Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [44]
1. Scientists do not accept Intelligent Design as science.
2. Therefore Intelligent Design is not taught in public school science classes.
3. I think Intelligent Design is science.
4. Therefore I will lobby the government to force teachers to teach Intelligent Design as science.
This is what I call the God of the Government argument (pace the God of the Gaps argument discussed in the last chapter): If you can’t persuade teachers to teach your idea based on its own merits, see if you can get the government to force teachers to teach it. If I were trying to force my theory of history into public school history classes, my actions would be considered ludicrous. It is just as absurd when Intelligent Design theorists push their way into science lesson plans. In the free marketplace of ideas, turning to the government to force your theory on others—particularly children—goes against every principle of liberty upon which modern Western democracies are founded. It seems, however, that science might not fall under such moral principles of liberty—unless we fight for it.
If I were a religious believer, I would be embarrassed by the latest round of attempts to legislate these beliefs into the public schools. If creationists want their doctrines taught in public school science classes, they need first to develop a science, and then to convince scientists that their scientific ideas merit inclusion based on the quality of the arguments and evidence.
How Science Makes It into
Science Textbooks and Classrooms
Since we live in a free society, parents are free to choose whatever schools they want their children to attend, or even to homeschool their children if they are dissatisfied with the choice of public and private schools in their area. If all schools were private, and if the education of children were strictly a function of the free market, there would be no high-profile court cases and school board battles over evolution and creationism; there would be no debate over evolution and Intelligent Design. Creationist parents would be free to send their kids to private schools where creationism is taught. Indeed, some creationist parents do this now (or they opt for homeschooling programs that include a creationist unit in the biology curriculum).
Conflict arises out of the fact that public schools are funded by the government, and since we are the government, taxpayers feel that they should have some say in what is taught in public schools. This sounds like a reasonable argument, until we carry it to its logical conclusion—all parents would be justified in demanding equal time for their particular religious, political, or social beliefs. Christians would want a Christian slant in the curriculum, Muslims would want a Muslim slant, Native Americans a Native American slant, and so forth. Education would dissolve into an endless parade of beliefs given equal time, with no core curriculum on which to focus students’ attention. (To get just a flavor of exactly what that “so forth” would entail, visit the appendix.)
So how does a new scientific discovery or theory make it into the science curriculum? It usually takes a long time, because science is a fairly conservative institution with high and exacting standards of evidence. It is typically years before experimental results trickle down from scientific conferences and journals into textbooks and lecture notes; and it is often decades before a new theory displaces an existing and commonly taught theory. Scientists face these hurdles all the time. The case of the microbiologist Lynn Margulis is instructive.
Lynn Margulis is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges the