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During a round-table discussion with reporters from five
Texas newspapers last week, President George W. Bush said
that schools should teach intelligent design,
as
well as the theory of evolution, when covering the origin
of life.
I think that part of education is to expose people to
different schools of thought,
the President said.
You're asking me whether or not people ought to be
exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.
On its surface, that's a reasonable answer. but it
quickly leads to difficulties when applied to K-12
education. For one thing, there is doubtless a school of
thought in this country which holds that the value of pi (a
mathematical constant expressing the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter) must really be
3,. because I Kings 7:23 describes a vessel that was ten
cubits from the one brim to the other,
round all
about,
and a line of thirty cubits did compass it
round about.
That's certainly a different idea.
But do we
really want our schoolchildren wasting precious time in
arguments about whether pi is really 3.0 or
3.141592653589793238462643383... ? I suspect not.
In other words, different ideas
are an important
part of education in a philosophy or literature class.
They're a waste of time when teaching the multiplication
table or the parts of speech.
The second problem here is that there are a lot of
different ideas
about the origin and development of
life. It isn't just Darwin on one side and Genesis on the
other. There's a Hindu account and a classical Greek
account and the Ute account of Sinawaf and Coyote and
hundreds more, if not thousands.
But wait, someone will argue. We're not talking about teaching religion in the public schools. We're talking about teaching a scientific theory known as Intelligent Design. You might see it as a backdoor approach to teaching religion in public schools, but it really isn't. The presence of a watch implies a watchmaker, and our schoolchildren should learn this, alongside Darwin and the Big Bang.
So let us assume that Intelligent Design represents honest science, rather than yet another attempt by American fundamentalists to control the rest of us just as thoroughly as they control our President.
Now I will seek evidence of Intelligent Design, starting at the top of my own body -- a bald spot, which gets sunburnt quickly if I go outdoors in daylight without a hat. Wouldn't an Intelligent Designer have arranged matters so that my hair would have continued to grow there?
Move down and there are my bifocals. Unlike my baldness, these are not evidence of age. I have worn glasses since I was eight years old, and bifocals since I was 11. Without glasses, I am legally blind. What kind of Intelligent Design is that?
There's also a set of artificial teeth. Our natural teeth are the first part to wear out while we're alive, and the last thing that remains after we die. How can that be evidence of Intelligent Design?
I'll skip human plumbing, since that could be used as evidence of Intelligent But Malicious Design (the vermiform appendix was fabricated to provide income for surgeons?), and proceed to the knees. My mother just had hers replaced, and my creaky joints feel as though they need oiled every morning.
Automobiles, by contrast, do show evidence of intelligent design. They can be lubricated, and worn-out parts can be replaced quickly and easily.
Someone more versed in human physiology could doubtless come up with reams of proof that our complex but unreliable bodies show little, if any, evidence of Intelligent Design.
So it's fine by me if our schools hearken to the
President and expose students to different ideas
on
this matter. An hour or two of discussion, especially if
the teacher is getting on in years, will quickly convince
the students that there's no discernible connection between
Intelligent Design and human anatomy, and they can go back
to learning some real science.
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