Saket Vora

This column appeared in the 28 April, 2006 edition of The Technician, the student newspaper of NC State University.

Last Thursday I attended a forum on the subject of intelligent design versus evolution and what should be taught in public schools. Sponsored solely by the American Civil Liberties Union, a scientist and philosopher duo represented each side of the issue. The event proceeded as one might expect – both parties absolutely firm in their beliefs speaking to an audience full of people similarly firm in their beliefs with little chance of anyone changing their mind. Dr. Gerard Van Dyke, distinguished professor of botany at NC State and representing the pro-intelligent design side, at one point expressed his exasperation at the seemingly pointless nature of the discussion. While I doubt anyone left with a changed mind, I came away thinking more about misunderstandings that fuel this heated controversy.

Science and religion are two philosophical outlooks on life. Both of them can be used to understand the world and one’s life. Science is built upon the fundamental proposition that things are known and understood through observation, deduction, empirical data, and the reproducibility and independent verification of experiments. Basically, science has defined for itself the realm it can assert positive claims about. The realm of religion, however, includes elements that are not empirically testable or independently verifiable – ideas like heaven and hell, salvation for the soul, divine being(s), and miracles. In essence, the realm of religion is not as limited as science because by its very nature it can draw upon things in explanations and making normative claims that science cannot. Tensions arise when claims are made that appear to infringe upon the other’s realm.  The belief that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth grew tenuous because this could be refuted with the scientific method. Astronomers such as Galileo and Copernicus found that the geocentric view of the Church was unsupportable by their observations, and for this issue science took jurisdiction. The claim held by ‘young Earth creationists’ that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old is another that falls into the jurisdiction of science. If one subscribes to the proposition upon which science is founded, such a view is quite dubious.

It is concerning these claims where I feel that supporters of creationism misunderstand what science is trying to say. Science does not take a position on whether God exists or not. If an experiment could be designed to test for the existence of God, science could take a stab at it, but no such experiment exists that is reproducible, independently verifiable, or empirical. A commonly asked question is what existed before the Big Bang, and on this science cannot say. This should not be taken as a failing of science; rather, as an example of how science can respect its limitations. Because no observations can be extracted from before the Big Bang, science simply has nothing to base a claim on it.  Regarding evolution, Darwin did not set out to discredit religion – in fact, he himself was a religious man. He was trying to find a better explanation for his observations of the natural world. That explanation, the idea that organisms change and evolve over time, is not disputed by the scientific community and natural selection, which is the mechanism of evolution, has become one of the most important foundations of the biological sciences due to its resounding success at explaining the natural world.

Proponents of creationism say that intelligent design ‘liberates’ science, allowing ideas such as ‘intelligence’ or divine influence to be valid sources of evidence for theories. If you allow this though, you no longer have true science. Legal issues aside, is a high school science classroom truly the place to be teaching students something that is not even accepted as science? Dr. Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, admitted under cross-examination during the Dover trial that astrology would fall under his definition of a scientific theory. As for being independently verifiable, he stated, “I can’t point to an external community that would agree that [intelligent design] was well substantiated.”

I don’t have a problem with creationism being discussed in a high school philosophy class, but it simply is not justified in a high school science class. This controversy will continue to be debated all over the country, but as it does, I urge all parties involved to deeply examine the real source of their disagreements before resorting to pandering and heated rhetoric.