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Bush Supports Teaching Intelligent Design
TELL PRESIDENT BUSH TO SUPPORT SCIENCE EDUCATION AND OPPOSE INTELLIGENT DESIGN! On Monday, August 1, in response to a query from a Texas reporter, President Bush said that he believed that both evolution and Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools "so people can understand what the debate is about." During the 2000 campaign, Bush said several times that local school boards should decide about teaching evolution and alternatives; he also indicated support for teaching creationism. Intelligent Design (ID) seeks to contradict scientific theories, advocating religious beliefs over scientific research. Its origins and the goals of its advocates are theological. However, some advocates of ID have introduced claims that can be falsified, and have been, as in Ken Miller's criticism of Michael Behe. TAKE ACTION NOW and tell the President why Intelligent Design has no place in a science curriculum! Intelligent Design is a fundamentally religious assumption unsupported by evidence and has no place in the science classroom. We must counter the proponents of ID who wish to introduce their ideas by appealing to arguments for "equal time," falsely implying that Intelligent Design is as scientifically valid as evolution. In response to this threat to scientific literacy, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Center for Inquiry will be increasing its efforts to defend evolution and science education and are forming a task force for this purpose called "Activists for Science." We will work to develop a network of pro-science advocates across the country who champion the integrity of science on the local and regional level. We will feature regular articles on the matter in Skeptical Inquirer and issue activism alerts such as this one. We will continue to sponsor lectures and events to educate the public about evolution and the Intelligent Design movement. The Inquiring Minds program will be working with educators to develop effective supplemental material on the Evolution / Creationism issue. We have recently launched the CreationWatch web page to monitor the issue. It features articles and resources, curricular material, and headlines from around the world on creationism, intelligent design, and evolution. JOIN US in defending science education! By following the directions included in this e-mail, you can send a message to President George W. Bush. A strong show of support for scientific standards will send a resounding message to the President and the public that our children's education should not be compromised by the teaching of Intelligent Design!
Dear [ Decision Maker ] , You recently stated that "part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." I wish to express my agreement with this point of view, though I have two concerns. The context of this remark was an important one: the public debate over the teaching of evolution and Intelligent Design. The first concern regards the part of the school curriculum you believe is appropriate for Intelligent Design. A vocal minority of your supporters believe that Intelligent Design should be given equal weight in the science curriculum alongside evolution. This displays a lack of understanding of the nature of science. Science is based on a critical approach that requires all hypotheses and theories to be tested against observable phenomena. In the last 250 years, we have made immense strides in scientific research and understanding and have come up with a number of ideas, solidly based in rigorous observation and experiment, which can be relied upon to help us to understand our world and our place in the universe. That's how we managed to put men on the moon. One of these ideas is the theory of evolution. The evolution of organisms involves a process of natural selection by which some individuals in a population are more likely to survive because of novel variations that make them better able to deal with the pressures of their environment. This selective pressure and the introduction of new variations by genetic mutation cumulatively causes organisms to be modified over time - to evolve - in order to adapt to their changing environments. The theory of evolution was originally based on observations from paleontology, comparative anatomy, and experiments in animal and plant breeding. Additional evidence for modern evolutionary theory is found in molecular biology and the structure of DNA. The entire discipline of biology is structured around the theory of evolution. Intelligent Design is an idea of a different kind. It cannot be tested by experiment and has no evidence in its favor beyond ad hoc explanations and straw-man criticisms of evolution. It has no place in the science curriculum. It may be useful at an introductory level to illustrate the differences between science and nonscience and teach invaluable concepts about the nature of science. Creationism and Intelligent Design may be appropriate in other parts of the curricula - perhaps in philosophy, comparative religion, history, cultural anthropology, or social studies - where it would not be out of place to speak of an idea with a fundamentally supernatural basis. The second concern I have is the issue of our children's well being. Failure to distinguish between testable scientific hypotheses and faith-based ideas is bound to confuse a large proportion of students and inhibit improvements in science literacy across the nation. Not only is an understanding of the evolutionary sciences a matter of mental and intellectual fitness; it is also a matter of survival. We live in an increasingly competitive world, and if our children are to obtain the skills that they will need to compete in the global marketplace, they must be guaranteed an education in which science is not adulterated with religion or mysticism. I realize that you receive advice from all quarters of the nation, but I hope that the sound advice you receive from leading science organizations and your own scientific advisors will demonstrate that the issue of science literacy in schools, and the importance of the theory of evolution in understanding life on earth, should not be sabotaged by the religious proponents who clamor for your attention.
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| Background Information |
Keep Intelligent Design out of the White House and out of our schools!
Advocates of Intelligent Design have adopted an aggressive public relations campaign to get Intelligent Design into the classroom and have succeeded in getting the matter considered by the U.S. House of Representatives and school boards or state legislatures in Georgia, Kansas, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Arkansas, and elsewhere. Through the efforts of concerned parents and scientists across the country, many of these efforts have failed or been overturned, but challenges to science education continue. We fear that Bush's statements in support of Intelligent Design will reinforce this antiscientific movement and have a detrimental effect on science education in America.
President Bush's comments on Monday in support of teaching Intelligent Design alongside evolution stem from widespread ignorance about basic scientific concepts such as the fundamental role evolution plays in biology, the extraordinary evidence for evolution, and the scientific method.
Bush said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
It is important that students be exposed to critical examination of novel ideas, but this does not justify teaching theological concepts such as Intelligent Design in the science classroom. Science education should teach students the rigor and methodology of science at its best and introduce them to fundamental concepts such as evolution.
The movement to introduce Intelligent Design (ID) into the science curriculum is little more than an attempt to institute occult explanations based upon religious faith and undercut evidence-based, secular science education.
Intelligent Design posits that some features of life are far too complicated to have evolved through natural processes. Therefore, one or more designers must have been involved. Many ID supporters (including public speakers like Phillip Johnson and William Dembski and organizations like the Discovery Institute) have acknowledged that Intelligent Design is a way to get Christian theology taught in public schools. Intelligent Design is "the thin edge of the Wedge" to undermine scientific naturalism and challenge the godlessness and immorality that purportedly stem from a scientific method based on rigorous evaluation of empirical evidence – a method which excludes supernatural explanations.
"Intelligent design is junk science. It has not a single legitimate scientific finding to its credit. Instead of actually trying to explain how things work, ID seeks to blunt research with the simplistic answer, 'The designer(s) did it.' Such unscientific attitudes belong in the Dark Ages, not America's classrooms."
Nonetheless, ID proponents have succeeded in garnering public support by misrepresenting the science of evolution and appealing to faulty reasoning. Rather than engage in scientific research and peer-reviewed scientific discourse, they've taken the debate directly to the public, calling the achievements of science a matter of majority opinion. The scientific revolution – and our continued success in science and technological innovation and discovery – depend on the rigorous, empirical standards of the scientific method. Teaching Intelligent Design detracts from both the content and the spirit of science.
The theory of evolution is critical to our understanding of how life works. Students need to be educated about evolution in order to address biological concerns in their own lives, including how their own bodies function, personal medical issues, the foods they eat and where these foods come from. Biological issues are increasingly matters of public policy: environmental management, scientific research on issues like stem cells or genetic modification, and reproductive health care. A public that is ignorant about basic principles of biology is incompetent to make reasonable well-informed decisions on crucial personal, social, and economic issues.
Please join us in defending science and protecting our children's right to learn about the wonders of life!
(Read more about Intelligent Design at CSICOP's CreationWatch web page: www.csicop.org/creationwatch.)
