There's another article in today's New York Times about the debate over the teaching of evolution ("Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive" registration required to access NYT articles). The article focuses on the Discovery Institute, a (Seattle-based) foundation which is, depending on your point of view, either trying to undermine the notion of sicence (and evolution in particular), or to promote so-called "intelligent design." As usual, reading about what these people are doing got my blood pressure up.
The intelligent design (I.D.) crew claims that there is an honest debate (a controversy, even) over evolution and other ideas about mankind's origins. The "controversy" over evolution is a cultural (and religious) one, not a scientific one, yet the I.D. crowd tries to portray their concerns as science. Intelligent design is untestable, therefore it is not science. Evolution is about as widely accepted in the scientific community as any theory can be; there is no scientific debate over its verity.
One of the fundamental misunderstandings in this debate concerns what people mean by the word "theory," as evidenced in many religionists' pleas to teach or discuss both "theories." Wikipedia has an excellent description of the different ways people understand the word (from Science):
The word theory is misunderstood particularly often by laymen. The common usage of the word "theory" refers to ideas that have no firm proof or support; in contrast, scientists usually use this word to refer to bodies of ideas that make specific predictions.
The New York Times article continues:
As much philosophical worldview as scientific hypothesis, intelligent design challenges Darwin's theory of natural selection by arguing that some organisms are too complex to be explained by evolution alone, pointing to the possibility of supernatural influences. While mutual acceptance of evolution and the existence of God appeals instinctively to a faithful public, intelligent design is shunned as heresy in mainstream universities and science societies as untestable in laboratories.
Here's another example of how the I.D. people over-extend:
"We are in the very initial stages of a scientific revolution," said the center's director, Stephen C. Meyer, 47, a historian and philosopher of science recruited by Discovery after he protested a professor's being punished for criticizing Darwin in class.
These successes follow a path laid in a 1999 Discovery manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which sought "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies" in favor of a "broadly theistic understanding of nature."
The money aspect of I.D. has some annoyances:
A closer look shows a multidimensional organization, financed by missionary and mainstream groups - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides $1 million a year, including $50,000 of Mr. Chapman's $141,000 annual salary - and asserting itself on questions on issues as varied as local transportation and foreign affairs.
"We give for religious purposes," said Thomas H. McCallie III, its executive director. "This is not about science, and Darwin wasn't about science. Darwin was about a metaphysical view of the world."Huh? Darwin was about describing a naturalistic (i.e., non-supernatural) explanation for complexity in nature.
Intelligent design is a sort of successor idea to the simple creationism that was propounded in earlier decades.
"They have packaged their message much more cleverly than the creation science people have," said Eugenie C. Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, the leading defender of evolution. "They present themselves as being more mainstream. I prefer to think of that as creationism light."