NEXT MONTH, the controversy surrounding creationism and evolution will get some additional attention from none other than Ben Stein, who will star in a new documentary called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The documentary essentially proposes that the scientific establishment squashes all viewpoints that don't adhere to evolutionary biology -- academic censorship of sorts -- and that intelligent design (ID) deserves a fair shot in public school science curriculums. Opinions similar to those of Stein abound, but they are incited by a disturbing lack of knowledge and a flawed understanding of the scientific process. Fundamentally, intelligent design is little more than creationism and merits no more time in a science classroom than the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Supporters of ID balk at the above description that their ideas are religious; they claim ID is a wholly scientific theory with broad explanatory powers equivalent to those of evolution. But all one has to do to disprove this silly claim is to take a cursory glance at history. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that creation science could not be taught next to evolution in science class because it violated the First Amendment by promoting a religion.
Up until that time, creation science and scientists, which had been around for a few decades, had absolutely no problem associating themselves with the Bible or Christianity -- they reveled in those habits, in fact. They thought they were doing God's work by debunking evolution. Once the Supreme Court gave them a reality check, however, they were forced to find alternative methods of spreading their venom.
What to do? Just come up with a new name for your ideas! And so they did, introducing the label 'intelligent design' to the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The main tenets and propositions of ID are equivalent to those of creation science, but they discarded open appeals to divinity to make ID more palatable. In the famous 2005 Dover trial, a federal court ruled, once again, that intelligent design was basically religious and could not be taught alongside evolution in a science classroom. The judge issuing the damning condemnation of ID was a Republican Bush appointee and a regular churchgoer -- one really can't blame this on 'liberal activist judges,' though some tried.
Beyond the normal problems with calling intelligent design scientific -- it lacks testable propositions and makes no predictions -- lies the blatant fact that it's also not new, despite the claims of ID proponents that it's somehow an original idea. Design arguments are as old as philosophy itself, and to that end ID seems to be more philosophical than religious, if we are willing to ignore the identity of its promoters (all Christians associated with the Discovery Institute) and focus strictly on the contents of its arguments.
Most design arguments are rife with logical fallacies, especially with analogical fallacies, but they thrive because they appeal to basic human instincts, which are often, unfortunately, too fragile to counter them. The most famous one is William Paley's watchmaker analogy, which states that if one found a watch in the middle of a valley, the presumption would be that the watch had been created by an intelligent creature -- it was not made naturally or randomly. Ergo, our universe, with all its vastness and complexity, was also designed. The argument fails because it misconstrues the construction of a clock with the construction of the universe -- those two processes are not analogous. Analogical fallacies are common in our daily lives; as a general rule, never use analogies to prove or validate a point (they can't), but only to clarify or explain a point in case it is not well-understood.
ID posits more advanced variants of what I described above, but its central maxim -- that life on Earth is so complicated that only an intelligent designer could have conceived it -- is a gigantic logical fallacy. Without any grand claims to absolute truth, nation-wide science curriculum should teach that the best available evidence suggests that life on Earth evolved. Calling ID science is an absolute abomination that should never be allowed into our science classrooms.
Erald Kolasi's column appears Mondays in the Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ekolasi@cavalierdaily.com.
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