The language of life
IN the border war between science and faith, the doctrine of "intelligent design" is a sly subterfuge -- a marzipan confection of an idea presented in the shape of something more substantial.
As many now understand -- and as a federal court ruled in December -- intelligent design is the bait on the barbed hook of creationist belief, intended to sidestep legal restrictions on the teaching of religion in public-school science classes. The problem is not its underlying theology -- a matter properly left to individual religious belief -- but its disingenuous masquerade as a form of legitimate scientific inquiry.
Proponents of intelligent design argue that the diversity of life can be explained best by a guiding intelligence -- be it a supreme deity or a space alien -- not the undirected action of evolution and natural selection. By the tenets of intelligent design, life in the universe is simply too complex to have happened by accident. Supporters argue that theirs is a scientific theory that can be tested through experiments, like other scientific ideas. The systematic campaign to make intelligent design part of school curriculums as a scientific alternative to the teaching of evolution has triggered dozens of legal and legislative disputes in 31 states, including California.
Until recently, however, those scientists most qualified to defend evolutionary biology were strangely reluctant to confront these dissenters publicly. Now, in three quite different books -- a collection of essays, a biography of Charles Darwin's intellectual life and a debunker's guide to the debate -- some of the nation's most distinguished thinkers step forward as expert witnesses to challenge the ruse of intelligent design directly.
Taken together, these works are essential reading for anyone who sincerely wants to "teach the controversy" as intelligent design advocates so often urge -- or to understand its dishonesty. As distillations of the best thinking on this ploy, they ought to be required reading for every high school science teacher and school board member in America.
In exploring the shortcomings of intelligent design, these writers also highlight a broader struggle over the evidence of existence that is as old as science and revealed religion.
