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PZ Myers on ID
PZ Myers of Pharyngula had an op-ed published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune arguing why ID should be left out of science classes. Here is an excerpt:
Science is a conservative process. Most college-level introductory textbooks contain only material that has stood the test of time and has been confirmed independently. ID proponents have not only failed to provide any evidence for their thesis, they aren't even trying. There are no labs doing research on this subject; all the papers the Discovery Institute has tried to publish are exercises in spin, in which they try to distort biology researchers' work to fit their preconceptions.
With no established body of results, no current work and no promising prospects for future research, why should ID be supported? It's a dead end. It is absurd to propose that our kids learn about a subject that no legitimate scientists are pursuing and that has no utility. With no track record to earn the respect of scientists and educators, ID is attempting to circumvent the accepted standards of testing and validation to sneak into our schoolrooms -- it's cheating. It takes a great deal of hard work and persistence and time and evidence to establish a scientific idea, work that should not be shirked by taking the easy route and asking the government to legislate a concept into the schoolrooms. Yet this is exactly the strategy ID proponents are following: spreading propaganda to persuade school boards and state education departments to insert the ideological dogma of ID into classrooms.
Contrast ID with how legitimate scientific work gets into the curriculum. There is an active ferment of new ideas, new experiments, and new evidence constantly bubbling up in the scientific literature. Many controversies work themselves out in the pages of Nature or Science or other journals, and prompt hypothesis testing and the gathering of new evidence. If an idea is well-supported by the evidence, it gains wider currency within the scientific community, and eventually works its way into the science textbooks. Biology books are written by biologists, not by the hodge-podge of lawyers, philosophers, theologians, rhetoricians and rare scientists willing to abandon scientific principles found in the ID movement. Textbook content should accurately reflect the general opinion of the scientists who do real work in a field.
I agree.
4 comments:
What in the world is ID?
Pate,
Sorry, "ID" is short for "intelligent design," which is a movement that is trying to be taken seriously as science. It argues that certain biological features show evidence of intelligent design. I've dealt with it a little bit on my blog. (See reviews of Darwin's Black Box and Defeating Darwinism on the sidebar, and here, which is one of my inaugural posts). Others are even better qualified commentators. (See Talk.origins or Panda's Thumb, again on the sidebar.)
I really like PZ and his blog, but you have to realize that activist biologists are as good an illustration of "ideological dogma" as the ID proponents they critique. The fact that they object to any mention of ID in bio textbooks shows they are claiming the exclusive right to expound the modern cosmological myth and will brook no alternate statements.
It is well known that a fair percentage of scientists, even biologists (not just LDS) have some form of belief in God. So the implicit position of activist biologists -- that no scientist would buy into any of that ID baloney -- is simply wrong on the facts. They are misrepresenting the facts and drawing blatantly flawed public policy inferences, then cloaking their position with the mantle of science. Most people aren't fooled by that approach, which only gets the biologists frustrated (they don't seem able to recognize the distinction between their politics and their science).
It is a wonder that with such strong scientific arguments and positions, they continue to lose ground in legislative debates over ID and similar proposals. Ever wonder why? It's a question they never seem to ask themselves.
Dave,
I do see your point. I think biologists need to do a better job of getting the "believing" ones out there to draw important distinctions. Right now Francis Collins and Ken Miller are two of the most notable examples of such.
Being against ID, as currently put forth by the Discovery Institute, does not necessarily equal disbelief in God or that God played an active role in creation. That's a tough message to get across to the man on the street, it seems to me.
On the other hand, it looks like the ID movement is here to stay for a while. Scientists may have no choice but to deal with it in class. ID, when properly understood, is not much help to creationists, it seems to me--especially young-earth creationists. The most rigorous claims of ID are pretty modest at the moment.
Ideologically, on this issue, I agree with Myers. On a practical level, I recognize a different approach may be needed.
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