Intelligent design, continued

(This looks like it's going to be a series.)

Bill Keezer has some some comments about intelligent design.

The stridency of the debate in some areas is remarkable. The ACLU and liberals are fighting tooth and claw (I'll keep the conceptual pun) to prevent its discussion in the public schools. Others consider discussing it out of place in high school science. Those favoring its presence in curricula, either want it there as a way to encourage belief in God or as a way to demonstrate what science is with an example of what it is not.

The ACLU has gained a reputation of fighting to keep any and all vestiges of religion out of the public schools, and indeed, apparently out of the public view. However, in their strident activism, there is a question that deserves asking: To the degree that Creation Science (CS), or Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory (ID/IOT) is a religious subject, does it belong in science classes?

I got in to a discussion on the subject of God and science in the Debunk Creation e-mail group, and the moderator allowed it to continue since it was demonstrating some very good points about science. And indeed, I'd love to have this same discussion in a high-school science class.

The issue I discussed, at great length, was, what sort of evidence could possibly count as proof that God exists, and is God the only possible explanation for various things?

Testimonials about miraculous healings and lives turned around once people accepted Christ were not definitive proof one way or the other because: a) people in other religious offer similar testimonials, and b) many people have equally startling changes in their mental, physical, and lifestyle health despite being agnostic or atheist.

Could we set up a study on the healing power of intercessory prayer? Many folks have done so, and published the reults. It seems that about half the studies show a positive response, half show a negative response, and a few show no response at all – about what you'd expect by random chance.

If we saw a positive response, what would it prove? What if the positive response was associated with only one particular faith? Would it mean there is a God hearing and acting on prayers? Or would it mean there's some mechanistic system in the universe that needs to be accessed using some particular formula, like a magic spell?

The current foes of ID, almost appear to be afraid in their intensity of effort to keep ID out of the public schools. In fact my friend, Peg, at What If? has commented on this more than once. I think it is because it does have a flavor of religion about it--intelligent design implying a designer(and executioner). So it provides a good cover for their motives. Generally the idea of the separation of church and state are argued, with ID being considered in the specific theistic doctrine group.

But if that were all that were involved, I can't think the reactions would be so strong. I suspect it is more along the lines of doctrinal purity, that no competing idea should be discussed or presented, possibly because they have no faith that it can be discussed in an insufficiently unfavorable way. Given the quality of teaching I have seen recently in the schools, it would not be able to be discussed, period. Few, if any, teachers would be able to discuss the material in the books successfully beyond the teacher's guide.

To be sure, I've seen any number of people who harbor a deep anti-religion bias. They see CS or ID/IOT as a way of sneaking Biblical literalism into public schools. Once the camel's nose is in the tent, the rest of the camel will follow, and the end result will be an American Taliban. And ironically, the best way to ensure this is to maintain implacable hostility toward any appearance of any religious thought anywhere near a school. Eventually, you get a backlash. People will get tired of being called unreasonable, or fundies, or the Taliban, and start saying, "OK, I'll show you what a real religious extremist looks like." Another approach is that people have heard religious moderates referred to as "Taliban kooks" so often, that when real Taliban kooks come along, no one will take the label seriously.

I, personally, get a bit tired in my discussions of CS and ID/IOT, because I see the same arguments brought up time and time again. It's a bit like the twelve-year-old who thinks he's being original when he asks, "Oh yeah? If God created everything, who created God?" Understand what you would presume to criticize, and that includes looking up what people in the field have said about the arguments you found so appealing in the tract you just read.