Just finished watching “Expelled”, it’s the Ben Stein Intelligent Design documentary. Absolutely artful.
Cinematically, and especially as regards the usual intended purpose of documentaries (that is, pretending to objective investigative journalism while actually pushing an agenda), this movie was done very well.
With a powerful running comparative theme between Proponents of the (Darwinian) Theory of Evolution (hereafter “TEs”) and Communists/Nazis, combined with appeals to “free inquiry” and a well-portrayed “We’re the Victims, but all we want to do is Talk, and be heard”, the Proponents of Intelligent-Design-is-Legitimate-Science (hereafter “IDs”) have been given the best method I’ve yet seen for fighting their battle.
Where do I stand? Ideally, education would be out of the hands of government, and into the hands of private enterprise…which makes this argument mute. Parents could then choose to send their kids to whatever school taught what they wanted their kids to learn. Which due to economies of scale, would result in like-minded folk, who cared enough, clumping together (geographically) for the sake of their children’s education. Although give technology/standard-of-living another 10-15 years and your average U.S. citizen would be able to send their kids to a high-quality “virtual” classroom, complete with 10-20 other students connected to the teacher (and each other) simultaneously through streaming video/audio feeds with bevy of peripheral technology (digital drawing/writing tablets, digital books/source-material, et al). Of course this won’t be a substitute for the in-person social interaction a brick-and-mortar school is so good for, as well as other shortcomings a system like this might have. I know, and can think of, solutions to these problems, but that’s a little too tangential to the question at hand.
When it comes to how ID and TE should exist in the current educational system I think that it is of the utmost importance to define certain terms and clarify the overall goals of our educational system. Specifically, what subjects should be taught in school? IDs and TEs both say that their ideas should be taught under “Science”. But seriously, that alone is a pathetically inadequate answer. It is obvious from the massive extent of “The Sciences” that we’re not going to try to teach every possible field to our children, despite how entertaining it might be for (us to watch) them to try to wrap their little brains around Computational Fluid Dynamics, Quantum Mechanics or for a real “meta” experience they can try “Instructional Theory” .
So we have to prioritize. For the last hundred or so years, our system has been set up to teach the “fundamentals” of the sciences, with the primary intention (or so it seems to me) that a graduating high school student would be able to easily transition into any more specialized form of these sciences at the college level, or at least have a pretty basic understanding of “how the world works” if the student doesn’t continue on to higher education. The other major purpose behind the choice of subject matter, it seems, has been to train the mind of the student to think analytically (which results in problem-solving that’s better “guess-and-check”).
So…we have Information Gathering and Mental Training. Let’s see if we can divide the common high school subjects up into these:
…
I just lost interest in finishing this thought. Anyways…it seems to me that the only way ANY theory should be taught as “Science” is if it conforms to the definition of science. This is where the argument should take place. Commonly (and simplified) a theory is “properly” scientific if it:
- Makes falsifiable predictions
- Is supported by rigorous observation or experimentation
- Is the most simple explanation (Occam’s Razor)
How do our candidates measure up against these three basic rules? Well, they both seem to do just fine with 2) and 3), although they might quarrel when it comes to “who’s more simple?”. More importantly, though, BOTH of them seem to fail at 1). I’ve been wracking my brain, and scouring the internet for legitimate falsifiability for either of these theories, and I’ve come up dry. So…we can just throw it out, right? Then both are happily scientific, and arguing about whether the other is the simplest (”parsimonious” in philosophy-pf-science-speak).
Oh, well.
One last particularly interesting point raised by the Stein-vs-Dawkins finale:
Despite the high likelihood that most IDs are thinking of something similar to a Islamo-Judeo-Christian God when they conclude with the existence of a Designer, all that they’ve really concluded is the existence of “an intelligent being that controlled the genetic development of life as-we-know-it”. No omniscience. No omnipotence. No immortality. Just some dude that was brilliant (by human standards) at tinkering with carbon-based molecule chains.
With our developments in computers, artificial intelligence, and self-replicating robots, I find it hilarious to think that, within a century or two, we’ll be able to “seed” another world/planet with our ‘bots, and have them Designed to eventually (many thousands of robot generations down the road) have this same argument amongst themselves. Awesome movie/book idea coming…
So…the story follows a race of robots on a red planet (as they debate this same TE/ID argument), but some terrible disaster is about to strike them (rampant super-virus), so they set aside their argument, pool their computing resources, and design carbon-based life with such finely tuned genetics that it will eventually develop a bi-pedal species with opposable thumbs and that species will eventually re-create the robotic species. They then send this “version” of life to a blue-green planet, to fulfill its purpose. But wait! Flashback at the end of the movie…the robots were ORGINALLY created by a humans on Earth, then sent to Mars, to do exactly THAT! But wait!! Flash FARTHER back, and the humans came (evolutionarily) from this SAME species of robot!! But wait!! Flash back even further (ad nauseam)…
Bottom line:
Silly debate.
Absurd rancor.
Neither of these theories belong in any class before college. When the kids in biology ask, “but where did the animals come from?” you explain to them that you weren’t “there” with your camcorder when the animals first “came”, and then let them know that they can study it the origins of life, the universe and everything, further in college. Just the same way you’d respond if they asked, “but if the universe is EVERYTHING, what space is there for it to expand INTO?”. Some inquiries are beyond high school. Talk about survivability and genetic mutation/variation all you want. The origin of species? Pointless to discuss, at least for high school science kids.
