Thursday, August 18, 2005

Letter to the Editor

Forgive me if I mentioned this before, but our local paper ran an editorial two weeks ago on the president's opinion on having Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. The editorial can be found here. Here's my response, only part of which was printed by the paper yesterday:

The Dispatch ran an editorial last Wednesday critical of the president's recent comments on teaching Intelligent Design about which I'd like to pose some questions. The editor wrote:

"Yet here's the president of the United States, saying schools should teach both "theories" on the creation and development of life. And global warming has no scientific basis, mercury pollution is not the threat most scientists say it is, drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge will have no effect on one of the world's last great wildernesses -- and are there really such things as endangered species?"

If sarcasm were a reason to accept an implied conclusion then the paper would have a strong case against the Bush administration's attitude toward science-related issues, but it's not, and they don't. Each of these issues is framed by the writer in a highly tendentious way. The controversy surrounding global warming, for instance, is not about whether it's happening but about its cause. No one claims that drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will have no effect. The debate is over whether the effect will be significant and permanent. Part of informing one's readers is accurately presenting the facts, but this the editorial fails to do, preferring the rhetorical appeal of snarkiness to the difficult work of thinking.

The writer then gets to the real point:

"Intelligent design is not a 'theory,' but strictly a religious concept that may have its place in Sunday school and in the home -- not in high school biology class."

Not a theory? Does the editor mean that ID is not a proposed explanation for a set of observations? Does the editor know what a theory is? Has the editor ever actually read anything written on ID by a prominent advocate?

And what about ID makes it a "strictly religious concept"? Is it religious because some wish to use it to promote a religious agenda? If so, is Darwinism fascist because some have employed Darwinian principles like survival of the fittest to justify the extermination of the less fit? Is ID religious simply because it posits a Designer? How, exactly, would that make it religious?

The Dispatch goes on to say that:

"The president's view on intelligent design would, no doubt, warm the heart of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and anti-evolution champion in the Scopes trial who saw Darwin's theory as heralding the end of western civilization. But for a man who presides over the most powerful and most scientifically advanced nation on earth to be spouting such a fundamentalist mantra in the name of 'improving' education is more than unseemly, it's irresponsible and embarrassing."

Why is it irresponsible for the president to state his personal views on this issue when asked to do so? He didn't say that ID should be legislatively mandated. He merely opined that it would be a good thing to stimulate students to think about a very important question. Why should it be embarrassing to hold a view consonant with the opinion of the majority of people one leads? Is it that the editor is embarrassed that the president lacks the same level of scientific enlightenment possessed by his/her fellow sophisticates in the news media?

Moreover, what does the Dispatch mean by calling the president's words a "fundamentalist mantra"? Does the paper intend to suggest that only creepy fundamentalists believe that it's appropriate to mention the possibility that intelligence is necessary to explain the apparent biocentricity of the cosmos and the complexity of the biosphere in a science class?

What is really "unseemly, irresponsible and embarrassing" is lazy, otiose rhetoric masquerading as informed argument. The editor of the Dispatch knows nothing of what he/she is talking about so, like a middle schooler caught in an argument over matters he does not understand, the writer just sputters insults. It may make the writer feel good, but it's not very persuasive.