Don't teach design theory: scientists
By David Rood
October 21, 2005
AUSTRALIA'S scientific community has united to oppose the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools, saying it would open classrooms to unscientific views such as spoon-bending and alien abductions.
In a letter to newspapers, a coalition of 70,000 science researchers, academics and teachers have called on Australian governments and educators to stop intelligent design being taught as science.
"To do so (teach intelligent design) would make a mockery of Australian science teaching and throw open the door of science classes to similarly unscientific world views ” be they astrology, spoon-bending, flat-earth cosmology or alien abductions ” and crowd out the teaching of real science."
Intelligent design argues that life is too complex to have evolved solely through the evolutionary theory of natural selection, so there must have been a higher intelligence involved.
Critics have labelled the theory a front for biblical Creationism. In recent months, intelligent design has won the backing of US President George Bush and Catholic Cardinal George Pell.
"We don't want a simple dogmatic teaching of evolution," Sydney Archbishop Pell said in a recent speech. "We would want (teachers) to talk about the enormous, significant problems in the evolutionary history and these are freely admitted by people who study these things."
Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has also given the theory his qualified support, saying it should be taught in schools alongside evolution, if parents wished. In August, The Age revealed that Campus Crusade for Christ, a Christian group that operates in Australia's universities, was seeking support for the distribution of a DVD about intelligent design to every Australian high school for inclusion in the curriculum.
The open letter ” signed by groups such as the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Science Teachers Association ” argues that intelligent design, unlike evolution, does not qualify as a science.
For a theory to be considered scientific, the letter says, it must be testable by experiment or observation, the results should be able to be reproduced and the theory should explain more than is already known.
"But not being able to imagine or explain how something happened other than by making a leap of faith to supernatural intervention is no basis for any science: that is a theological or philosophical notion," it says.
The executive director of Focus on the Family Australia and an intelligent design supporter, Colin Bunnett, said comparing the theory with spoon-bending and aliens was extreme and puerile. Intelligent design was asking scientific, not hypothetical, questions about the theory of evolution, he said.
"Please Mr Evolutionist, give us your answer as to how it happened and if you can't then how are you proving it?" Mr Bunnett said. "If you can't explain it . are they not then taking a step of faith to say evolution is the answer." Focus on the Family is the Australian distributor of the DVD on intelligent design.
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