How dangerous is the noise on ï¿½Intelligent Designï¿½ in todayï¿½s context? Mehul Kamdar

How dangerous is the noise on ï¿½Intelligent Designï¿½ in todayï¿½s context?

Mehul Kamdar

Published on February 13, 2007

It was an incident that was completely unrelated to the current raging debate in the USA on Evolution and ï¿½Intelligent Designï¿½ that made me wonder about how dangerous the legislative threat to modify educational syllabi really was. A friend who has a seven year old daughter studying at a very exclusive private school in San Francisco, had a major problem with her teacher over the choice of a poem for an annual elocution contest in the school. His first choice was Felicia Hemansï¿½ ï¿½Casabiancaï¿½ but the teacher refused to let his daughter recite this poem because she said that it was ï¿½too darkï¿½ because the protagonist died, burning to death. He then suggested W B Yeatsï¿½ ï¿½The Stolen Childï¿½ and once again, the teacher shot the choice down because the poem spoke of fairies taking children away. No, this wasnï¿½t some school or school board policy because, from what I learned, other teachers in the school (including one whose son was in the same class and apparently had the same problems) sympathized with my friend and his daughter. This was a case of political correctness taken very far, but, it pointed directly at the danger of allowing noise and bluster to dictate what educational syllabi should have been, according to those trying to legislate the teaching of a work of fiction called Intelligent Design.

I had already heard from the thirteen year old son of a friend at a school in Appleton that he had decided not to study science when he grew up, because, he had been taught at the non-conformist church that he went to every Sunday, that ï¿½science did not have room for moral values.ï¿½ I wondered how many more young boys and girls were being taught this at this particular church. When I tried talking about the church in question to several people from other ï¿½rivalï¿½ churches, all they had to say was that in this economically backward part of the USA, the church in question had been able to raise more than $ 3 million in one year. There was a sense of awe in the other churches about this achievement by the anti-science church and I wondered how many more similar churches existed in other parts of this country. How many of them got people who were basically poor to contribute huge amounts from their incomes and then pursued a policy that, in the long term, would ensure that their children stayed poor and desperate. With no background in science, what were they trying to get their followersï¿½ children to become? Taxi drivers? Wal Mart clerks? One thing that those who ran the church in question were certain of creating out of these children was a source of revenue for as long as the children stayed with the church. It did not matter that without science in their educational curricula these children would be doomed to doing minor jobs and that their own futures would impact on that of the country as well in the long term.

Which brings me, a complete non expert in matters scientific, to the question of ï¿½Intelligent Designï¿½ and the present debate over this issue. It is sad that it took a legal procedure - a Supreme Court decision - to ensure that the process of evolution, for which ample scientific evidence exists, was indeed what happened and not the Biblical process of creation which was even dated to around 6000 BC by the Bishop of Usher before Darwin blew his religious research into the weeds. The fact that careful research and indeed all the evidence and not just from Darwin but from James Huttonï¿½s geological research well before Darwinï¿½s own work had shown that the scriptural account of creation was clearly fiction was disregarded in what became an acrimonious argument between a church that was determined to hang on to itï¿½s traditional fiction and a body of scientists and secular thinkers who were determined to demonstrate what they had learned and had evidence of. The historical similarity, if one takes the Scopes Monkey Trial where a schoolteacher was tried in Tennessee for teaching Darwin to his students and fined for this ï¿½misdemeanourï¿½ was clearly to Galileoï¿½s trial for asserting that the Geocentric theory of the church was wrong and that the heliocentric theory that he had propounded was what the evidence pointed to as being right. When confronted with evidence that it was wrong in the past, it was customary of the church to try whoever disputed itï¿½s fiction in the courts. The same thing that happened to Galileo happened to Scopes except for one difference - the days of the Inquisition were long over, there was a powerful secular government in the USA and the church was unable to hammer itï¿½s way through using brute force.

This brings the debate on Intelligent Design into question - where an attempt at muzzling those who would question Biblical fiction about Creation through the courts failed, it has become a battle to use the one body in a democratic system that is above the Judicial System - the Legislature. As the Judiciaryï¿½s function is to interpret the law it is completely possible for a legislature, which makes laws, to enact a law where the idea of an almighty creator who created everything that exists is meant to be taught instead of the process of evolution which we now know is factual. It is completely possible to force the teaching of religious fiction - indeed several fundamentalist countries in the Middle East do not teach evolution at all - if laws are enacted to silence those who would want to teach it. The educational system has been put on a tight leash in all this noise and confusion to as good as ban poetry that is considered classic in most of the rest of the world. When teachers have to think hard before they allow their students to read Felicia Hemans or W B Yeats, something is dreadfully wrong. If they were compelled to teach religious fiction as science it would be considerably worse. Harm has indeed been done to children by bowdlerizing their textbooks and regulating what they should read. This politically correct censorship combined with a forced study of the fiction of ï¿½Intelligent Designï¿½ would do little more than render the schools here into proto Christian ï¿½madrassasï¿½ and children would grow up into religious automatons, taught what they should believe in, not how to think for themselves. It is this danger to the future of a great country that has to be addressed - hopefully, with every argument that the fundamentalists make about their views on the origin of the universe and on life, the secularists would counter with logic and common sense and beat them at their dangerous game. Failure to do this would mean the beginning of a new darkage in North America, and the attendant beginning of continuous misery for people who are caught in this ridiculous religious fiction.

Mehul Kamdar from Chicago is currently moderating Mukto-Mona forum. He was the editor of The Modern Rationalist under late M D Gopalakrishnan and associated with various rationalist movements. He can be reached at [email protected]