Botanists in a greenhouse can cross a white flower with a red flower and raise generations of pink flowers that do not revert to red or white. This experiment provides a tiny example of evolution, but it provokes no debate because it was observed happening. The situation was different in 1859, when Charles Darwin published his theory of the origin and gradual evolution of species, including the human, over the millennia. The theory was documented from the fossil record and biological observations. It was criticized, however, by some contemporary scientists, who questioned its use of hypotheses and by many religious people who considered it a denial of the biblical accounts of creation. Nowadays, however, evolution in one or other of its sophisticated formulations is universally accepted in mainstream scientific thought. In 1996, in a much-quoted comment, Pope John Paul II said, New knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
A large part of the American population, however, is not sure about this theory. Last year, a CBS poll found that 65 percent of those surveyed thought that in public school classrooms evolution should be taught alongside creationism, a literalist doctrine based on the Genesis narratives of the divine creation of the universe.
It is no surprise, therefore, that debates about evolution, and particularly about its presentation in public education, continue to flare up in American society. The current vigor of the debate was illustrated last month by some election results in Kansas and Pennsylvania. In Kansas the state board of education voted to adopt for the teaching of science new standards that would point out gaps and inconsistencies in Darwinism and would also define science itself simply as a continual search for more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.
In Dover, Pa., the local school board had voted to bringin a very minimal waythe concept of intelligent design to the attention of ninth-grade biology students. Critics of this concept say it is a masquerade for creationism. For the proponents of intelligent design argue that some organs and organisms are so complex that they could have been created only by an intelligent designer. Other Christians sympathetic to the notion of design, including some scientists, do not deny the existence of the evolutionary process; but they argue, much as St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas and Christian philosophers have done, that the complexity, the splendor and the purposiveness of the process and its products point to the existence of an intelligent cause that has designed it all.
On Nov. 8, that Dover school board was voted out of office. The new board does not reject the idea of intelligent design, but says it should be taught in an elective course, not in a required biology class. This suggests the way toward a rational compromise in the debate about teaching evolution.
Journalists eager for excitement like to describe these debates as battles in a supposed war between religion and science, but there is no such war. Many scientists are people of faith; but when they are investigating the behavior of material phenomena, they have neither the tools nor the methods as scientists for dealing with the question of whether or not there is a God who, as believers might say, holds the created world in his hands.
The scientific method, however, is not the only way of acquiring knowledge. Defenders of intelligent design may not be thinking like scientists, but they are thinking like philosophers. They are using reason in just as legitimate a way as scientists do, but in a different zone.
Schools should therefore make room for the methods of philosophers and historians as well as of mathematicians and physicists. On a very limited scale, some public schools and colleges are already doing this. The Sept. 21 issue of Education Week reports that the National School Boards Association is now advising its members to address intelligent design in social studies, humanities or comparative religion courses. A few state universities offer elective seminars with titles like God and Science. To be sure, nervous academic deans classify these seminars under the heading of humanities, as though they were second-class citizens in academia. But at least they have a seat at the table.
Newspaper stories have been popping up this year under headings like: Evolution or Intelligent Design. School administrators drawing up a curriculum need change only the conjunction here, so as to read Evolution and Intelligent Designnot alternates but coordinates.
Science must devote itself only to observable phenomenon. To force science to bend to non-scientific principles is to do great disservice both to science and to God. Faith is not scientific, faith should not be proved, and faith should not be in a science classroom. Science should not prove God; it must follow its own footsteps. Even if I believed the universe was created 4.000 years ago, I must still be an evolutionist because that is structure our biological life is built around. To deny evolution is to deny basic biology and how biology works, and in the end to deny God’s mechanisms.
It is time that we stop making evolution a litmus test. We must separate the structure (biology) from the Creator, and allow both their proper place.
Intelligent Design is neither science nor theology but a bogus conflation of the two. As science, it pitches its wares to school boards and judges rather than to the scientific community (and the transparent processes of experimentation, peer review and publication) so it purposefully circumvents the very methods of science it claims to use. And it delivers an insipid and lifeless theology, with some unnamed but allegedly verifiable “designer” out there replacing the full majesty of the image of God that our religious tradition has nurtured. Intelligent Design retreats from reason by circumventing the way science is actually done and guts the unknowable mystery which lies at the heart of all faith by attempting to reduce it to pseudo-science.
Following Aquinas, the Catechism of the Catholic Church in Article 159 states: "Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God."
It is troubling that a publication put out by the Jesuits, who usually don't lack for intellectual rigor, would find attractive some sort of mushy compromise with this bogus idea. I should think you'd know better.
Puxzzling because it says scholars (what scholars? scientists?) should consider philosophy and history in this matter, and, presumably in shaping curriculum, though you acknowledge that the tools of science (scientific method) cannot deal with this approach as probative. Puzzling as you do not clearly point out the realtionship of faith in reason in this matter, noting only that intellegent design, like Thomas's "proofs" can serve as an indicator. The Editorial is disappointing also. It fails to note that intelligent design proponents often refer to evolution is "just another theory." While citing the media's interest, you also fail to note how large amounts of money are being spent to promote the intelligent design approach in the press and on TV. Ultimately it is disappointing that, when a group seeks to "prove" what they "know" is true on a populace and then move on to indoctrinate that view in our schools, you try to "harmonize" their beliefs.
Faith and science are not in contradiction; proponents of intelligent design as science and scientists are.
Intelligent Design is neither science nor theology but a bogus conflation of the two. As science, it pitches its wares to school boards and judges rather than to the scientific community (and the transparent processes of experimentation, peer review and publication) so it purposefully circumvents the very methods of science it claims to use. And it delivers an insipid and lifeless theology, with some unnamed but allegedly verifiable “designer” out there replacing the full majesty of the image of God that our religious tradition has nurtured. Intelligent Design retreats from reason by circumventing the way science is actually done and guts the unknowable mystery which lies at the heart of all faith by attempting to reduce it to pseudo-science.
Following Aquinas, the Catechism of the Catholic Church in Article 159 states: "Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God."
It is troubling that a publication put out by the Jesuits, who usually don't lack for intellectual rigor, would find attractive some sort of mushy compromise with this bogus idea. I should think you'd know better.
Puxzzling because it says scholars (what scholars? scientists?) should consider philosophy and history in this matter, and, presumably in shaping curriculum, though you acknowledge that the tools of science (scientific method) cannot deal with this approach as probative. Puzzling as you do not clearly point out the realtionship of faith in reason in this matter, noting only that intellegent design, like Thomas's "proofs" can serve as an indicator. The Editorial is disappointing also. It fails to note that intelligent design proponents often refer to evolution is "just another theory." While citing the media's interest, you also fail to note how large amounts of money are being spent to promote the intelligent design approach in the press and on TV. Ultimately it is disappointing that, when a group seeks to "prove" what they "know" is true on a populace and then move on to indoctrinate that view in our schools, you try to "harmonize" their beliefs.
Faith and science are not in contradiction; proponents of intelligent design as science and scientists are.
Science must devote itself only to observable phenomenon. To force science to bend to non-scientific principles is to do great disservice both to science and to God. Faith is not scientific, faith should not be proved, and faith should not be in a science classroom. Science should not prove God; it must follow its own footsteps. Even if I believed the universe was created 4.000 years ago, I must still be an evolutionist because that is structure our biological life is built around. To deny evolution is to deny basic biology and how biology works, and in the end to deny God’s mechanisms.
It is time that we stop making evolution a litmus test. We must separate the structure (biology) from the Creator, and allow both their proper place.