The current Kansas evolution trial reminds me of a letter to the editor I
wrote back in 1998. At the time, a teacher in a local school district was
teaching intelligent design to his biology students. The Washington State ACLU
got involved, and it became a very big deal. The teacher, Roger DeHart, was even
featured on the front page of the L.A. Times. (Check out the website of the Burlington-Edison Committee for Science
Education for a complete run-down of the controversy.)
Then, as now, the papers didn't do a particularly good job of objectively
evaluating both sides of the debate. They made it seem, to the casual observer,
that there were valid arguments on both sides. In fact, however, the teacher
didn't understand even the most basic principles of evolution. In my letter, I
pointed out the two major misrepresentations about evolution that the media
always fails to correct: that evolution
is random, and that a theory
is the same as a hypothesis.
[Roger DeHart first claimed] that he had to introduce intelligent design
material into his classroom because he had discovered after careful review
that the established Darwinian explanation for the evolution of life is
flawed.
Then, in his letter of October 28, DeHart writes, "Darwinism teaches all
life … is … the result of chance random process, an accident of nature." But
anyone who has even glanced at standard evolutionary theory knows that it is
not based on chance at all, but driven by natural selection — a process that
is definitely not random.
DeHart says that "it is intuitive even to children" that life requires
intelligent design. It may also be intuitive to think that heavier objects
fall faster than lighter ones, but Galileo disproved that centuries ago.
Science is not based on intuition. Science is based on facts, and scientific
theories are explanations that fit those facts. (It is an unfortunate accident
of the English language that the word theory is used to mean
"hypothesis.")
The third important point, that I was hinting at but couldn't
completely cover in 250 words, is that scientific theories are always subject to
review and extension, and even theories that we know to be incomplete or wrong
are still, and should still be, taught in a high school science classroom.
Take Newton's theory of gravity. Newton's theory is incomplete and
sometimes incorrect: mass is not constant, gravity does not act instantly, and
space is curved. But we should still teach Newton's theory because it is simple
enough for introductory science classrooms and most of the world in which we
live works on Newtonian principles.
And if you don't want to teach evolution because it conflicts with
the Bible, just wait till you start to learn about what other branches of
science have found — that time travel into the future is possible and relatively
easy (see time
dilation), that gravity bends light, that light is sometimes a wave and
sometimes a particle. Each of these startling concepts has been confirmed via
careful experiment.
I think a lot of people would even be astounded by the Galilean
revelation that heavier objects don't actually fall faster than lighter ones. I
even recently saw a PBS special that demonstrated how many MIT students
couldn't light a lightbulb when handed it, a battery, and a wire (article;
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