Intelligent Design of School Curricula

Since Pat Robert­son has now damned the good vot­ers of Dover, PA last week and the state of Kansas has turned back the clock there by about 80 years, I thought I might put forth my opin­ion on the con­cept of Intel­li­gent Design. Per­son­al­ly, I am all for the the teach­ing of Intel­li­gent Design in pub­lic schools: in phi­los­o­phy class. In the end, the leap between the hard facts of sci­ence and the assump­tion that all the uni­verse around us has been cre­at­ed by a high­er being is one of faith. To dimin­ish this by demot­ing faith to some class­room instruc­tion does a dis­ser­vice to those who believe in such things. While it may be a very remote anal­o­gy, let me ask this: my wife and love one anoth­er very much, and it is the rea­son we are mar­ried and togeth­er (arguably) for the pur­pose of repro­duc­tion (par­ents, don’t get your hopes too soon, I’m just mak­ing a point). How­ev­er, it would be ridicu­lous to teach love in biol­o­gy class. It is psychology.

And so it is with Intel­li­gent Design. I, as a Chris­t­ian, believe in a high­er being and that He cre­at­ed the uni­verse and all the things, both liv­ing and non liv­ing, in it. I also believe in sci­ence. These two have nev­er felt like a con­flict to me, as one requires facts and the oth­er faith. Sci­ence is the pur­suit of truth based on evi­dence with blind igno­rance toward pre­con­ceived notions. Faith, on the oth­er hand, is a belief of some­thing that can­not be known. I do not believe in a God because of some proof laid about before me, but often times, in spite of all evi­dence that may actu­al­ly con­tra­dict such a belief. That is what makes one’s faith spe­cial and unique: belief with­out know­ing (that is, in fact, the very def­i­n­i­tion of reli­gious faith).

Let’s applaud the peo­ple of Dover, PA (not curse them, Pat). They’ve decid­ed that they’re reli­gious beliefs (and their right not to believe if they so choose) and they’re chil­dren’s beliefs need not be ingrained in sci­ence class. Biol­o­gy will con­tin­ue to be based on the clear­ly defined the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion and reli­gion— reli­gion will be held in its tra­di­tion­al high regard, as some­thing that tran­scends the phys­i­cal world we learned about in biol­o­gy and physics.