In Pennsylvania, the accepted theory of evolution has been called in question by the school board of the Dover Area School District. The district has teachers read students a letter stating that evolution is an incomplete theory and suggests intelligent design as an alternative theory. A group of parents has sued the district holding that the intelligent design theory requires the existence of a creator and thus violates the First Amendment.
Both sides in the Dover case are based on fallacies. The plaintiffs, parents supported by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, claim the teaching of intelligent design is a violation of separation of church and state. The ACLU continues to make this mistake, acting as if any mention of intelligence beyond humanity’s is the same as the establishment of a church forbidden by the First Amendment. Theories that require the existence of God or the like are not legitimate science, though. Regardless, the First Amendment does not ban anyone from religious expression in schools or anywhere else. In fact, it guarantees the right to such expression.
Attempting to eliminate the mention or discussion of God and similar concepts in the public sphere, such as schools, is the same as unconstitutionally establishing a governmental church of atheism, which is no more demonstrably correct than a belief in God.
The school board is arguing that intelligent design should be taught as a scientific theory. A scientific theory, though, requires testable propositions-and the idea that the changes in the genetic code are directed rather than random is not testable. While it is possible to arbitrarily define randomness and sample a known population to determine if the changes in a genetic code attributed to mutation are random or not, two problems remain. First, the shear number of genetic codes prevents us from obtaining anything resembling a statistically significant sample. Second, even if it was possible to view every genetic code that has existed over time, our definition of random variation is still arbitrary-we lack a basis to determine if mutation is random or intelligently directed.
Instead, intelligent design should be taught from a philosophical viewpoint. From a scientific standpoint, intelligent design is indistinguishable from evolution. The two differ only in that intelligent design attributes evolutionary changes to an end-seeking will, where evolution states the changes are random. Since randomness is a somewhat arbitrary concept, there is no way to distinguish the two using testable propositions.
Creationism, too, is a legitimate philosophical viewpoint. God created the universe in such a way that it looks like it has been around for billions of years. This, too, cannot be tested scientifically because science relies on instruments and experiments that assume the world is as it appears within known error limits. Thus creationism is not a scientific theory, and intelligence design is indistinguishable from evolution.
Of course, both sides of the Dover case show a great deal of faith in the Platonic viewpoint -that there exists some sort of knowable, objective and ideal truth. They neglect that all facts and theories, scientific or philosophical, must be taken on faith -faith that our senses and perceptions somehow correspond to outside reality. Since these are the only windows through which we view the world, assuming our senses tell something resembling the truth is necessary to function, but it is an unprovable assumption nonetheless. There are no facts without our senses and there is no truth without faith.