Seems Jerry Pournelle (view of Sunday Jul 7th 08 at jerrypournelle.com) can’t seem to understand why otherwise sensible people are so adamant about not letting ID be taught in schools. The argument is that if the people represented by a given school board wish to have it taught, then let them teach it. Local control is superior to being dictated to by well meaning faceless beaureaucrats at the State level, and so on.
Here’s the problem with that thinking.
School boards are composed of a wide variety of people, most of whom aren’t scientists. School boards are qualified to name the football team, hire teachers that aren’t child molestors, and so on. There is a mix of serious and responsible things and the frivolous. These things are well within the purview of what a school board is designed to do. But as a rule these same school board members are NOT qualified to decide what gets taught as science.
So, I’m advocating credentialism, is that it? Yes. I am. Teachers have to have a license to teach, so why shouldn’t school boards be likewise regulated if you intend to let them influence what gets taught?
Dr. Pournelle correctly points out that science doesn’t know how the universe was created. A big bang has been postulated which isn’t provable with present day knowledge. Strictly speaking, magical creation is just as valid a guess as far as mankind’s knowledge allows. Science by definition requires repeatability, so in a certain sense how the universe was created is beyond the purview of day to day science and more of a philosophical matter. How did life start on earth? Panspermia? Emergent property? We don’t know. Evolution theory tells us how life adapts to the environment, not how it came to be. Since we don’t know, goes the argument, then ID ought to be discussed as being just as valid.
The problem with that thinking is that of all possible hypotheses, ID deliberately invokes magic. While it can be philosophically argued that the big bang may well have used magic, note that the underlying thinking is that the big bang used a natural process, albeit one that we don’t know much about… yet. In other words, saying “we don’t know” is *not* equivalent to a claim of magic.
Also note that I have referred to the beginnings of life as competing hypotheses. Not theories. This is important. What we teach in school about science is theory. We teach how hypotheses work and how they are different from theories. Meanwhile advocates of ID refer to their pet as a “theory” and ask for it to be taught in school. Well, let’s see now… a theory ought to be able to make provable predictions as well as explain the past. So what possible prediction could ID offer… more magic? That’s not a theory. And to be blunt, I don’t think it qualifies as hypothesis, either. In fact, anything that invokes magic ought to be disqualified on account of failing the laugh test. My scientific hypothesis is that my cat is under the control of supernatural, magical beings who originated in another galaxy. And since you can’t prove that it’s not, my hypothesis is just as good as yours. And I demand that it be taught to your kids in public school because I have convinced the local rubes that I’m right. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it? It IS stupid. ID isn’t a hypothesis that passes the laugh test, much less a theory.
As a last item, we’ll talk about the elephant in the room. ID is a “wedge” designed to give scientific sounding cachet to an otherwise religious point of view. Here’s a scientific test: using a random poll, ask say 100 scientists for a thumbs up or thumbs down on ID. I’m thinking you’ll usually get 100 out of 100 thumbs down; once in a while you’ll get a thumbs up, but that’s because there are trained people who lose it (“flood geologists” come to mind.) In other words, ID isn’t a science issue supported by scientists. ID is believed in by fundmentalist religious types (for obvious reason), the woefully ignorant, and the left side of the bell curve types who at any other time would be just as fervent about astrology.
