Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

(Excerpted from "The Religious Right's New Tactics for Invading Public Schools", By Rob Boston, Church and State Magazine, October 4, 2007)

The courtroom defeat of "intelligent design" (ID) in Dover, Pa., two years ago left creationists reeling -- but not for long. To no one's surprise, groups that promote elevating theology over science have re-tooled for the umpteenth time and are again shopping their wares to the public schools.

The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization that promotes ID, has just published Explore Evolution, a textbook it is promoting to biology teachers nationwide. Despite its title, the book does not so much explore evolution as try to debunk it, relying, critics say, on the same old pseudo-scientific arguments that are stock in trade among the creationists.

Opponents of evolution have tried these tactics before. After the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law mandating "balanced treatment" between evolution and creationism, creationists began advocating the instruction of "evidence against evolution." This was simply young-Earth creationism with a new name.

The Discovery Institute's tactics are more sophisticated. The group does not endorse young-Earth creationism, for example. But critics say the organization's new book is yet another attempt to slip ID, a religiously grounded concept, into the schools.

"Explore Evolution is a real piece of work," Joshua Rosenau, public information project director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), said. "Everything from the author list to the content reveals the book's deep links with earlier generations of creationism, however hard they try to obscure that heritage."

The NCSE, based in Oakland, Calif., defends the teaching of evolution in public schools, and Rosenau recently reviewed for the group. He added, "Like previous creationist works, it attacks evolution with misrepresentations and misunderstandings, but where previous generations of textbooks claimed this as evidence of divine intervention, Explore Evolution leaves that leap to students and teachers. Needless to say, we have yet to identify any criticisms of evolution in the book which do not have a long history in the creationist literature."

The most learned of the fathers, by a very singular condescension, have imprudently admitted the sophistry of the Gnostics. Acknowledging that the literal sense is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason, they deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part of the Mosaic dispensation.

European panel condemns creationism effort
(UPI, Oct. 5, 2007)

European lawmakers approved a report condemning efforts to teach creationism in schools, underscoring concern about an emerging socially conservative agenda.

Meeting in Strasbourg, France, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe members approved, in a non-binding 48-25 vote, a report that criticizes creationism advocates for potentially sacrificing children's education "to impose religious dogma" and to promote "a radical return to the past," The International Herald Tribune reported Friday.

The report said creationism, a belief that a supreme being created life and the universe, was "an almost exclusively American phenomenon" but some of its tenets had migrated to Europe.

Denying pupils knowledge of various theories was "totally against children's educational interests," the report said. Creationism supporters endorse "a radical return to the past which could prove particularly harmful in the long term for all our societies," the report said.

Believers of a literal interpretation of the Bible joined people who accept the theory of evolution as "the result of a transcendent will, an 'intelligent design,' " the report said.

It also pointed to a Muslim version of creationism, highlighting a Turkish cleric's work, "The Atlas of Creation," that was distributed to schools in Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland.

The report said creationism, a belief that a supreme being created life and the universe, was "an almost exclusively American phenomenon" but some of its tenets had migrated to Europe

Religious-based education on trial
(By Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune, October 8, 2007)

Sarah Potter-Smith, a sophomore at Calvary Chapel Christian School, can't understand why anyone would think that learning any subject from a Christian perspective is inferior to a secular education.

"We learn just as much as the public schools around here do and, actually, we learn more. For example, we have to learn about evolution on top of creationism too," said the 15-year-old.

Calvary English teacher Shannon Jonker, 26, said the Christian perspective helps students identify the many religious and biblical themes in literature. "We're reading 'Frankenstein' right now, and there are allusions to the creation story," said Jonker, a 2002 graduate of University of California, Riverside.

The Christian perspective is why people send their children to a Christian school, said Robert Tyler, head of Advocates for Faith and Freedom and Calvary's lawyer in a controversial case against the University of California system.

In an unprecedented lawsuit that opens yet another front in the nation's culture wars, an association of Christian schools, including Calvary, charges that the admissions policy at the university unconstitutionally discriminates against them because they teach from a religious perspective.

The case offers a window into the deepening conviction of many conservative Christians that there is hostility to their faith in the public square and particularly in public schools. "This is just another example of what's happening on a much larger scale," said Tyler, who maintains that the university is attempting to secularize private Christian education.

The outcome of the suit could affect not only the college plans of thousands of students at California's some 800 religious high schools but the way curricula are developed and taught at religious secondary schools around the country. The case could go to trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles before the end of the year.

To ensure that regular course work will satisfy the admission requirements of the University of California system (UC), public and private high schools may submit for approval descriptions of the 14 core, or a-g, courses in math, science, history, English, foreign language and the arts, plus one elective course, that the system considers evidence of adequate preparation for an education at one of the 10 UC schools.

The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), lead plaintiff in the case, accuses UC of rejecting some of the core courses at their member schools primarily because they add a religious viewpoint to the standard course material taught at secular schools, a charge the university system vehemently denies. Viewpoint discrimination, on which the case pivots, is banned under the 1st Amendment. In this case, the plaintiffs charge that the university's a-g policy allows a "secular viewpoint" to be taught in core classes but not a religious viewpoint.

If UC continues to reject core courses, the plaintiffs assert that future graduates of their schools may not be eligible for admission to UC schools. "UC follows the policy of rejecting any course in any subject, even if it teaches standard content, if it adds teaching of the school's religious viewpoint," the plaintiffs claim in their legal filings.

"That statement simply is not true," said Christopher Patti, counsel for UC. "There is no prohibition on religious content in UC a-g courses," he said. "If the course adequately teaches the subject matter and adequately teaches the skills that students need in that subject, then the fact that it may also make reference to other theories doesn't disqualify it, even religious theories," he said.

He was referring to the charge that the university rejected core courses using textbooks by leading Christian publishers Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book because of religious content. These included biology texts that presented evolution but also the biblical account of creation and intelligent design as alternative theories.

UC said it rejected such texts "not because they have religious content, but because they fail to meet the university's standards for effectively teaching the required subject matter." UC, which also has disapproved courses from secular and other religious schools, said the books might have been approved as supplementary instead of primary texts.

UC rejection of courses at ACSI high schools, including Calvary Chapel Christian School, began around 2004, said Pastor Des Starr, superintendent of Calvary, which is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, as are six of its present and former students.

Earlier, Starr said, the school had no problems meeting the UC requirements with many of the same or similar courses. Many Calvary graduates went on to successfully graduate from UC schools; nine more just entered in September. Patti, the UC counsel, said no major change had been made in the a-g requirements beyond the fact that "the process of reviewing has become more regularized and rigorous over time."

As for the assertion that schools such as Calvary may eventually lack enough approved courses for UC admission, Patti said, "The hypothetical that every core course would be disqualified is so far-fetched because Calvary already has a very large number of approved courses, including courses in every one of the a-g requirements." Once approved, he said, courses stay approved unless they undergo significant changes.

Moreover, he said, if a school does not have approval for all or any of the 15 a-g courses, there are other ways for students to satisfy the requirement. These include scoring in the top two-thirds on the relevant SAT II tests in missing courses or by achieving a total score of 3450 on the three-part SAT Reasoning Test and two SAT II subject tests. However, since the majority of applicants achieve eligibility through approved courses in high school, the Christian schools consider these alternatives unfairly burdensome for their students.

The case has the potential to be "very important," particularly if it goes to trial rather than being settled by summary judgment, said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, a non-partisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech.

"If it's all looked at closely at trial and the university prevails, then it seems to me to send a message across the country that a religious viewpoint at a religious school can get you in trouble. That's a chilling message. That can hurt your graduates, and that is also a disincentive to go to a religious school," he said.

"On the other hand, if the schools prevail, then I think it really sends a message that we take seriously the freedom of religious schools to teach from a religious perspective and that the public university and the government don't interfere with that. All we require is the same sort of neutral criteria for admission that apply to everybody else," Haynes said.

As Michael Broyde, a professor of law and academic director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, sees it, "In order for this to become an important case, the factual predicate has to be as follows: They [the Christian schools] are teaching the right course, but they're teaching it with an intellectual bias and because of that intellectual bias the University of California is denying them credit."

For Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian legal group, the bias is on the part of UC and of a kind "that I thought we had gotten past a long time ago," he said.

Established in 1993 on a campus of low-slung Spanish-style buildings, Calvary has 1,200 students in its upper and lower schools; it graduated its first senior class in 1999. About 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles in Riverside County, the school is in a fast-growing part of the state's so-called Bible Belt. Starr makes clear the school's educational approach in his comments on its Web site: "Helping our students develop a Christian mind is central to our mission. Simply put, this means that our teachers train students to integrate or connect their Christian faith with their learning. They are taught to understand, analyze, and interpret every subject from a biblical perspective."

The case, Association of Christian Schools International et al vs. Roman Stearns et al, was filed in August 2005. Both sides have filed motions for summary judgment, but a hearing scheduled for Sept. 24 was postponed by the court.

Whatever the outcome, Starr indicated that the school's goals for its students will remain the same.

"We want them to think as a Christian. We want them to reason as a Christian. Whether we're using a Christian textbook or a secular text, we're still going to integrate the word of God into the curriculum," he said.

IF you define morality as the duties of a person to his society rather than to an imaginary Godhead then the morality problem disappears.

One should pity us poor Atheists

You usually seem so quick to emphasize that ID isn't religion, that I'm surprised to see you equate anti-ID with anti-religion.

The origin of speciousness
(James Randerson, Guardian, October 9, 2007)

Growing numbers of school kids (we are told) believe in creationism. That poses a problem for teachers presenting evolution as part of the science curriculum. So they should cover religious explanations of origins alongside Darwinism.

That was the argument put forward last week in a new book entitled Teaching About Scientific Origins. One of its editors Prof Michael Reiss, of the Institute of Education in London told the Guardian:

"The days have long gone when science teachers could ignore creationism when teaching about origins. While it is unlikely that they will help students who have a conflict between science and their religious beliefs to resolve the conflict, good science teaching can help them to manage it - and to learn more science.

"By not dismissing their beliefs, we can ensure that these students learn what evolutionary theory really says, and give everyone the understanding to respect the views of others," he added.

Prof Reiss, who has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is also a Church of England priest, qualifies his position in the book:

"Teaching about aspects of religion in science classes could potentially help students better understand the strengths and limitations of the ways in which science is undertaken, the nature of truth claims in science, and the importance of social contexts for science.

"I do not belong to the camp that argues that creationism is necessarily nonscientific ... Furthermore I am not convinced that something being 'nonscientific' is sufficient to disqualify it from being considered in a science lesson. An understanding of (nonscientific) context often helps in learning the content of science."

This "anything goes" approach to school science will only serve to blur the boundary between evidence-based scientific knowledge and faith. At best it will provide an unwelcome distraction in an already tight curriculum. At worse it has the potential to confuse children as to what science is and what it is not.

To borrow an example from the evolutionary biologist and popular science author Prof Steve Jones, we don't ask science teachers to spend valuable teaching time explaining why the stork theory of human reproduction won't get you many marks in the exam. Nor do we ask them to go in detail through the case for the sun revolving around the earth.

School science lessons are for giving pupils a working knowledge of our current - but of course provisional - picture of how the world works, plus the evidence underpinning that. There is too much fascinating science out there to waste time rehearsing discredited old ideas.

The job of a science teacher should be to present the evidence in favour of Darwin's beautiful theory. The new guidelines from the government on teaching evolution state that alternatives to Darwinism such as creationism and intelligent design can come into discussions on the subject, but only to illustrate what does and does not constitute a scientific theory. In stating clearly that creationism and intelligent design "should not be taught as science" they are right on the money.

Prof Reiss is not saying that creationism is science, but his proposals seem to stem from the dangerous notion that religious views are beyond challenge. Education should be about allowing such views to be challenged.

Quote:

The origin of speciousness
(James Randerson, Guardian, October 9, 2007)

Prof Reiss wrote:

"I do not belong to the camp that argues that creationism is necessarily nonscientific..."

The the article wrote:

Prof Reiss is not saying that creationism is science...

Darwin's beautiful theory

He dismissed Richard Dawkin's recent book The God Delusion as a "vulgar caricature of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince".

There is the old Joycean question of how far you can walk away from something culturally imprinted in you so deeply.