Intelligent design resurfaced in Wisconsin politics last week when Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, proposed a bill to ban its teaching in public schools in Wisconsin.
The past year of the fight between intelligent design and evolution was significant because it witnessed the first high-profile court case regarding intelligent design. In December, a U.S. District Court judge in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of 11 parents who sued the Dover Area School District because of a statement about intelligent design that was read aloud in ninth-grade science classes. He found that the teaching of intelligent design in schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'
The first area where intelligent design fails miserably is religion. Supporters contend it is not a religious theory, but when it is rejected they cry religious persecution. In Justice John E. Jones' 139-page judicial opinion he said, 'It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy.'
His statement is entirely accurate'it is creationism by another name and in no way should be taught in our science classes. It violates the separation between church and state. More importantly, though, it is not scientific.
The supporters of the Wisconsin law cite similar concerns. At a news conference with Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, and UW-Madison professors, Berceau said, 'Our children must be exposed to what science really is about and how the scientific enterprise functions, free of political or religious connotations.'
Originally, the case in Dover was over a small statement to be read aloud in class which spoke about other theories besides evolution. But the case argued in front of the district court showed 'the board members wanted a 50-50 ratio between the teaching of creationism and evolution in biology classes.'
I have no problem with mentioning creationism. In fact, my tenth-grade biology teacher, upon starting our evolution unit, mentioned creationism as an alternative to evolution. However, he made it abundantly clear that it had no scientific standing whatsoever and would not be taught in his class.
For a theory to qualify as scientific it must meet many standards. It should be consistent, parsimonious, useful, empirically testable and falsifiable, correctable, dynamic, and progressive. Intelligent design meets absolutely none of these standards.
Its argument consists mainly of claims that there are some things which are too 'irreducibly complex' for evolution to explain alone, meaning a system could not have possibly been formed by successive, slight modifications to a previous system. This, of course, is the premise, of evolution and intelligent design assumes it to be false. They point to the human eye as an example, but, as Daily Cardinal science columnist Adam Dylewski pointed out in November, scientists now have come up with a plausible sequence of explaining the great complexity of our eyes.
Simply put, intelligent design is not science and it violates the separation of church and state. It does not belong in a science class, and Berceau's plan should be supported.
