Intelligent design bill aims to create momentum for ’07

A little-publicized bill that would allow the teaching of intelligent design in Missouri classrooms never made it to the floor of the Missouri General Assembly this year. However, proponents of the Missouri Science Education Act say the issue will likely be back before lawmakers in 2007.

Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, chairwoman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, said the bill’s sponsors wanted to use this year’s committee hearings to generate momentum for the measure. Cunningham’s committee approved the bill by a 7-6 vote in March.

The Missouri Science Education Act would require sixth- through 12th-grade science teachers to engage in “critical analysis” of evolution as a theory rather than teaching it as an accepted fact.

Sen. Bill Alter, R-Jefferson City, who introduced a similar bill in the Senate, said it was necessary to continue discussion of the issue. Alter said both evolution and intelligent design are theories and should be handled as such in the classroom.

“If it’s taught the same as any other science, I’m all for it,” he said.

The science education act also represents a subtle tactical shift by intelligent design proponents, said Jay Wexler, an associate professor of law at Boston University. Since a U.S. district judge in Dover, Pa., ruled in December that a resolution requiring the teaching of intelligent design violates the Constitution, proponents are more aggressively pointing out the gaps in evolutionary theory while attempting to change the definition of science in the classroom.

“Their strategies evolve over time,” said Wexler, who thinks the Missouri bill still raises constitutional concerns but says it is more likely to be accepted than the Dover resolution.

Opponents of an intelligent design requirement in Missouri classrooms, such as Rep. Sara Lampe, D-Springfield, say the legislation is more about discrediting evolution than improving standards.

“It’s very clever to come at the intelligent design issue from this angle,” Lampe said.

Although the proposal didn’t generate much discussion among legislators beyond Cunningham’s committee, the public debate over intelligent design showed no signs of abating.

In February, Marc Strand, a scientist with Eastman Chemical Co. who lectures on the origins of life as a hobby, told a gathering at Columbia’s Christian Chapel that intelligent design theory marks the halfway point between creationism and evolution. Proponents of intelligent design believe the world is so complex that there had to be a designer, but they stop short of arguing that the designer is God, Strand said.

Neither intelligent design nor evolution can be scientifically tested, he said, and therefore neither should be taught in a science class. Both theories are matters of faith, in his view, and belong in a philosophy or religion studies classroom.

Strand acknowledges he believes in creationism.

“I go all the way,” he said. “If I can’t believe the first few chapters of the book I’m supposed to base my life on, how can I believe the rest of it?”

Such attitudes shouldn’t surprise anyone, says Kenneth Miller, a professor at Brown University. Miller, who gave a series of lectures on evolution at MU in April, said the attacks on evolution as a theory obscure the fact that intelligent design lacks any scientific basis whatsoever.

“There is no controversy about evolution in the scientific community,” Miller said, “and this particular bit of misrepresentation is simply designed to undermine the teaching of evolution in a way that will aid religiously derived ideas such as intelligent design.”

Miller says that evolutionary theory has been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny and that if proponents think intelligent design is legitimate science, they should be willing to subject it to the same standard.

“The fact that they seek political means to inject their ideas into the science classroom shows just how threadbare their so-called theories really are,” Miller said.

Theories are the backbone of science, says Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which supports the teaching of evolution.

Scott, who received her doctorate from MU, said evolution is like the theory of gravity — “exceedingly well-supported and accepted by scientists.”

Indeed, Niall Shanks, a professor of history and philosophy of science at Wichita State University, said evolution is a “well-established branch of science,” citing evidence at the genetic level, relatedness between species and fossil data.

“The evidence for intelligent design is nonexistent,” Shanks said. “It’s a theological theory. It has no place in a biology class.”

Scott is concerned that the Missouri Science Education Act could undermine science education standards and that its sponsors are trying to “micromanage high school curriculum.” Lampe agrees, pointing out that standards in education are constantly changing and should not be bound by statutes. The science education act, she said, would limit the power of Missouri educators to set their own curriculum.

“I see it as taking away local control and putting in the hands of legislators what should be left to professionals,” she said.

Yet, even opponents of intelligent design say the two sides should be able to find common ground. Miller said evolutionary theory actually complements Christian teachings that God loves the world and provides for it.

“The notion that species are part of a common fabric of life and that the providential plan of the Creator was to produce a natural process that accomplished his ends is not at all contradictory to any Christian,” he said.

Nonetheless, Shanks doesn’t think the debate will be resolved anytime soon.

“The matter won’t be settled by scientists,” he said, “it will be settled by judges in black robes.”