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Sept. 28, 2005
To Debate or Not to Debate Intelligent Design?
When I heard that advocates of “Intelligent Design” were urging schools to “teach the controversy” between their view and Darwinian evolution, I was dismayed.
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- N.Y. Court Backs College in Expulsion, Oct. 4, 2005
- Berkeley Reverses Tenure Denial, May 23, 2005
About 20 years ago, I coined the phrase “teach the controversy” when I argued that schools and colleges should respond to the then-emerging culture wars over education by bringing their disputes into academic courses themselves. Instead of assuming that we have to resolve debates over, say, whether Huckleberry Finn is a racist text or a stirring critique of racism, teachers should present students with the conflicting arguments and use the debate itself to arouse their interest in the life of the mind. I elaborated the argument in numerous essays and in a 1992 book, Beyond the Culture Wars, which is subtitled, How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education.
So I felt as if my pocket had been picked when the Intelligent Design crowd appropriated my slogan, and even moreso when President Bush endorsed its proposal, saying that “both sides ought to be properly taught” so “people can understand what the debate is about.” As a secular left-liberal, I felt that my ideas were being hijacked by the Christian Right as a thinly-veiled pretext for imposing their religious dogma on the schools.
And yet, setting intellectual property questions aside, the more I ponder the matter and read the commentators on both sides, the more I tend to think that a case can be made for teaching the controversy between ID and Darwin.
Not that the sides in this debate are equal, as Bush’s comment suggests. If we judge the issues strictly on their scientific merits, the Intelligent Designers don’t seem to have much of a case. In a lengthy and detailed article in The New Republic (August 22 & 29), the evolutionary scientist Jerry Coyne persuasively shows that the supposed “flaws” in the theory of natural selection that IDers claim to point out simply don’t exist. H. Allen Orr had made a similarly persuasive refutation of ID in The New Yorker (May 30), and these arguments have been further reinforced in articles by Daniel C. Dennett in The New York Times (August 28) and by Coyne again and Richard Dawkins in The Guardian (September 1).
Taken together, these writers make an overwhelming case that Darwinian evolution, if not a total certainty, is as certain as any scientific hypothesis can be. As Coyne puts it, “it makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity.” From a strictly scientific standpoint, there seems to be no real “controversy” here that’s worth teaching, just a bogus one that the IDers have fabricated to paper over the absence of evidence in their critique of evolutionary science.
And this would indeed be the end of the story if the truth or validity of an idea were the sole thing to consider in deciding whether it is worth presenting to students. But when we measure the pedagogical merits of an idea, its usefulness in clarifying an issue or provoking students — and teachers — to think can be as important as its truth or validity. In some cases even false or dubious notions can have heuristic value.
This point has been grasped by several commentators unconnected with the Christian Right who defend the teaching of the controversy. In a column of June 2000, before ID had become prominent in the news, Richard Rothstein, then The New York Times education columnist, proposed that students be exposed to the debate between creationism and evolution. And in a piece on the controversy earlier this year in Slate, Christopher Hitchens, asks, “Why not make schoolchildren study the history of the argument? It would show them how to weigh and balance evidence, and it would remind them of the scarcely believable idiocy of the ancestors of ‘intelligent design.’”
Hitchens’ argument has been challenged by the editors of The New Republic, who caustically retort that getting kids to weigh and balance evidence is not exactly “what Bush — or IDers — want at all.” What they want “instead is to teach ID as a substantive scientific argument. If anything, what Bush is calling for is anti-historical, the exact opposite of what Hitchens praises.” This is true, but so what? Hitchens doesn’t claim that his argument is one the IDers themselves would make, but only that students would learn something important about how to think from the kind of debate the IDers propose.
Secular liberals will object that Hitchens is overly confident that the good guys would win if the debate were aired in schools. In his scenario, the students would see the “idiocy” of ID’s ancestors and also presumably of its current advocates. What secular liberals fear, however, is that in many classrooms the scientific truth would be overwhelmed by dogma and prejudice.
Behind such fear — and behind the liberal secularist objections to teaching the debate — one senses the shellshock and impotence of the Blue-state Left in the wake of the 2004 election, and the worry that the Left will only lose again if it allows itself to be suckered into debating “values” with the religious Right on its own terms. This worry is deepened by the feeling that American public debate is not a level playing field, but an arena in which conservative money and Fox News control the agenda.
Though I share these fears, there seems to me a certain failure of nerve here on the part of the Left. After all, if evolution and intelligent design were debated in academic courses, the religious Right would have the same risk of losing as the liberal secularists — maybe greater risk, if Hitchens is correct. In any case, it’s not clear that one wins a battle of beliefs by hunkering down, circling the wagons, and refusing to engage the other side. And if the Right has more money and media clout with which to shape such a debate, that may be all the more reason to enter the debate: if you don’t have money and media clout, arguments are your best bet.
Seen this way, the anti-evolution assaults of the Intelligent Designers and the creationist Right could be viewed less as a threat than an opportunity. This moral is suggested by a recent news story in The New York Times that reports that museum staffs that are being challenged by religious patrons to explain why they should believe in evolution “are brushing up on their Darwin and thinking on their feet” (September 20, 2005). One museum has developed training sessions for staff members “on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.”
What is most interesting in the article, and most germane to the recent debate, is the suggestion, reflected in quoted statements by museum people, that though this religious rejection of science may be misguided, it needs to be listened to and answered rather than ignored or dismissed, and that being forced to defend evolution can actually be a good thing. The implication is that it’s not unreasonable for patrons to press museum people to explain the grounds on which evolutionary science is more credible than ID or creationism. As one director of a paleontological research institution puts it, “Just telling” such patrons “they are wrong is not going to be effective.” As another museum staffer advises docents, “it’s your job not to slam the door in the face of a believer,” and another says, “your job is ... to explain your point of view, but respect theirs.”
Arguably, this is precisely the job of teachers as well, though admittedly museums serve different functions than educational institutions. If the goal of education is to get students to think, then just telling students their doubts about Darwin are wrong is not going to be effective. And teachers being forced to engage their religious critics and explain why they believe in evolution might be a healthy thing for those teachers just as it seems to be for museum workers. In fact, I would like to ask Coyne, Dennett, Orr, and others who have written so cogently in defense of evolution if they don’t feel just a tiny bit grateful to the IDers for pushing them to think harder about — and explain to a wider audience — how they know what they know about evolution.
Scientists like Coyne and Dawkins concede that debate should indeed be central to science instruction, but they hold that such debate should be between accredited hypotheses within science, not between scientists and creationist poseurs. That’s hard to dispute, but, like Rothstein and Hitchens, I can at least imagine a classroom debate between creationism and evolution that might be just the thing to wake up the many students who now snooze through science courses. Such students might come away from such a debate with a sharper understanding of the grounds on which established science rests, something that even science majors and advanced graduate students now don’t often get from conventional science instruction.
How might such a debate be taught? Ideally in a way that would not become fixated on the clash of faith and science, which might quickly produce an unedifying stalemate, but would open out into broader matters such as the history of conflicts between science and religion and the question of how we determine when something qualifies as “science.” At the broadest level, the discussion could address whether the ID-evolution debate is a smoke screen for the larger political and cultural conflict between Red and Blue states. Representing such a many-sided debate would demand the collaboration of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, a collaboration that could make a now disconnected curriculum more coherent. Such a collaboration would also answer the scientists’ objection that there just isn’t time to debate these issues, given everything else they have to cover. Then, too, explaining how we know what we know against skeptical questioning is not an add-on, but an intrinsic part of teaching any subject.
In any case, science instructors may soon have no choice but to address the controversy posed by ID and creationism. If many American students now bring faith-based skepticism about evolution with them into classrooms, as it seems they do, then there’s a sense in which the controversy has already penetrated the classroom, just as it has penetrated museums, whether ID or creationism is formally represented in the syllabus or not. Schools and colleges may not be teaching the controversy between faith and science, but it’s there in the classroom anyway insofar as it’s on some students’ minds. Teachers can act as if their students’ doubts about evolution don’t exist, but pretending that your students share your beliefs when you know they don’t is a notorious prescription for bad teaching.
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Comments
IMHO the controversy should be aired in appropriate courses, though I don’t know which ones they would be. That would be up to faculties.
One can be facile and say the argument is over intelligent design versus dumb luck. But I have two nagging questions: 1) Where did the matter/energy that produced the “big bang” come from? 2)What lab has produced a living organism from inert material?
Hans Gesund, at 7:42 am EDT on September 28, 2005
March on Main Street
Come on out and debate. The tension in class, mild, helps sink your teaching in the minds of students, as they toss the ideas around. Controversy good. Censorship bad. The emperor should not hide his new clothes,but parade them proudly down Main Steet for all to see. So what if they begin to laugh? He’s so well dressed. Only the stupid people can’t see it.Come on, debate in public. What have you got to lose?
Quentin L. F. Patch, at 7:42 am EDT on September 28, 2005
An essay I wrote on ID in schools:
Using ID Judo Although this will shock many who know me, I’ve decided that the “Intelligent Design,” or ID, crowd is absolutely right: We should teach ID in schools — and in science class no less.
That’s because there is simply no better subject for teaching the difference between science — figuring out the laws that determine how nature really works — and non-science, using supernatural forces to describe how nature appears to work. And this “debate” is long overdue, because many, many Americans are have no firm grasp of the difference, mainly because of the horrible way science is “taught” in this country.
Below the college level, most “science” classes are anything but. Instead, most schools force teachers to use the “Big Wad O’ Facts” science-teaching method, or BWOF for short. Here’s how BWOF works.
Find some teachers. Hire science majors if you can, but no worries if you can’t. (If anything, science majors make life harder. They often fail to focus on the Most Important Thing, standardized test scores.) Generally, anyone who can get teaching credentials will do.
Except in the rarest of schools, nearly all the “science teachers” have never once done any science outside of a graded school assignment. That is, unless cornered and made to use “science” and given a gold star for a neatly typed report, they don’t practice it. It’s like hiring vegetarians to teach kids how to barbeque spareribs.
Next, insist on using textbooks. Textbooks provide the main BWOF ingredient: a cornucopia of desiccated “facts,” neatly arranged in discrete chapters to tell students “physics,” “chemistry,” “biology,” and “geology” (excuse me, I mean “earth science") and “astronomy” are all completely different, unconnected subjects. Textbooks are great for turning relentlessly questioning five-year olds, filled with wonder and curiosity, into slack-jawed, glassy-eyed teens filled with a burning desire to know: “Is this going to be on the test?”
The final ingredient: endlessly demand “high standards,” political doublespeak for “high standardized test scores.” Mix well and ignore, in between panicked bouts of furious stirring when the pundits — non-scientists all — gas on about the need for yet “higher standards” because “The Russians are Coming! No, wait! It’s the Japanese! No, it’s the Finns! No, the Chinese!” and presto! The BWOF soufflé — a nation of believers in astrology, alien visits, homeopathy, the theories of Depok Chopra, the Laffer Curve, and — by a solid majority — creationism.
In a nutshell, we suck at teaching science. Contrary to what profit-seeking text and test publishers say, science is not about facts at all. BWOF and standardized tests turn an endlessly fascinating subject into years of pointless regurgitation that instills only apathy. Thus, we churn out well-tested scientific ignoramuses who can fill in the bubbles on multiple-guess tests without knowing the first thing about framing a usable hypothesis (one that is falsifiable), observer bias, scientific ethics, or anything else about real science.
That’s why we need ID: to introduce doubt into science classes, thus showing how science is not about the right answer but, rather, about finding reliable methods that yield the best answer so far.
So, not only should we teach ID, we should do so every year, in every science class. Besides, it takes just two sentences to teach both the entire theory of ID and present its entire body of evidence. Ready? One: we live in a world filled with wondrously complicated beings. Two: It’s possible that an intelligent designer put it all here; at least, science can’t rule it out.
That done, we can spend the rest of the year experimenting and, in the course of it, talking about WHY science can’t rule ID out, what science actually is, and how it works, how it goes astray, and how it finds its way back. Naturally, we will have to consider the “alternative” to ID every year too: evolution by natural selection, one of the three or four most profound, powerful, and fruitful scientific ideas ever developed.
Even better, science teachers would have to review all this annually, helping them remember the difference between untestable guesses and science, which is, as Nobel prizewinner Richard Feynmann famously put it, just “learning how not to fool ourselves.”
Naturally, ID backers will object — as many already do — that we make a “religion” of science by insisting on its fundamental premise: that there are no supernatural causes in science (no intelligent designers, in other words). But this is nonsense, like saying that football is a religion because it makes players follow its rules rather than those of hockey.
In the end, real science loses nothing standing next to ID. And, although they don’t realize it, ID boosters can only lose by forcing their pet non-theory into science classes. When they can’t complain about close-minded scientists refusing to teach ID, they lose the only thing that makes them interesting or sympathetic. Meanwhile, they will also start losing all those kids who can’t tell ID apart from science because they’ve only had BWOF science classes. Put ID into schools and you end up with kids getting some real science too, with ID being the perfect foil for helping teachers show the difference between science and non-science.
Thus, it’s time to embrace ID. It’s probably our best chance — a kind of intellectual judo — for replacing the thin gruel of BWOF and standardized tests with something all too often absent from schools: science.
John Gear 2005
jmg, ID Judo, at 8:43 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Amen! to John Gear
The ID/evolution “debate” forced me to take a look at what I actually know about science ... and he’s right, it’s nothing. And I have an MA(humanities). I learned about “null hypothesis” is social science classes. But when it comes to scientific explanations of how the world works, there’s no discernible difference between my understanding of electricity and the Trinity...that is, I take them both on faith. Science to me is a BWOF, far less a coherent system than the mainstream christianity (MC)I adhere to. Incidentally, it might behoove atheist science teachers to note that, since that embarrassing thing with Galileo, MCs have drawn a line between what belongs to science and to faith.
Mary, public 4-yr college, at 9:50 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Science
Intelligent design is a philosophy, not a science — it doesn’t really even appeal to the scientific method, but rather to statements that sound like they make sense. I don’t think we can discuss its scientific merit seriously.
As to the scientific reasoning arguement, hard-right Christians will say you are supressing their religion by publically mocking it in schools; some secularists and members of other religions will likely accuse you of bringing Christian perspectives into the classroom and failing to do likewise with their’s. We may end up teaching Indian, African and biblical creation stories alongside ID and evolution. If so, we basically have made empirical data (evolution) the equal of philosophy (ID) and blind faith (creationism). I’m not sure how we can let in ID and be able to keep creationism out.
Finding “gaps” in science doesn’t really give carte blanche to fill them in with whatever you feel like. There are things we cannot yet fully explain — that doesn’t mean we should rush to find a way to explain it immediately, using God, supernatural forces, or other such intellectual crutches.
The theory of evolution really has no contraversy in the actual scienfic community; the doctrine is established.
Incidentally, if you have empirical proof of supernatural forces, I’m sure scientists will be willing to examine it. Since ID advocates haven’t produced any, I don’t see how their claim can even be evaluated. It seems like a case of untestable hypothesis, except that we already have the answer from elsewhere (evolution).
Kevin, Undergraduate, at 10:09 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Teaching ID is a matter of proportionality. Despite jmg’s rant against the lack of training of most science teachers, the world today is swamped with science information. My sons’ high school bio textbook looked as big as second base. The class struggled to get through it all. As for college, try second AND third base because most science texts are now broken down into two parts, or more. Now, given this load of ever expanding info, where is ID supposed to have time to fit, and for how long? Just because it is reasonable that teaching it provides a kind of context for true, research based science, doesn’t mean that it should take valuable time away from the thousand mini-subjects that need to be taught. I suppose that if it’s a sentence or two, there’s no harm, but I don’t believe that IDers want that. Indeed, they want to WASTE huge gobs of valuable education time. Given where our students are, and where our nation needs to be, like so many things in our life that we might want to do, I don’t believe that we have the time for ID—at least not in science class. Like anything, the proportionality is critical, and I don’t believe that it is the goal of IDers to accept the proportionality of a sentence or two. This is the real danger of musings, by Mr. Hitchens or others, that it might be interesting to teach ID, because it is not an easy thing to find available time in science classes.
Parent of Scientist, Time is Valuable, at 10:21 am EDT on September 28, 2005
I could not agree more with parent of scientist’s comment: “Despite jmg’s rant against the lack of training of most science teachers, the world today is swamped with science information. My sons’ high school bio textbook looked as big as second base. The class struggled to get through it all. As for college, try second AND third base because most science texts are now broken down into two parts, or more.”
I agree that the world IS swamped with science facts — rather than informed by them — in great part because rather than teaching science, we “struggle to get through” huge doorstop compendia textbooks that think that being comprehensive (enough to appeal to buying committees) is the only thing that matters.
I hope that if nothing else emerges from the ID “controversy” — which is, as several have noted, not a scientific one — we do take from it the understanding that as a nation we need throw off the tyranny of the BWOF and focus instead on making sure that kids actually DO science starting in the very earliest grades and progressing through high school. There is far more learning in a single, well-guided experiment — even one that produces a null result — than there is in a textbook the size of first base.
jmg, at 10:50 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Teaching Controversy as Science
I’m for Gerald Graff when it comes to the importance of teaching controversy. But as a responsible academic I would assert that it should be taught where appropriate in the curriculum. Creationism/intelligent design has nothing to do with science, and is thus NOT appropriate in a science class. It belongs in religion, political science, or history, perhaps, but not in science. It might be taught alongside other historical controversies like the long battle between The Church and Galileo over whether or not the Sun and the stars revolve around the Earth. It might be taught along with a balanced selection of alternative creation myths. (I’m told that the Buddhist version is much richer and more interesting than the Christian version. Or, there is the very appealing recently developed expansion and extension of the intelligent design idea known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.) If you believe there is pedagogical value in teaching controversy in science, there are plenty of genuine and important scientific controversies one might use as vehicles. For example, there’s the current debate about the growing array of physical observations of the Earth and what they imply for global climate change.
Don Langenberg, Professor of Physics at University of Maryland, at 10:57 am EDT on September 28, 2005
“teaching the controversy”
Doesn’t anybody see that “teaching the controvery” will open up a real big, smelly can o” worms? Putting students’ (and/or their parents’) religious beliefs up for argument will—the law of unintended consequences, you know—create a very bad scene. Pointing out, in a classroom, gaps and alleged flaws, in evolutionary theory is one thing (scientists are used to having their beliefs vigorously challenged), but point out evidentiary holes in a student’s religous beliefs are quite another. Imagine what will happen when the teacher or a student says to another student, “Well, there’s absolutely no scientific evidence that 2000 years ago, a Middle Eastern carpenter, rose from his tomb and ascended into heaven"? A brouhaha about anti-religious bigotry, that’s what will happen. Or do proponents of “teaching the controversy” think that only the core beliefs of the evolutionists will be assailed in the classroom discussions?
Peter Plagens, Mellon Distinguished Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, at 11:28 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Dirt Under the Rug
I agree with Gerald Graff that merely pushing conflicts about origins under the rug isn’t healthy. However, given many of the partisans’ extremely poor understanding of the cultural and historical issues involved in the current controversy—and the extreme dogmatism they so easily embrace—it may be the easier option.
As an example, consider Christopher Hitchens’ short essay “Equal Time” that appeared in Slate magazine a few weeks ago (URL http://slate.msn.com/id/2124952/?nav=navoa). In that essay, Hitchens asks himself “How do I know about Darwin to begin with?” and argues that the best way to get at this controversy is by teaching it from a historical perspective. He proceeeds to share what he learned in school about Darwin the naturalist, the voyage of the Beagle, the Huxley/Wilberforce debate, and the Scopes Trial. Hitchens proceeds to attibute to Bryan views that Bryan did not hold and which he specifically rejected at the trial. As historical authorities, Hitchens offers the accounts written by H.L. Mencken and two movie versions of the play _Inherit the Wind_.
Now, as an historian I am not at all averse to using Mencken’s writings as primary source material and _Inherit the Wind_ as a significant cultural artifact. As polemical devices they succeeded well and are therefore very worthwhile to know about. But they are not objective history. The gulf between _Inherit the Wind_ and the historical reality of the Scopes trial is as great as the gulf between early 19th century creationism and contemporary biology. For Hitchens to write that his knowledge of evolution comes from such polemical sources—and to imply that they are the sources from which the next generation’s historical understanding should come from—should be profoundly unsettling for anyone who cares about the integrity of history teaching.
If anti-antivolutionists are to have integrity, they should place scholarly accuracy over the imperative of defeating the allegedly toxic ideology of red-state Americans. This means that they are going to have to toss a lot of historiographical baggage. Or to use another metaphor, they are going to have to lift the rug and sweep away a good bit of filth they have allowed to accumulate in their own corner.
By the way, I like Mr. Hitchens and I was graceful enough to mail him my personal VHS copy of the PBS documentary _Monkey Trial_ in hopes of remedying some of his all too widely shared ignorance about the Scopes Trial. I hope he watched it, though I am not holding my breath in anticipation of a response from him.
Best,
ClioSmith, Associate Professor at Trinity Bible College, at 11:44 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Teach controversy on Comedy Central
About not enough time to cover every friggin’ theory —
Consider the speakers on recent Comedy Central panel on ID .. leaders from Darwin & ID camps — and someone from the “natural energy” camp ..
http://www.comedycentral.com/show...eos/most_recent/index.jhtml?start=17
Surreal? Of course. Waste of time? Of course — Chindia is laughing at USA, that USA could waste time on such inane, pointless discussions.
B.J.S., at 11:45 am EDT on September 28, 2005
Hear, Hear
To second what a lot of folks here have said, teaching the controversy is a great opportunity for teachers of science to illustrate that science does not rest on dogma. Don’t just tell them “evolution is true and if you don’t believe it you are an idiot.” That’s just as anti-intellectual as telling them “creationism is true and if you don’t believe it you’re going to hell.” Rather, show them WHY they should believe it. Don’t insist but rather illustrate. Why should scientist be afraid to do in the class room the very thing that defines the profession?
Cicero, at 12:04 pm EDT on September 28, 2005
Time out
As one who taught elective Shakespeare courses for many years, I “taught the controversy” over the authorship of Shakespeare’s work with a few words of deserved dismissal for the 19th–Century-manufactured mysticism-cum-numerology “theories” (no empirical evidence there!) that some long-dead person or hydra-headed committee produced the works. If an Oxfordian or a Baconian (there were none) had pressed the issue, we would have dealt with it, taking valuable time away from enjoying the plays themselves. But I wonder how much teaching of the (manufactured) controversy would satisfy the ID fanatics. Can’t one see the next cry being “Equal Time”—after the teacher has spent some class hours on the “controversy” and then moved on to the actual business of the science class, i.e., science?
normalvision, Prof. of English (ret.), at 12:47 pm EDT on September 28, 2005
To include ID, the CODECES must be included as well.
I doubt the pending court case would worry so many if modern “intelligent design” didn’t originate from a political think tank that chooses to manipulate the populace via their preachers. Traditional Native Americans believe in the creator...evolution from a monkey or an African is baloney, according to their oral history. But Ahhh...there’s the crux of the problem! Even modern academics, eager to recruit new masters students to reinforce their published theories, choose to repeatedly undermine the tradition of oral history in indigenous peoples. That bias has in large part led us to this dilemma. Anthropologists and archaeologists regularly tell tribal people that “they, the academic” know more about their history and culture than the people themselves. Physicists and astronomers ignore the information tribal people relate about the data recorded on petroglyphs and pictographs throughout the world. This mindset ignores the amazing breakthroughs experienced by religious science academics (notably Galileo) who had access to the Codeces returned to Europe from the New World. It ignores the vast contributions to European biology...food plants, medicinal plants and surgical procedures that resulted after the Codeces were sequestered by Pope Gregory for several hundred years. And to this day, DNA threads pointing to the prehistory of Native American origins are buried, because of fear that the theory of African origin of the species might be challenged. The long held biases of the US scientific community have created the opening for this administration to completely undermine scientific education as we know it. Research and discussion on climate change are regularly controlled in favor of oil and insurance company profits. It is all a cycle that comes around to the academic community first and foremost and is a dilemma that has been brewing in this country, in earnest, since the Smithsonian published it’s first ethnology report for Congress in 1901. Now, with over 100 years of science “massaged” by politics, the US scientific community is shocked that anyone will challenge “natural selection.” A scientist could go way out on a limb in the “intelligent design” debate and declare that the Bible is essentially printed oral history from our indigenous ancestors. He or she could parallel the common themes of creation, flood and apocalypse found in indigenous stories and relate how they foretell the climate change we are experiencing daily. But of course we can’t support the concept of “Bible as oral history” because indigenous oral history is something attributed to people that developed countries like to “declare ignorant” so millions can be subjected to the manifest destiny colonial practices we call politics. The masses are hindered from understanding the “reality” of the Creator and understanding the vast science of this solar system because academics will not change their mindset. This bias, combined with a reduced access to higher education, creates an opportunity for politicians to exploit; the masses have to believe what their preacher or teacher defines, rather than use the inquisitive mindthe Creator gave us. We all lose because of this and are less peaceful.
moxie, at 5:38 pm EDT on September 28, 2005
The problem with addressing the creationists is that it gives them validity. This has been seen time and time again when a real scientists engages in debate. The creationists spin it as evidence of their own legitimacy. They then return to their own claiming victory. It’s a waste of time. Teaching creationism isn’t appropriate for science class. There is no conflict within science so take it somewhere else. Social studies, psychology or sociology for example.
Gideon S, at 6:04 pm EDT on September 28, 2005
teaching the “controversy”
As to the merits of “teaching the controversy,” I can’t helpasking what would happen if some flat-earthers, after pushing their viewpoint, eventually elicit a response from geographers, astronomers, airline pilots, whatever. Could they then proceed to insist that there is a genuine controversy and accordingly, that “both sides” must be taught? In short, just because know-nothings insist there is a controversy and legitimate experts eventually point out how wrong they are, does this mean that there really is a genuine dispute that warrants pedagogical attention?
David P. Barash, professor of psychology at university of washington, at 9:40 pm EDT on September 28, 2005
When I read this, my first thought was of all the problems with teaching the controversy. Setting up a debate format would virtually necessitate an artificially level playing field, wouldn’t it? I spend some time at Answers In Genesis and it occurs to me that there would be a fight over defining the “other side.” Present kids with the viewpoint that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time with even a half-decent rebutal, and most of them will fall off their chairs laughing while old-earth creationsists complain of straw men. But fail to do that, and literalists will claim proof that secularists must really hate God’s Word if they’re willing to entertain criticisms but not Bible-based ones.
Then I got an idea: Evolution lesson plan, specifically on whether humans evolved from apes. Have the teacher give a one minute explaination of a certain photograph. Then give a creationist guest speaker the remaining 49 minutes to argue that humans were specially created, on the condition that the photo is used as back drop. What photo? This one.
Of course, that would never happen. Creationists would complain they deserve a level playing field, which would really mean excluding lots of important evidence.
But you know what? Screw them. Push through an honest look at the debate in spite of it. Let creationists talk all they want about, say, gaps in the fossil record, so long as the evolution side gets to not merely rebut those claims but present all the positive fossil evidence for common descent, along with a strong overview of the other evidence out there. Let them babble about kinds, so long as there’s a discussion of how real scientists view species and evidence for how speciation occurs. For good measure, maybe throw in lesson on the really indefensible arguments like the thermodynamics one.
The back drop idea would probably have to be left out, but make sure the end result is something creationists will hate, at least when they get too good a look. When they oppose it, just throw their own words back at them, “don’t you want to teach both sides?” They’ll have little logical reason to reject the plan. Implementation could be a little tough; it would require persuading a high-placed state official to carefully design and push a proposal. At the least, it could be a good rhetorical device for writers of Op-Eds and letters to the editor: “Yes, teach the controversy, and expose kids to [insert major piece of evidence]” At best, it could result in a program to improve biology teaching, help kids understand what good science looks like, and discredit creationism forever.
Chris Hallquist, at 4:58 am EDT on September 29, 2005
The problem with teaching the controversy boils down to that of equality. All science classes start with the presentation of the entirety of the evidence for ID. This is repeated many times during the lesson. The evidence for evolution, however, is only partly presented, and an extremely small part at that. Surely equality would require that the full facts for evolution be taught before the so called controversy can be discussed.It seems manifestly unfair that one side of the deabte should be allowed to ahve all of the evidence to support it’s case available whilst the other side is denied access to almost all of the evidence to support their view.
G Lyn, at 6:09 am EDT on September 29, 2005
Prof. Graff may have started a marvelous new trend!
Coming next week: a biology professor pontificates about what should be taught in English classes.
Steve LaBonne, at 1:38 pm EDT on September 29, 2005
>1) Where did the matter/energy that produced the “big bang” come from?>
Nothing to do with Evolution. The aswer is, we don’t currently know, but some of us get a good laugh at how inserting God at this point doesn’t nothing but leave the universe as a complex clockwork, with no evidence that anyone did jack to adjust it since.
>2)What lab has produced a living organism from inert material?
So? If anyone does it will be a) pure luck or b) a computer simulation. Why? Because dumping some dirt in a box and watching it for three days, during which maybe 10 million chemical reactions a day takes place is ‘nothing’ compared to leaving box the size of a planet for even 10 billion years (3,650 billion days), in which 10 trillion chemical reactions happen. Those BTW are ‘way off’, but just for the sake of arguement, if we assume they are right, then we are looking at:
Number of attempts ‘in’ a lab: 30,000,000Number of attempts ‘on’ the planet: 36,500,000,000,000,000,000
Lets say the odds of it happening are 1 in 100,000,000,000.. Then it ‘could’ have happened 36,500,000 times in the entire period during which life arose. The numbers of how many years it took could be 10, 100, 1000 times greater or more. Please explain how, short of accelerating time, it would even be possible to do such an experiment, short of pure luck, in a laboratory...
All of which is irrelevant, because abiogenesis (i.e. life from mere chemicals), was **never** part of evolution for 99% of the theories existance and is ‘only’ considered a ‘likely’ part of it now, because it provides a possible non-supernatural explaination. **However**, Evolution itself is *not* about how chemicals get together to produce life, it is by its very definition, “How life changed over times *after* you already have life.” I am getting quite tired of people bringing up abiogenesis as a complaint against a theory which doesn’t not involve itself with the ‘formation’ of life, but only how it changes ‘after’ is already exists. But then this is part of their tactic. To bring up irrelevant bullshit, then claim Evolution can’t be true, because you can’t prove something it isn’t even involved with describing.
As for the original clown that posted the article, PZ has something to say about how ‘you’ get the whole debate wrong:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblo...s_you_know_what_youre_talking_about/
Kagehi, at 4:00 pm EDT on September 29, 2005
Educational researchers have come to understand that educating students in science isn’t so much about providing content as it is about confronting students’ preconceived paradigms in a way that produces enough conflict so they are forced to revised their thinking about how the world works as we know it scientifically. In other words, we know that students will stick to their ideas about natural laws, such as momentum or the electrical conduction, until they are presented enough evidence to contradict their beliefs so that they have to modify them.
This creates an uphill battle for science teachers that must be addressed creatively and concretely. An abstract discussion with students about ID versus evolution would be difficult indeed to orchestrate successfully in a classroom where a large number of students hold deeply embedded fundamentalist beliefs.
Worse, science teachers live in communities and may find themselves facing public controversy they want to avoid by bringing the debate into their classroom. They may not be willing to take a strong stand on an issue that will put their jobs at risk.
I’d say let the science teachers decide how they are going to address the questions from the students. Maybe they even feel they will be supported enough that they can confront the issue head on. They will likely be able to teach more about science than they would by just “covering the content.” But let’s not legitimize ID by formally making it part of the science curriculum and forcing teachers to present a weak defense when they do not have the kind of support they need to do otherwise.
D. Klein, at 2:09 pm EDT on September 30, 2005
Many thanks to D. Klein for the *great* one paragraph summary of what teaching is — which I think can be generalized beyond just science ...
Is there a particular book/thinker to which you attribute that view, or should I just credit you?
jmg, NICE!, at 3:00 pm EDT on September 30, 2005
This “controversy” is not a scientific “debate”
“Teaching a debate” would be one thing—that implies an open and honest dialogue based on mutually accepted scientific principles with no agenda other than scientific accuracy. What scientist wouldn’t be in favor of that? But teaching a manufactured “controversy” in which one party rejects all scientific method or rigor, promotes a false dichotomy between “fact” and “theory,” and obscures its own ideological (religious) agenda behind a bunch of rhetorical double-talk is just a mockery of real scientific dialogue. The ID position not based on objective observation, experimentation, or reproducibility—it’s based on a skewed strategy of using “gaps” in scientific knowledge to introduce faith-based assumptions into the discussion.
Real dialogue requires the courage and integrity to admit to one’s own agenda and a priori assumptions. I’ve never met a legitimate scientist who’s afraid to acknowledge his or her theistic/atheistic beliefs and explain how they are or aren’t compatible with their scientific understanding. ID advocates, on the other hand, steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their own theistic assumptions, or explain to students the religious origins of their “scientific” perspective. They aren’t interested in debate—they’re interested in indirect indoctrination. The fact that they won’t put their cards on the table makes any attempt at dialogue, debate, or “teaching” a futile project. Like the slavery “debates” of the 19th century, this one isn’t about facts or science or objective discourse—it’s about ideology, politics, and self-interest.
huntly, at 3:37 pm EDT on September 30, 2005
Intelligent Design
Neither the author nor most of the commentors seem to know anything about intelligent design, or the scientific case against Darwin’s theory, other than what they have heard or read second hand. Nor do they acknowledge that the scientists who are working on ID are not proposing that it be mandated in schools or universities (WHY won’t they acknowledge it, one has to ask.) The debate over ID should proceed for now in academic circles. The “teach the controversy” suggestion, therefore, doesn’t even apply to ID, but to the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory, a separate matter from the case for ID. Over 400 scientists have signed a statement that they “are skeptical of claims for tha ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” Far more scientists would sign this statement if it were not for efforts in several universities and the Smithsonian Institution to punish scientists who have signed it. (Real academic freedom, as you all know, is actually quite selective.)
The reply of the Darwinists has been to circulate their own statetments, not about Darwin’s theory, with its supposedly “overwhelming evidence” (that somehow doesn’t make it into textbooks), but with irrelevant attacks on ID.
So, the challenge is there. Nothing you do is going to stop scientists who are interested in ID from conducting research and writing about it. At some point their work will have to be addressed for what it is, not for how it is represented by others.
Meanwhile, refusing a civilized and proper academic debate about Darwin’s theory is not a matter of “denying legitimacy” to critics. It is about intellectual cowardice. And the suggestion that the controversy be taught, all right, but in a one-sided way, is not responsive, but sinister. What your author and commentators want is not learning, but indoctrination.
Bruce Chapman, Discovery Institute, at 3:14 pm EDT on October 3, 2005
jmg, please do not attribute my comment to me. Many researchers have addressed this issue. Just go to the library and look up research on “persistence of misconceptions in science education.” Examples abound. A quick Google search pulled up this, for instance: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/str/4.html.
Perhaps you are right that this can be generalized to other areas of teaching. But as I reflect on some people’s support of ID and reactions to evolution, I wonder if we should focus more what scientists (and nonscientists) understand about scientific methodology.
D Klein, at 3:41 pm EDT on October 3, 2005
What controversy should be taught?
Bruce suggests that the “teach the controversy” is just about “scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory.” Not so. For several reasons:
First, confused critics continue to think that it is simply “Darwin’s theory” that is taught in evolutionary biology classes. Evolutionary theory has come a long way since Darwin, and evolutionary biologists recognize that Darwin’s theory was wrong in many ways. Many critics are just not that familiar with contemporary evolutionary biology, which is too bad.
Second, biologists already “teach the controversy” if this just means discussing evidence for and against various claims in evolutionary biology as well as problems that remain to be solved. For example, there are debates about how powerful natural selecdtion is (compared to random genetic drfit) and so on. The biology journals and textbooks are filled with discussions of these puzzles.
I agree with Bruce Champman that the debate for now should proceed in academic circles — the ID research program has not produced any evidence to make it worth teaching as a controversy in science class.
On other other hand, I am all for teaching the debate about ID in a philosophy class, for example, it raises issues about the nature of evidence, how to tell science from pseudo science, and so on. But until the IDers actually have some specific, testable predictions to discuss, there is no scientific debate here — only a political one.
the work of IDers has been extensively addressed for what it is (indeed, I have written a critical reply to Dembski’s first book). Of course, new arguments and evidence may arise, but at the moment, the only thing there is to ID is attempted criticisms of evolution. Some of their criticisms are the same as those mainstream evolutionary biologists make all the time (we can’t yet explain X). Other criticisms, though, are just confused.
The upshot though, is that they have no serious alternative.
Chris Stephens, at 5:59 pm EDT on October 3, 2005
Ignorance Deterred (ID)
I suspect a large number of the ID detractors here have not even bothered to read any of Michael Behe, Steven Meyer, or William Dembski’s brilliant views on ID, or visit the Discovery Institute’s site.
What you will find is that 1) ID predates Darwinian evolution 2)ID is not ‘creationism in different clothing’ 3)the leading ID proponents are not ‘anti-evolution’.
The evidence showing that ID is not Creationism, is overwhelming. There is a huge vested interest however, in continually tieing the two together, because ID must be defeated. And the way to defeat it is to keep it out of our schools. The way to keep it out of the schools is to exhaustively and mindlessly repeat the misinformation that they are synonymous, and throw the ’separation of church and state’ argument at it until it goes away.Fortunately, times are changing, and the word is getting out that this is actually a Science versus Science debate.
Randall, at 4:11 am EDT on October 4, 2005
Teaching the Difference
In the first chapter of our book talks about ancient peoples’ efforts to describe their world, the steps of the scientific method, and the Meteorite Impact hypothesis and Big Bang Theory are described within the context of using SM to develop ideas.
We talk about the use of myth, and compare it to the scientific method. I don’t HAVE to bring up “the debate” because as soon as we get to the Big Bang Theory, it comes up on its OWN...some of these kids come from middle schools (we draw from more than 15 different schools) where they were taught the Biblical creation story.
We’ve already made the flow chart on the board, comparing myth vs. scientific method. We’ve spent a little time talking about “faith” versus “experimental observations/data". I’m always respectful of a person’s right to their faith...it’s just important that they understand the DIFFERENCE. ID is faith-based. The Big Bang Theory and evolution are based on observations. Despite the fact that I teach in a Catholic school, I have yet to field phone calls from angry parents or have a student tell me that they leave my classroom feeling that their personal beliefs, whatever they are, have been disrespected. (I can only hope they’d trust me enough to tell me that if it were true)
However...my kids don’t take those NCLB standards tests. I can easily see how teachers who are under the gun to get a certain amount of content exposure could wonder just how they are supposed to find time for this as well. Sure, they will remember more with discussion than “cover and test” but...then you have to be willing to make the tradeoff between “going wide but shallow” vs. “going narrow and deep".
I agree with an earlier post...Bush would prefer the former. Our thinking should be limited to consumption of simplified info-bytes. I contend that the Right, in labelling the “intelligent elite” seeks to marginalize people who THINK. Bush wants it simple: either you’re for us, or you’re against us. If you are against us, we’ll use any campaign to smear and impugn.
So while I do something to teach the difference in my classrooms, I can see how the majority of teachers are lacking the time to implement a meaningful discussion...they’ve got those #$*#$ tests to prepare for. In this environment, let’s face it: dogma is easy. Thinking is WORK. What will the children of Bush’s America choose? I shudder to think.
Linda Andersen, Teacher at Catholic coed college prep HS, at 5:49 am EDT on October 5, 2005
ID is not testable
Randall wrote:
I suspect a large number of the ID detractors here have not even bothered to read any of Michael Behe, Steven Meyer, or William Dembski’s brilliant views on ID, or visit the Discovery Institute’s site.”
I have read their work and visited their web site.
Randall wrote:"What you will find is that 1) ID predates Darwinian evolution 2)ID is not ‘creationism in different clothing’ 3)the leading ID proponents are not ‘anti-evolution’.”
Well, if ID is defined loosely enough, then of course it goes back many years. But Dembski, for example, would argue that it has only been seriously developed very recently (all of the probability machinery he develops certainly wasn’t around pre-Darwin!). Of course, why does it matter as far as teaching the controversy when it was started?
Second, ID may not be creationism (depending on how creationism is defined), but it still isn’t science. IDers can’t yet tell us how to independently test specific hypotheses about an Intelligent, supernatural designer. See Elliott Sober’s paper “Testability” on his website.
Randall also writes “the leading ID proponents are anti-evolution". Well, they don’t deny microevolution, if that is what you mean. but they do deny macro evolution in many cases, and in some cases they think an intelligent designer works in conjunction with evolution. How we are to test this latter possibility using scientific methods remains a mystery.
So, even though ID may not be exactly the same as say, Young Earth Creationism (and I certainly agree they’re different), ID still isn’t science. So Randall is wrong that “this is actually a Science versus Science debate.”
Chris, at 7:13 pm EDT on October 9, 2005
Chapman
Bruce Chapman’s claim that ID supporters are not insisting on having ID taught in the science classrooms flies in the face of cases being brought in order to achieve just that end.
The problem is that not one single ID supporter has yet to present an experiment of ID in keeping with the falsifiability standard of the scientific method.
He can claim that those speaking against the inclusion of ID in the science classroom (it has its place in philosophy and certain English classrooms) don’t have any background in ID, but that is a fallacy no less egregious than those perpetrated by the people suing to include ID in the classroom or those who say that ID and Darwinian Evolution are even talking about overlapping issues.
I am, in the short term, less concerned by the fight over specific school districts or universities than I am over the distressing mischaracterization of ID and Darwinian Evolution as even discussing the same material.
Andrew Purvis, at 1:35 pm EDT on October 11, 2005
Intelligent Design
I’ve got news for all you ID critics. ID is already part of science! Michael Ruse, a prominent philosopher of science says:
“Both history and present Darwinian evolutionary practice have shown us that design-type thinking is involved in the adaptationist paradigm. We treat organisms –the parts at least — as if they were manufactured, as if they were designed, and then we try to work out their functions. End-directed thinking – teleological thinking – is appropriate in biology because, and only because, organisms seem as if they were manufactured, as if they had been created by an intelligence and put to work.” Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does evolution have a purpose?, p. 268 (Harvard, 2003)Warren
Warren, at 5:01 am EDT on October 29, 2005
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How much money is enough?
To economic rationalists, the so-called “Intelligent Design” debate is just another example of the rampant waste of public resources. If the ID crowd wants to live in scientific ignorance — why expend scarce public resources to force them to kow-tow to Big Education?
Does Big Education think it can change their minds on ID? If so — will the topic of abortion be next? Good luck!
Why not just give the ID crowd vouchers or charters and let them go? Wouldn’t that be a more productive use of resources?
What could be the incentive for Big Education to keep them? Could it be money and power?
The late Albert Shanker, AFT president, compared U.S. public K-12 education to Soviet productivity during emergence of Solidarity in Poland. Have those words come back to haunt Big Education?
Bob A., Everyday Darwinist at Small private college, at 7:41 am EDT on September 28, 2005