Not So Intelligent Design
Sermon, October 21, 2005
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

As I am sure that you are aware, a court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is currently hearing the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District concerning whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in the local schools’ science classes as an alternative to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.  This case, along with other efforts to promote “Intelligent Design,” has drawn significant attention, as well it should, because its result could not only affect how science is taught and whether our students are able to compete in the scientific world, but also how many other subjects are taught as well.  For if a group of religiously motivated individuals can convince a local school board to require that Intelligent Design be taught in the classroom, then other groups will be encouraged to push that their understanding of certain subjects be taught as well.

Leonard Pitts Jr., a nationally syndicated opinion’s page columnist, pointed out in a recent column how this might apply to the teaching of history.  A museum in Vicksburg, Mississippi “featured an exhibit claiming the [Ku Klux] Klan was …formed to save the South from corrupt black governments and that, while ‘many people suffered, some no doubt innocently,’ the night riders sought only to ‘restore some semblance of decency.’”  Pitts asks, “When we teach schoolchildren about the Klan, must we give equal time to this view?” 

And what about teaching the Holocaust; should teachers be required to tell their students that some individuals deny the Holocaust ever occurred?  Of course, science is different than history, but there is no reason to expect that the same reasoning does not apply.  Indeed, groups have already tried to have certain books removed from the curriculum, so we should expect that some groups might try to have books –or at least specific ideas—added to the curriculum.

In the case in Pennsylvania, the Dover School Board passed, after long and heated debate, a resolution that stated, “Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.”  The school board developed a statement that was to be read to each ninth-grade biology class; when some teachers refused to read it, the assistant superintendent stepped in and read it.
With regard to Intelligent Design, the primary reason that we should be opposed to its being taught in our schools is that it is a religiously based concept and not science.  Some of you probably recall the efforts, during the 1980’s, to bring what was called “Scientific Creationism” into the classrooms. 

The credo of the “Creation Research Society” stated “The Bible is the written Word of God, and because we believe it to be inspired throughout, all of its assertions are historically and scientifically true in all of the original autographs.”  Creationists developed a quasi-scientific argument purporting to demonstrate the validity of the biblical creation story.  Creationism was so blatantly religious that school districts dismissed it out of hand as a violation of church and state. 

Intelligent Design has attempted to avoid the church-state problem by not dealing with religion at all.  There is no reference to the biblical creation story or even to God.  Although those who promote this idea clearly believe that God is the intelligence behind the Design, they do not come right out and say it.  Nevertheless, it is obvious that Intelligent Design is an effort to bring religion into the classroom.  As Jerry Coyne wrote in The New Republic, Intelligent design…is the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions.”

Furthermore, Intelligent Design does not qualify as science.  In an article entitled “Show Me the Science,” Daniel Dennett points out that the proponents of intelligent design have not done “experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding,” nor “observations from the fossil record” or any other scientific field “that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.”

What makes science science, as opposed to say religion, is that its theories can be tested and either proven or disproved.  That is not the case, however, with Intelligent Design.  Its basic argument is that life as we know it is too intricate and complicated to have come about without some intelligence.  In essence, it is a form of the theological argument from design for the existence of God which I studied –along with its refutations—in an undergraduate philosophy of religion course.

Those who favor intelligent design argue that evolution is “just a theory.”  But to say that evolution is just a theory is, in and of itself, not a viable criticism.  Some theories are worthless and have been demonstrated to be false.  Others are still being tested.  And still others, like evolution, have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.  For if one calls into question evolution, where proof is overwhelming, then science itself would be worthless since virtually all theories could be questioned.

That is not to say that evolution answers all questions or that there are no gaps in the theory; scientists continue to experiment, learn and revise Darwin’s original theory.  But evolution is a solid scientific theory.

Intelligent design is not and its arguments cannot be scientifically tested.  We can’t set up an experiment to determine if it is so.  It is not science and therefore has no place in the science curriculum.  As Kenneth Woodward, a religion writer, concludes in a recent article, “The danger in intelligent design is not just that it is bad science, but that it seeks to enlist evidence from science in the service of religious truth while denying evolutionary processes like mutation and natural selection.”

Next Shabbat we will begin reading B’reisheet, the book of Genesis, which contains the stories of creation.  These are significant stories, which teach us a lot, but they are religious stories, not scientific stories.  To read them as a scientific account of creation is to misread them and to miss their deep and abiding religious message. 

Intelligent Design is not scientifically based, but is a clear attempt to bring religious ideology into the classroom and therefore should not be allowed in the public schools.

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