Similarly, schoolchildren also come to learn that the world wasn't really created in six days. They learn about a man named Darwin and a process called evolution. It may be difficult for them to understand at first, but they come to accept it as the truth.
Sadly, some people on the religious right have not reached the point that most little children have come to. Even more sadly - and outrageously - they are trying to make it so that children in school today never reach that point either.
Recently, the Kansas Board of Education overturned their August 1999 decision that barred the state's schools from teaching evolution. With the reversal of this decision, it seemed that reason and science had finally won over creationists' crusade to put God into the state's science classrooms.
Creationists believe that the origins of life are more accurately explained through a literal reading of the early chapters of the Bible than through Darwinian biology. Because creationism is religious belief without any kind of empirical evidence and not a proven scientific theory, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach creationism as science in public schools.
Unfortunately, creationists have a hard time accepting the fact that the jig is up.
Having realized that the creationist cause is a failing one, those who want to keep religion in science are uniting under a new banner called "intelligent design theory." Proponents of intelligent design theory, or IDT, grudgingly accept evolution but claim that the "irreducible complexity" of living things can only be explained as the work of an "intelligent designer" ("Assault on Evolution," Salon.com, Feb. 28). In other words, those who believe in IDT think God was responsible for evolution, and they say that their theory should be taught in schools.
Let's leave aside a lot of things. Let's not worry about the way IDT proponents only argue against Darwinism without being able to give any empirical facts in support of their own theory. Let's put aside the separation of church and state, indisputably one of the founding principles of this country.
Leaving aside all that, the creationists' and IDT believers' desperate and frankly pathetic attempts to meld religion and science together is ridiculous because it is so unnecessary.
Some creationists seem to think that acknowledging the creation story as a fictional story - as many other stories in the Bible unquestionably are - and not meant to be taken literally would somehow be the death knell for religious faith. They seem to think the acknowledgement of science's truths means people can't keep their faith in God or continue believing in other aspects of their religions. This worry is unwarranted, as science and religion have coexisted for hundreds of years without either being extinguished.
Other IDT believers think modern science has degenerated into a kind of "immoral materialism," and IDT is a way to defeat that lack of morality. There is a reason, however, that morality does not play a large role in science. Science is objective by necessity. Scientists cannot allow their personal beliefs and morals to color their observations. They have to remain impartial and simply record what they see, noting cause and effect without making wild and unsupportable inferences. If they did not remain objective, the events that actually occurred in experiments would be lost in the maze of conflicting ideologies and no further scientific advancements would ever be made.
Going beyond the absurdity of the creationist/IDT cause and thinking about what the world would be like if their ideas were actually implemented can be a bit disturbing. If creationists had their way, scientific discovery truly would come to a standstill. Replacing science with theology would be teaching religious myth as fact. It would be like teaching kids that magic beans really do exist and, if you plant them, you can grow a giant beanstalk just like Jack. Undoubtedly this would lead to a generation of kids with really distorted ideas of biology, not to mention a poor grasp of reality.
Proponents of IDT can present their theory in philosophy classes if they want to. They can teach it in a theology class or in the religious studies department of the University if they so choose. But they have to keep it out of the science classrooms because there simply is no place for it there.
(Laura Sahramaa is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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