Agnostic Mom

One of my favorite ways to contribute to my secular community is by writing letters to the editor of my local paper. Here is the letter I sent this morning:

Comments in “The Vent” and “Letters” against evolution reveal that most of these people don’t understand it. A past venter asked why apes still exist if humans evolved from them, implying a greater expertise than biologists. His and others’ comments are an embarrassing display of ignorance.

The current debate about Intelligent Design has revealed a deeper problem: scientific ignorance has surpassed evolutionary ignorance. Most ID proponents lack an understanding of science’s definition and goals.

This is not a debate about a Designer’s existence. To reject the teaching of ID in science classes is not to reject God. It is simply an effort to maintain scientific integrity where theories are based on research and duplicatable test results. If we cannot observe and measure a theory, we cannot create an explanation — no matter how reasonable it seems to us. If we had always applied this faulty method, the world would still be a flat disc in the center of a universe that revolves around us. The current “gaps” in our knowledge are an incentive for scientists to continue their search.

While it might be acceptable to include ID in a philosophy class, it has no place in a science class. This misallocation of the subject is largely because the scientific community has failed to educate the public. If educators could effectively reach the non-science-oriented majority, more people would understand ID’s improper fit in a biology class. Too few people understand the basic fundamentals of the Scientific Method, the basic definition of science, the process of validating and testing a hypothesis to see if its results are duplicatable, and the goals of scientific discovery.

Our science educators must learn how to teach the masses.

This letter was published in the East Valley Tribune, one of Phoenix’s two major newspapers, on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2005.

*For a more humorous commentary on this debate, check out this website where you can read a letter sent to the Kansas School Board on an alternate theory of Intelligent Design.