Hope in Dover

A battle over science is being waged in this country right now. \nInterestingly, the war rages not in science labs or peer-reviewed scientific journals, but in school boards, the courts and public opinion.\nThe fight concerns intelligent design, which is pushed as an alternative to Darwinian evolution that ought to be taught to impressionable high school students. \nThe Kansas State Board of Education made an unfortunate decision Tuesday. One part of its decision expects students to be aware of the controversy regarding evolution. The use of the word "controversy" might be misleading, but it's difficult to disagree with the premise. Evolutionary scientists don't have all the answers to all the specific questions regarding life's emerging complexities, and students ought to know that. This is just an honest part of science.\nThe problem is with the second part of the board's decision. It changes the definition of science to no longer limit it to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. The clear implication is that the supernatural might now be included in science classrooms. This is a thinly veiled maneuver by the proponents of ID.\nID examines certain complexities present in biological systems and concludes that they are too complex to have been the products of mutation and natural selection, the mechanism that evolution posits. ID supporters' favorite targets are the eye and the bacterial flagellum, intricate systems with many subparts that must coordinate to function properly.\nQuestioning whether the current model of evolution could result in these structures is fine; it is science. But ID "science" goes terribly wrong in the next step of its argument. It claims because these systems are so complex, an intelligent designer that transcends the laws of nature must be responsible. ID's founder, Michael Behe, readily admits that ID offers no explanation for the mechanism by which a designer would design. It merely claims the existence of this intelligent designer. \nID will never belong in the realm of science because it is not falsifiable. Scientists can only disprove theories by designing experiments. But because this intelligent designer transcends the natural world, no experiment designed by a scientist can possibly disprove the designer's supernatural existence.\nThere are many acceptable venues for ID's discussion, but science classrooms are not one of them. \nAlthough I am sure science will win the war, I fear we are currently losing the battle. But as disheartening as the Kansas decision was, I found hope the same day in Dover, Penn. \nIn that school district, a court case is challenging the mandate that students are to be informed about ID, but it won't be decided until January. However, the voters in Dover already made their decision. Of the nine board members who voted for the ID policy, eight were up for re-election. \nAll eight lost.