IN 1925, Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of any theory of biological existence (namely, evolution) other than creationism. Eighty years later, we have come full circle. Only today what is prohibited is not evolution, but creationism. Regardless of which side is right, censorship is wrong. It was wrong in 1925, and it remains wrong in 2005.
Earlier this month, President Bush offended some in closed-minded society when he suggested that public schools should present the theory of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution. Intelligent design suggests that the diversity and complexity of life on earth is so great that it cannot be adequately explained by the theory of evolution.
Critics immediately pounced on Bush's statement as evidence that he is a Bible-thumping, ignorant hick whose proposal would undermine students' understanding of science. The National Academy of Sciences has railed against "increasingly strident attempts to limit the teaching of evolution."
Those who believe that proponents of intelligent design pose a threat to science are as mistaken as those who believed the world was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth. First of all, if anyone is limiting teaching, it is the secularist radicals. Thanks to their labors, there is not a marketplace of competing ideas in our public schools today, but only a monopoly of evolutionary theory.
In contrast, Bush made it very clear that he did not advocate the advancement of intelligent design as the correct or only theory. Rather, Bush stated that both theories should be presented "to expose people to different schools of thought" in order that "people can understand what the debate is about."
Even when I attended a public high school in New York (hardly the Bible Belt), our biology textbooks presented evolution with a prominent disclaimer that it was a theory. As with all theories, it is possible (though scientists say unlikely) that it is wrong. Judging by their alarmist reactions, radical secularists must take evolution as the unquestionable truth. This is not a belief in science; it is the very devotion to dogma that they ascribe to proponents of intelligent design.
As President Bush stated, presenting intelligent design as a critique of evolutionary theory only enhances, rather than diminishes, understanding of the latter. Just as one cannot understand debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, Republicans and Democrats or capitalists and communists, one cannot understand the debate over evolution if teachers are not allowed to present the debate. And what is so objectionable about debate? After all, the only ones debate has ever harmed are those with bad ideas.
The notion that intelligent design threatens science is also flat-out wrong. One's belief in evolution has no bearing on one's understanding of the interaction of chemical molecules, the laws of physics or even the functioning of biological organs and processes. The opposition to intelligent design is rooted not in science, but in prejudice and passion.
Lastly, one might argue that schoolchildren are too impressionable to be exposed to competing theories. Come to think of it, my first meaningful exposure to intelligent design came only in a college philosophy class. However, the case of Richard Sternberg gives the lie to this objection.
When Sternberg, editor of the Smithsonian journal The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, agreed to publish an article on intelligent design last year, he was ostracized by the institution. Although Sternberg, who holds not one, but two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology, does not even necessarily believe in the theory, that gave no pause to his colleagues, who, according to The Washington Post, falsely accused him of being trained as an "orthodox priest." If even our nation's top scientists cannot discuss evolution without resorting to adolescent name-calling, then the debate is not a problem of age. Again, it is a problem of passion and prejudice.
Our country was founded on the principles of free speech and debate. As John Stuart Mill explained, we can best arrive at the truth when there is a marketplace of competing ideas. George Orwell painted a grim portrait of what a society would look like if we were ever reduced to one-sided orthodoxy. How a society founded on Mill's dream has evolved into Orwell's worst nightmare even Darwin would be hard-pressed to explain. It's certainly no society any "intelligent" designer would have conceived.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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