Experts face off on religious, scientific theory
By Nicola Bunick
Professors debated the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design theory in schools at Tuesday's lecture titled. "Religion in Public Schools? Debating Creation, Evolution and intelligent design."
intelligent design theory accepts most of the premises of modern evolutionary theory, except it claims that a designer acted purposefully at certain points in time to create the complex structures found in nature that proponents of intelligent design theory claim cannot be explained by natural science. Examples of such structures include wings and eyes.
Columbia University professor Kent Greenawalt said the First Amendment permits teaching intelligent design theory as part of a biology or natural science curriculum as long as it is presented solely as one possible model for dealing with gaps in current evolutionary theory.
"The theory is not science," said Greenawalt. "It is based on science, but it is really about the limits of science."
Greenawalt sees nothing unconstitutional about presenting intelligent design theory alongside the teaching of evolution, but he feels that to teach it as the sole explanation for these gaps would be analogous to the teaching of religious doctrine.
"Only religious reasons would lead [intelligent design theory] to be taught as the sole alternative to modern evolutionary theory," said Greenawalt. "My claim is that if the only basis for teaching it is religious premises, then it counts as religion even if it doesn't exert any religious propositions."
The second speaker in the panel, Notre Dam law professor Gerard Bradley directly opposed Greenawalt's argument. He contended that by excluding intelligent design from science curriculum, schools are in fact in danger of violating the First Amendment. Bradley said natural materialism, the belief that physical events have natural causes, which is a key component of evolutionary theory, should not be taught as absolute scientific truth. He argued that there remain many aspects of the evolutionary process that science cannot guarantee have natural causes.
"If you exclude intelligent design theory from science, you are in great danger of collapsing science and material naturalism," said Bradley. "If you do that, then there is great danger of collapsing science into philosophical materialism."
Bradley said that by not teaching intelligent design as an alternative to material naturalism, a school is projecting the image that philosophical materialism is the only possible view of the world.
This means that all aspects of life were determined simply by principles of cause and effect and there is no free choice.
"Public schools are required by the constitution to avoid causing students to believe the school thinks that a particular comprehensive world view is true," Bradley said.
Not teaching intelligent design theory, in Bradley's opinion is the equivalent of teaching the doctrine of philosophical materialism as a general world view, which would be the same as the teaching of a religion.
The third speaker, Professor Steven Green of Willamette University, voiced similar sentiments to Greenawalt in that he felt there was nothing constitutionally amiss with addressing the fact that there are gaps in modern evolutionary theory.
"The main problem with intelligent design theory is that it confuses religion and science," Green said.
He deviated from Greenawalt's position and said intelligent design theory poses the problem that this would require the teachers to further explain and validate the theory, which could be interpreted as a violation of the First Amendment.
"Schools should explain the proper role of science and define evolution properly by explaining that it is not about the ultimate cause of life but of how it developed," said Green. "They should acknowledge that there are multiple views but they should not attempt to teach them."
All News Stories for Wednesday, April 16, 2003
