You don’t go to high school biology class to learn particular facts; you go to understand the general framework of evolutionary theory. Rather than contradicting any single fact, Intelligent Design undermines the entire intellectual basis of biology.
The central message of evolutionary theory is that complexity emerges spontaneously through purely natural processes. This is a difficult truth to grasp, and it flies in the face of centuries of cultural tradition. The Biblical narrative says that the world was created especially for humans, and that we’re the most important thing in it. Evolution says that the world came into being as a series of contingent accidents, and that humans are no more special or important than slime molds or wolverines or ferns or sea cucumbers (and that we’re much more like these creatures than unlike them.) If your science teacher tells you that a magical force is guiding evolution, you’re being let off the intellectual hook. Rather than having to struggle with the counterintuitive idea of self-assembling molecules, you’re comforted by a thought-terminating fantasy.
We’re at a critical juncture in technological history. It won’t be long before we can just print out DNA sequences at will to create custom organisms. If kids are coming out of American schools thinking that biology is being guided by a magical force with intentionality, that’s going to be a severe intellectual handicap. It isn’t just scientists who need to understand these things. Ordinary people will need to vote for policymakers who regulate and fund biotechnology, and will need to vote with their dollars and opinions as to whether the products of biotech take hold. We’ll need to understand that the line between “natural” and “artificial” is, well, artificial, that living things are made of the same molecules as everything else, following the same physical rules. We’ll need to understand the profound similarities between biological viruses, computer viruses and our own self-assembling nanobots. We’ll need to know that humans are part of nature and not separate from it, and that evolution is mindless and difficult to predict. I shudder to imagine the intellectual damage that ID does in such a world.
Hi Ethan,
Nifty stuff on the blog as I discover more. A small note, the link to Quora is off, it is http://www.quora.com/Does-teaching-Intelligent-Design-in-schools-really-damage-science
Amit
Thanks for the tip, fixing now.
A couple thoughts:
Firstly, I think the strongest argument against ID is that it has no purpose. Creationism actually presents a different sequence of events, but ID is just saying “Yeah, evolution happens, but we think God still guides it”. Okay, fine, discuss that in a philosophy class, not science.
Second(ly?), I think “contingent accidents” is a misnomer. Evolution has no purpose, so there can’t be accidents. Evolution is just as natural and blind a process as magnetism or weather patterns. I know you know this, and most people know this, but we should still strive for accuracy.
Thirdly, once again, great article :D
It’s also damaging in that evolution is literally the entire basis of modern biology–nothing makes sense without it. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a great example and maybe the most salient to public health, but there are tons of others. Pretending that these things just happen rather than evolve as a result of processes we can understand is actively destructive and bad for humanity.
>The more I learn about the body, the more random and haphazard its “design” looks.
Check out the recurrent laryngeal nerve for another bizarre evolutionary oddity. This is one of my personal favorites, because it’s just so weird–and makes no sense except in the light of evolution.
Well it doesn’t do any damage if it’s true. Just because different species are made of the same building blocks doesn’t mean they’re relatives. It could mean that they have the same painter.
We’re not just talking about shared building blocks. Every organism on earth has stretches of DNA in common. You can trace all the lineages back to a single shared ancestor. If there’s an intelligent designer, why does the design look exactly the same as if all of life just emerged by happenstance? Why would an intelligent designer construct the human throat so that you’re at risk of choking every time you swallow anything? Why not just have separate tubes for eating and breathing? The more I learn about the body, the more random and haphazard its “design” looks.
I agree. It is possible that all organisms were designed by the same creator, rather than evolved simultaneously; I’m not so arrogant as to say that I know for sure what happened.
But let me ask you this… why? Why would I assume that God created everything, when the rise life on Earth can be explained just fine without His involvement? I really need a reason, and “Genesis 1:1” just isn’t enough for me, in the same way that the ancient Egyptian story of creation isn’t enough for me.
I mean, if God Himself descends from on high and tells me how He created everything, then yes, I’ll happily believe. But until then, consider me a skeptic.