Evolution and Intelligent Design in the Classroom
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection.”
-Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, First edition
Published September 1, 2006
By Mary Crowley
Academy Contributor
The past year has certainly been a banner year for evolution. Research in genome sequencing that shed light on the inner workings of evolution was chosen by Science magazine as the top science achievement of the year. Charles Darwin graced the cover of Newsweek magazine to mark the opening of a large exhibit on his life and work at New York’s American Museum of Natural History.
The fossil of a 375-million-year-old fish found in the Arctic was reported to be the missing link in the evolution from fish to land animals. And widespread fear of the potential for the deadly avian flu to evolve into a pandemic-ready human form brought evolution’s less desirable potential to the front pages of newspapers and the front seat of lab benches seeking a vaccine.
Ironically, however, the year also featured a courtroom skirmish over the teaching of evolution between high school parents and proponents of intelligent design (ID), who hold that the natural world is too complex to have been developed by natural selection. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican, ruled for the parents, calling intelligent design “thinly veiled creationism” that is “breathtaking in its inanity.”
As Hessy Taft, an associate professor of chemistry at St. John’s University, explains, “With the publication of his Origin of Species in 1859, Charles Darwin forever changed the way we view the natural world.” Yet the ongoing assault on the teaching of evolution, and of science in general, by proponents of ID convinced her and a team of other scientists and science educators of the need to organize a recent conference of The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy).
A Boot Camp for Those on the Front lines
Entitled “Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science,” and held at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice on April 21-22, 2006, the event—a sort of boot camp for those on the front lines—brought together researchers, philosophers, and teachers to review the nature of science and evolution, how it should be taught, and what strategies are required to keep creationism out of public schools.
The timing for such an event couldn’t be better. The state of the teaching of science in the nation is indeed poor. According to the State of State Science Standards 2005—the first comprehensive study of science academic standards in primary and secondary schools conducted since 2000—22 states received grades of “D” or “F,” and nine states plus the District of Columbia received a “C.”
Conference presenters Gerald Skoog, director of the Center for the Integration of Science Education and Research, Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, and Gerald F. Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, outlined several strategies to raise the quality of science teaching—and the teaching of evolution—in the nation’s schools.
How to teach evolution has become a front line in the American culture war. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught along with evolution in public schools, and 42% of Americans are strict creationists who believe that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time,” according to a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People.
Teaching Intelligent Design Alongside Evolution
On August 2, 2005, President Bush said that intelligent design should be taught along with evolution in schools “so people can understand what the debate is about.” A few weeks later, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican said to be considering a 2008 White House run, agreed with the President.
Intelligent design is, indeed, intelligently designed—but as a strategy to derail teaching of true science, not as a true scientific theory. Developed in the wake of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that teaching creationism in schools violates the separation of church and state, ID veils its creationist roots by avoiding the mention of God. Since 1996, it has been carefully crafted and disseminated by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank located in Seattle, whose Center for Science and Culture has been at the forefront of a movement promoting ID and its teaching in schools. “Teach the controversy” is the rallying call that the Institute promotes, which the President seems to endorse.
However, there is no bona fide controversy and the issue cannot be framed as a debate over evolution, because ID is not a competing scientific theory. The definition of a theory in science is that it must be based on observable facts, and it must be testable. Evolution is an example of a theory, as are gravity, relativity, the existence of the atom, and countless other scientific concepts. Over time, of course, as new evidence is obtained, a theory can be either reinforced or modified, or overturned, and debate over theories is at the heart of science.
The Test of Time
Evolution has stood the test of time by countless confirming observations. Put simply, the theory is that natural selection— the process by which individuals (or genes) compete for limited resources—favors those that are best suited to survive and reproduce in a particular environment. Random genetic mutations could either be detrimental or beneficial for an organism, but the latter are those that enhance the organism’s reproductive success. Over eons, such mutations lead certain features in a species to persist—and certain species to proliferate, while others die out.
Uncovering the genetic code has also shown the remarkable commonality of the human genome with those of other mammals and even of yeast, lending further support to the evolutionary premise that living things share a common ancestry. At the conference a host of distinguished scholars—Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, Leslie C. Aiello, president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and Sydel Silverman, professor emerita at the Graduate Center at The City University of New York and a conference organizer—offered detailed presentations on how their work on protein machines, primate fossils, and the culture factor in human evolution demonstrated scientific support for the theory of natural selection.
Intelligent design fails on both basic tenets of a scientific theory: design cannot be observed, and it cannot be tested. Hence, it falls into the realm of philosophy or folklore—no more deserving of attention than the Flat Earth Society. “There is no place for a discussion of intelligent design in a science class,” says Taft. “It’s as ludicrous as it would be to discuss it in gym [class]—it has no relevance to the subject. The only place it might belong would be in a philosophy class.”
Human Life as an Engineering Wonder
ID proponents hold that human life is an engineering wonder that could not possibly have developed in accordance with the accidental, gene-by-gene fits and starts of evolution, hence pointing to a more intelligent “designer.” A common example they offer is the human eye.
In fact, even this prototypical example fails under minimal scientific scrutiny, as conference speaker Wen-Hsiung Li, James Watson professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, explained in a talk on gene duplication as a force of evolution. The necessary differentiation and fine-tuning of cellular processes required for species to evolve makes absolute sense in light of gene duplication, Li explained.
For example, genetic science traces predecessor ocular genes all the way back to the sightless bacteria at the base of the evolutionary tree. Various intermediate forms of “eyes” can be found in the fossil record and through comparative biology. Gene duplication—“a major force in evolution,” according to Li—is responsible for the development of the highly complex mammalian visual and olfactory senses from a common ancestor.
Philosophy—as well as theology—offers some interesting perspectives on how evolution and divinity need not negate each other—or default to ID. According to John F. Haught, distinguished research professor in the department of theology at Georgetown University, the question “why does life exhibit complex ‘design’?” can be answered in a number of distinct yet correct ways: “Life exhibits complex design because of natural selection. Or, life exhibits complex design because of divine wisdom, love, and humility that endow nature with self-creative capacities essential for the world to become itself,” said Haught.
A Triumph of Education
In this way, evolution and God can coexist. Expanding on evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s famed aphorism, Haught concluded, “Nothing in theology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
In summer 2005, The New York Times editorialist Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote:
Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth—and humans with it –was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn’t a triumph of faith. It’s a failure of education.
By contrast, the presenters at “Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science” provided educators with a veritable arsenal of arguments, tactics, and ideas to take back into their classrooms and rationally discuss with their students and the community what science is and how evolution is a part of it. In an arena that has shaped up to be a pedagogical struggle for survival, Klinkenborg might well agree that this conference was a triumph of education.
Also read: Resolving Evolution’s Greatest Paradox
About the Author
Mary Crowley is a New-York-based writer specializing in medicine, policy, and science. She has contributed many of The New York Academy of Sciences’ eBriefings, particularly in ethics, genomic medicine, neuroscience, and psychology.
