Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published in 1859, and the theory that life on Earth is in a constant state of evolution was around even before that. What columnist Zack Smith seems unable to grasp is the fact that the theory of evolution has, in fact, been subject to “critical analysis” for 150 years and has been proven every time.
The theory of intelligent design, which Smith acknowledges the sponsor of this bill “probably favors” (though Smith calls it “creationism” — get with the program, Zack; it hasn’t been called that since the Supreme Court shot it down in the 1980s), has only been around as a cohesive theory since 1984, though variations of it go back centuries. It has been subject to “critical analysis,” in its current form for 25 years, and in its prior form for decades.
But while evolution has held up under repeated scientific scrutiny, the central tenet of intelligent design, the concept of “irreducible complexity,” has failed every scientific test — every “critical analysis,” if you will — it has undergone.
I have no problem with bringing students up to date on the valid, scientific, “critical analysis” of both evolution and intelligent design, since such a curriculum would clearly show evolution to be valid science and intelligent design to be religious dogma with a thin layer of pseudo-scientific veneer thrown over it. But what this bill, like others struck down before it, seeks to do is present intelligent design proponents’ junk science against evolution and in favor of intelligent design, claiming it to be equal to rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific investigations over the past 150 years which have shown evolution to be fact and intelligent design to be bunk.
That’s not “critical analysis” — it’s religious indoctrination which has no place in a science class.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this column.
