Discussion Group Report

In 2005 Daniel Dennett responded to a statement by President Bush about intelligent design with an article in the New York Times. President Bush announced in August 2005 that he was in favor of teaching about "intelligent design" in the public schools." I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. This was followed a week later by Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee who made the same point. "Teaching both intelligent design and evolution doesn't force any particular theory on anyone." He said, "I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

In his article Mr. Dennett asks the question, "Is intelligent design a legitimate school of scientific thought?" Throughout the rest of his article he proceeds to show that it is not a legitimate scientific theory but only a ploy to get religion taught in our public schools.

He starts off by explaining why a determined band of naysayers would like to shake America's confidence in evolution. He explains, "the fundamental scientific idea of evolution by natural selection is not just mind-boggling; natural selection, by executing God's traditional task of designing and creating all creatures great and small, also seems to deny one of the best reasons we have for believing in God. So there is plenty of motivation for resisting the assurances of the scientists and biologists. Nobody is immune to wishful thinking."

He states, "…No intelligent design hypothesis has ever been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon, including evolution. It has no content. When intelligent design proponents argue that Darwin's evolution by natural selection hasn't explained everything yet, this is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology hasn't explained everything yet but intelligent design hasn't tried to explain anything. To formulate a competing hypothesis, the intelligent design folks would have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be or how he might have accomplished his goal of creating all life on earth."

The Discovery Institute, the conservative organization that has helped to put intelligent design on the map, complains that its members face hostility from the established scientific journals. But establishment hostility is not the real hurdle to intelligent design. If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, trying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology. Remember cold fusion? The establishment was incredibly hostile to that hypothesis, but scientists around the world rushed to their labs in the effort to explore the idea, in hopes of sharing in the glory if it turned out to be true. Mr. Dennett concludes by quoting George Gilder, a long time affiliate of the Discovery Institute, who has said, "Intelligent design itself does not have any content." Mr. Dennett then concludes, "Since there is no content, there is no 'controversy' to teach about in biology class."

It is the opinion of the author that we should make all efforts to keep our public schools from including intelligent design in our science curriculum. We would not let the competing theory of astrology be taught in our astronomy classes. We would not let the competing theory that "evils humors" can cause illness to replace the germ theory of disease in medical school. We would not allow the Ptolemy theory of an earth centered universe to share equal time with the Copernican theory of a sun centered universe.

Using the same reasoning, "intelligent design" should not be given the respect of being taught as a competing theory with Darwin's natural selection in explaining the evolution of life on earth.