Originally published on TheFactIs.org on August 17, 2005.
Life in an Unfinished World
Evolution is unfinished business in American society. Consequently, a few words from the President vaguely in support of making schoolchildren aware of the notion of intelligent design are sufficient to spark the latent hullabaloo. Of particular interest, when the topic arises from only faint prodding, are the attempts of anti-ID zealots to explain their visceral and very directed anger in a way that accords with the more-reasonable image that they put forward.
A piece by Charles Krauthammer in Time magazine that may have played a role in the question's being posed to the President offers the bottom-line explanation: "To teach [intelligent design] as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority." A variation of the same sentiment presented in a letter to the Providence Journal allows for an intriguing ambiguity: "The United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution."
The letter's author, Michael Berry, quickly specifies that "Americans look like fools to the rest of the world," but one could just as easily read his previous sentence with a complimentary tone: "The United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution."
The difficulty that evolutionists would likely have imagining that such a quality could be something of which to be proud indicates the inconsequentiality that they attribute to religion as a contributor to comprehension of reality. The same indication can be found in the space that they condescend to find for religion. Intelligent design, many argue, belongs in religion curricula — never mind that credulous religious education is banned from public schools. At best, blended with philosophy or secularized by the adjective "comparative," religionesque classes are relegated to lists of electives.
Even pretending, however, that the separate-classes resolution were workable, it would not represent a constructive compromise. Just as intelligent design is not simply retooled creationism, it does not seek to fill "gaps" in evolution with the all-encompassing investigation-ender of God. Rather, the motivation of those with an interest in intelligent design is to work under different assumptions than the typical secular scientist about aspects of the universe on which science cannot comment. It may be that we are coming to a tier of scientific knowledge — particularly as we incorporate human behavior into models of the universe — in which the assumption of a Creator allows advances that insistence on undirected forces would preclude.
Of more immediate importance is the possibility of asserting ethical boundaries to science. Put another way, it is crucial that generations being introduced to modern science understand that there are aspects of the universe on which it cannot comment; that there are complementary disciplines through which to understand our place therein. And teachers of students who are still learning how to learn do well to examine the space in which such topics as evolution drift across their boundaries.
That space is dangerously abandoned territory, as evidenced in a reader's letter that John Derbyshire shared on National Review Online:
Charles Krauthammer apparently appreciates the role of public religious expression in the United States. It might interest those who share that appreciation to explore the ways in which science and religion already complement each other in our society. If it is true that the United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution, then we must ask ourselves whether it is our scientific ability or our openness to religious faith that must be protected. I'd suggest that what sets us apart is our strategy for mixing the two in such a way as to resist intellectual fads and address the world as we believe it to be.
A piece by Charles Krauthammer in Time magazine that may have played a role in the question's being posed to the President offers the bottom-line explanation: "To teach [intelligent design] as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority." A variation of the same sentiment presented in a letter to the Providence Journal allows for an intriguing ambiguity: "The United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution."
The letter's author, Michael Berry, quickly specifies that "Americans look like fools to the rest of the world," but one could just as easily read his previous sentence with a complimentary tone: "The United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution."
The difficulty that evolutionists would likely have imagining that such a quality could be something of which to be proud indicates the inconsequentiality that they attribute to religion as a contributor to comprehension of reality. The same indication can be found in the space that they condescend to find for religion. Intelligent design, many argue, belongs in religion curricula — never mind that credulous religious education is banned from public schools. At best, blended with philosophy or secularized by the adjective "comparative," religionesque classes are relegated to lists of electives.
Even pretending, however, that the separate-classes resolution were workable, it would not represent a constructive compromise. Just as intelligent design is not simply retooled creationism, it does not seek to fill "gaps" in evolution with the all-encompassing investigation-ender of God. Rather, the motivation of those with an interest in intelligent design is to work under different assumptions than the typical secular scientist about aspects of the universe on which science cannot comment. It may be that we are coming to a tier of scientific knowledge — particularly as we incorporate human behavior into models of the universe — in which the assumption of a Creator allows advances that insistence on undirected forces would preclude.
Of more immediate importance is the possibility of asserting ethical boundaries to science. Put another way, it is crucial that generations being introduced to modern science understand that there are aspects of the universe on which it cannot comment; that there are complementary disciplines through which to understand our place therein. And teachers of students who are still learning how to learn do well to examine the space in which such topics as evolution drift across their boundaries.
That space is dangerously abandoned territory, as evidenced in a reader's letter that John Derbyshire shared on National Review Online:
If one is willing to concede that one area of inquiry is unsuitable to scientific study, then what is to say that science will provide any useful insight into any other area? If an Intelligent Designer is the answer to one question, how are we to know that it isn't the answer to all of them?A similar extrapolation can be posited in the opposite direction: If science offers an explanation for how and why life began, how are we to know that it doesn't offer an explanation for how we should live or how we should handle the lives of others? If the limits of science — not its "gaps," but its culturally as well as methodologically defined limits — are unsuitable for discussion within science class, then what will shape conclusions drawn from its mechanisms?
Charles Krauthammer apparently appreciates the role of public religious expression in the United States. It might interest those who share that appreciation to explore the ways in which science and religion already complement each other in our society. If it is true that the United States is the only country in which people still fight over evolution, then we must ask ourselves whether it is our scientific ability or our openness to religious faith that must be protected. I'd suggest that what sets us apart is our strategy for mixing the two in such a way as to resist intellectual fads and address the world as we believe it to be.