Feb 24 2006
A bit more on ID and ‘teaching the controversy’
As some of you know who have been following the ‘intelligent design’ debate (the notion being pushed by certain Christianists that evolution has too many holes and must have been guided by an intelligent designer, i.e. ‘God’), one of the methods they’ve been using to get the idea taught in schools is that in the name of academic freedom and inquiry, we should be ‘teaching the controversy’, which is a not-so-subtle method of sowing the seeds of doubt of evolution’s validity.
There’s a bit of a problem though; amongst the scientific community, there really isn’t a controversy. Scientists will readily admit that sure, there are still many things in evolutionary theory yet to be discovered. But a solid majority of them put evolution as the bedrock of biology. CSICOP’s Robert Camp has a good article about this phenomenon here, as well as some surveying that helps prove his point.
One of the main problems I see in the way debates are framed today is this so called ‘balanced view’ approach. It goes under the assumption that A) all opinions are equal and B) that there are always two sides to every issue. It’s like saying that in order to teach a class on Holocaust studies, we must also teach the viewpoints of Holocaust deniers. Sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion. But they don’t all carry equal weight. Some can be backed up by mountains of evidence (evolution, the Holocaust) and some can’t (ID theory, Holocaust denial).
This is even more obvious in today’s political reporting. Take something like Bush’s numerous tax cuts for the wealthy. The evidence is all there on paper as to whom these tax cuts are benefitting(the top 1%). Yet when discussed in the media, both sides are shown, as if they are somehow doing us a favor by letting us decide for ourselves, even though the facts are there for all to see.
Often, I read in letters to the editors and such, how ID should be taught alongside evolution to let the students (or parents of the students) decide. Since when do high school students (or their parents, for that matter) know more than the biologists? Most people can’t even name their congressman, for Crissake.
Yes, there are often two sides to an issue; a correct one and an incorrect one. But teaching something that is factually incorrect is wrong, pure and simple.
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Good thinking, John, and well put. It reminds me of arguments in my early days with certain people with whom I was debating in Washington DC who would say in response to statements I would make: “but that’s not very objective.” Their point was that I (and everyone else with whom they disagreed) needed to be more “objective.” What I learned was that objectivity is only a tool, that objectivity is not an end in and of itself. Once you have been objective, and it has served its purpose, you reach a conclusion. You can’t be objective ad nauseum, because you can never make any decisions or reach any conclusions that way.
What these “Christianists” are trying to do, as you so aptly point out, is to have us all believe they want everyone to be objective. What’s wrong with that, huh?
Well, I believe the world is flat and I really wish the schools would consider letting kids decided for themselves by letting them know there are people out here, like me, who believe the world is flat. There’s more than one side to a round earth theory, isn’t there? Objectivity, indeed.