Intelligent design is theology, not science

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Intelligent design is theology, not science

By Rosemary Roberts, News-Record, November 25, 2005,

In 1925, John Scopes, 24, who had graduated from the University of Kentucky the previous year, moved to Dayton, Tenn., to teach high school science and coach football. In July 1925 he was convicted of teaching evolution in his classroom and fined $100.

The trial stirred national controversy. The press swarmed to town, gave it gavel-to-gavel coverage and dubbed it "the monkey trial.''

The trial pitted those who believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible (that Adam and Eve were created as fully developed humans in the Garden of Eden) versus those who believed in the Darwinian idea that humans evolved from lower forms of life over thousands of years.

Intensifying the drama were two famous lawyers. William Jennings Bryan, a religious fundamentalist who'd been the Democratic Party's presidential candidate three times, represented the prosecution. Clarence Darrow, one of America's most acclaimed lawyers, represented young Scopes.

Though Scopes had taught evolution in his classroom, he was not an atheist or agnostic. "I don't know if I'm a Christian, but I believe there is a God,'' he said. Like many scientists before and after him, Scopes believed in God though not in the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

More than four decades after the so-called monkey trial, the Tennessee legislature finally overturned the law used to convict Scopes. And in 1960, Hollywood made "Inherit the Wind," a movie about the celebrated 1925 trial. The film's director, Stanley Kramer, invited Scopes, who was then a geologist in Louisiana, to return to Dayton for the first time in 35 years. The mayor presented him with a key to the city.

It would seem that Scopes and the teaching of evolution had been vindicated. Yet 80 years later, evolution is back in the news. This time, supporters of creationism are promoting a variant called "intelligent design.'' It contends that creation is too complex to have sprung from an evolutionary process alone and that a guiding hand was behind it.

That's fine for Sunday school class but not for science class. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences and every major scientific organization have repudiated intelligent design.

President Bush is playing both sides of the street. He thinks both evolution and intelligent design should be taught in science classes.

The Kansas Board of Education, by a 6 to 4 vote, recently redesigned that state's high school science curriculum, opening the door to intelligent design. Syndicated columnist George Will, though a conservative, fumed that the school board "is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people.''

But elsewhere in the nation, intelligent design is facing hurdles. Voters in Dover, Pa., ousted all eight members of the school board who'd changed the science curriculum to include intelligent design.

Syndicated conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote bluntly: "Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud.''

But what about North Carolina? How has our conservative state managed to escape getting embroiled in the controversy? From time to time, state legislators have introduced bills that would require the teaching of creationism in science class.

Back in 1925, Rep. Sam Ervin, then a 28-year-old legislator from Burke County and later a U.S. senator who gained fame in the Watergate era, opposed a legislative bill touted by creationists. "I don't see but one good feature in this thing, and that is that it will gratify the monkeys to know they are absolved from all responsibility for the conduct of the human race,'' Erwin cleverly replied. The creationists lost.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creationism is a religious belief and has no place in public schools. "Intelligent design,'' which is creationism in disguise, would likely meet the same fate.

If churches (and church schools) choose to teach the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, that's their prerogative. But I have never found religion and evolution to be incompatible. If you believe that God created human life, then He is still the creator -- even if the process was evolutionary.

But neither my religious belief nor yours belongs in science class. Period.

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