The Evolution of Intelligent Design.
Posted on May 6, 2005
There have been some news reports over the past week about teaching evolution, creation, and intelligent design in Kansas. While a contentious educational issue, I have no problem with them being taught side-by-side.
I believe in God, but I also believe in evolution. I believe dinosaurs once roamed the Earth, and most ideas of creationism (i.e. The Book of Genesis) are symbolic. Intelligent design is a newer idea that some people call Creation 2.0 – kind of like a secular version of Creationism. Stangely, after seeing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I suppose that could be a case of intelligent design. Maybe mice really are avatars of pan-dimensional, hypergalactic beings, Earth was designed by Deep Thought and built by Magrathea. Maybe the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything really is 42. Do I believe that? No. Is it possible? Yes. Similarly with creation, do I believe it? No. Is it possible? Yes.
When I was going through grade school, I was taught the difference between hypothesis, theory, and law. A hypothesis is basically an idea. It might be conjecture, but it might be based on an observation, and is usually the basis for running experiments to prove or disprove. A theory is something that has been shown to be true in a wider set of circumstances, but has not been proven to be definitively true or false. A law (physical, as opposed to legal) has been proven to be definitively true in all experiments, like the laws of inertia, or the laws of gravity.
Evolution, creationism, and intelligent design are all theories. They have not been proven true to the satisfaction of 100% of the people, although each is believed to be true by large numbers of people. I have no problem with each theory discussed and compared in classes, though it best to let the individual draw their own conclusions, without having one crammed down their throats. At the most basic level of science education, I don’t think it matters much one way or the other what a person believes. Creation isn’t going to tell a student whether a rock sample is igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. Likewise, evolution isn’t going to provide an explanation for evapotransporation. Intelligent design, as far as I know, isn’t going to help a student distinguish a femur from a tibia.
I am not going to debate one idea vs. the other. I think science has come up with a lot reasonable explanations for the world around us (reasonable to me, at least). But I also believe science hasn’t explained everything. I can reconcile God and evolution, and still believe in both, and I think students can be taught the theories and determine what they believe is true. I belive it’s called critical thinking, and as far as I know, that’s still taught in school.
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Teaching kids to believe that the Old Testament, or that any myth system, should be taken as non-fiction seems dangerous in its cultural egocentrism to me.
My idea isn’t they should be taught one idea over the other. I think they should be presented as equals, with the preface that they are theories – they haven’t been proven or disproven, but each theory has it’s supporters and detractors. Ideally, this would take a week or less to present a thumbnail sketch of each idea, and if a student wishes to learn more, then the teacher can suggest the library or the student’s parents.
As far as cultural egocentrism (if I understand it correctly), maybe it would be a good idea to present some of the creation myths from other cultures, such as ancient Greece, or Hindu. I personally like the Shinto version of creation.
It’s a fine line, but I think a teacher (a very careful teacher) can teach a topic, without advocating it. I think this is the contitutional requirement (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…)
Anyway, as I said, it should take less than a week, then the class can move on to more important things, like chemistry, biology, physics, math, etc. I’m assuming creation vs. evolution vs. intelligent design vs. ??? would happen in a science class, although it would probably be welcome in a sociology class as well.
I like that you make the distinction between hypothesis, theory, and law… yet I think that I’d classify creationism and intelligent design as hypotheses rather than theories. Have there been experiments that show them to be true on a wider set of circumstances?
I’m going to have to disagree with you a little on the nature of theory vs. law in science and with creationism/intelligent design as hypotheses.
Gravity, for example is a theory (albeit an almost universally-accepted one). This theory holds that objects have a property known as mass and that all objects with this property are attracted to all other masses due to the fact that mass warps spacetime in its vicinity. We we speak of the Law of Gravity we are generally referring to the formula F = G(m1)(m2)/r^2. The Theory of Gravity, however, is still taught as a THEORY (my degree is in physics). It has held up very well under testing, but could yet need additional tweaking (such as due to the acceleration in the rate of expansion of the universe currently under study).
Intelligent Design and Creationism are NOT scientific theories nor even hypotheses. They are theories in the common usage of the terms but NOT in the scientific usage of the terms for two important reasons:
1) Science is the quest to explain the world in terms of natural causes. Evoking the supernatural breaks the scientific process.
2) Any evocation of a supernatural cause for an event or process is UNTESTABLE and therefore cannot be the foundation for a scientific theory. You CANNOT disprove a theory based on supernatural intervention. Testability is required for any explanation to be considered a hypothesis or theory under the scientific usage of those terms.
It’s not that God can’t or doesn’t exist. It’s that you can’t invoke God as the reason why something happens in a scientific theory. It may be that we will eventually hit upon phenomena for which no underlying natural cause can be found. If so, that phenomena will lie forever outside the realm of science by its very nature. However, it is only by searching for natural causes that science is able to tell us anything useful.
So, there may be a God responsible for starting it all, but God lies outside the realm of science. ID and Creationism cannot be considered science, and in my mind have no place in a science classroom. Philosopy perhaps, where you can ask “Why”? Science can’t and does not try to answer that: it’s realm is strictly “How?”