MIDDLE AGES - AGAIN??

A work colleague with a particular grim outlook claims the United States is plunging back into the Middle Ages. Is that so? Certainly the fact that El Presidente sees nothing wrong with Teach the Controversy - the Discovery Institute’s foray into the teaching of evolution – does not help dilute such impressions.

Teach the Controversy is the major component of the Wedge Strategy, a political action campaign put forward by the Discovery Institute (a conservative Christian think tank based in Seattle, WA and funded by big names such as the Orange County Christian fundamentalist Howard Ahmanson Jr. and the MacLellan Foundation). Its goal is to change public-school science curricula through introduction of intelligent design (the concept that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent). According to the proponents of Teach the Controversy, the theory of evolution is in crisis…

Sure it is. It is under attack by an increasingly culturally scary government led by a president who, for all his apparent ignorance on almost any given subject, seems to be very knowledgeable of anything that contradicts either his personal religious beliefs or the beliefs of those who helped him win the White House…. Make no mistake: evolution is under attack by a highly organized – and very well paid for - campaign to reshape American culture by influencing public policy to reflect conservative Christian values.

Let’s face it: intelligent design is nothing more than some new breed of creationism in disguise. It reeks of religious ideology and many of its advocates don’t even care to conceal their underlying theological motivations. Also, critics have argued that many points raised by intelligent design proponents strongly resemble arguments from ignorance, where one claims that the lack of evidence for one view is evidence for another view (e.g. "Science cannot explain this, therefore God did it"). In this way, any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for intelligent design (don’t all this sound dangerously reminiscent of revisionist history?).

Teach the Controversy is supposedly about questioning, about providing students with an alternative. But frankly, an alternative to what? The theory of evolution is fully accepted by the scientific community, and therefore there is no controversy here. Regrettably, some scholars have decided to back intelligent design, such as Phillip E. Johnson of U.C. Berkeley and Frank Tipler of Tulane University. And the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, which began as a student organization at UCSD, helps establish student IDEA clubs on university and high school campuses.

Around the world, scholars and individuals observe the developments, perplexed that evolution is being challenged in 2005, and in the United States of all places. Here, this insane debate has gained new momentum in the last few weeks with the Kansas Board of Education approval of a draft of new science standards proposed by supporters of intelligent design. Definitive approval is expected in October; in the meantime, we should not forget that this is the same state and board which, back in 1999, deleted most references to evolution from textbooks and course outlines. See a trend here?

In truth, Teach the Controversy is not about science: it is about politics. If what its proponents seek is to foment a civil discussion about science, then history and philosophy courses could very well deal with it. But the official introduction of creationist views in science education across the nation can seriously undermine one of the core teachings of evolution: that all living things share a common ancestry. Assigning a Christian value to science could lead to isolation and ostracism of certain religious and ethnic groups, among other things. I believe we have all seen the results of such positions in the past, and they were not edifying in the least.