Public Schools in the United States Should not Teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution

Please see the comments for my source corrections from the previous round as well as my sources for this round which must reside there due to space constraints. The Importance of Scientific Conclusions and Consensuses Con’s objection to this part of my argument appears to stem from an out of context and often misrepresented statement signed by Gould and others from the Supreme Court Case Daubert v. Merrell which examined what courts should count as scientific evidence. The context of the brief from which the statement is taken should be taken into account. The purpose of the brief was to express objection to a lower court’s use of publication in a scientific journal as the sole standard of scientific validity. [1] I am not, however, arguing that publication in scientific journals should be the sole authority on what is scientific valid. To determine what is truly a scientific conclusion, a broader view must be adopted. Thus, this statement does not undermine my claims about the importance of the knowledge of the scientific community, and as I shall momentarily demonstrate, the full statement from the Gould brief and the courts decision itself actually supports this my position. According to the syllabus in Daubert, “The Court of Appeals agreed and affirmed... the rule that expert opinion based on a scientific technique is inadmissible unless the technique is ‘generally accepted’ as reliable in the relevant scientific community.” [1] This statement endorses the importance of scientific consensus. Additionally, the Court put in place standards for determining what can be used as scientific evidence in future cases. They are as follows: (1)Whether the theory or technique in question can be and has been tested; (2) Whether it has been subjected to peer review and publication; (3) Its known or potential error rate; (4) The existence and maintenance of standards controlling its operation; and (5) Whether it has attracted widespread acceptance within a relevant scientific community. [2] As can be seen, these criteria also recognize the importance of scientific consensus. Additionally, an important part of the statement signed by Gould is missing from Con’s quotation. The following comes right before the second part of the statement quoted by Con: “Science progresses as much or more by the replacement of old views as by the gradual accumulation of incremental knowledge.” This omitted sentence signifies recognition of the importance of the knowledge that is accumulated by the scientific community as a whole, in other words, the scientific consensus. [3] Pro’s other objection to this premise deals with Newton. He argues that because Newtonian principles have been proven to be wrong in certain conditions, they should not be taught in science classes if the premise is true. This does not refute the premise, however, because although Newton’s laws of motion have been shown not to apply when dealing with the very small and the very fast, they still apply in normal circumstances, [4] which is the circumstance in which they are generally taught. Newtonian principles are not taught as an alternative to quantum mechanics or similar theories, but rather are a stepping stone to get to those higher points. I’d also like to make an analogy between the teaching of Newton’s laws in science classes and the teaching of certain concepts in math classes. Mathematicians know that concepts like imaginary numbers and infinity don’t actually exist in the world in the same way they do in mathematics, but these concepts are taught anyway. This is because they generally work in the world when they need to as well as provide a way of getting to more advanced concepts, just as the basics of Newtonian physics opens pathways to more advanced physics. ID serves no such purpose. Not only has Con failed to raise sound objections to this premise, but I have shown how what he used as an important part of his argument here turns to completely supports my premise. Given the bearing Supreme Court standards have on what is legal in the United States, their acknowledgment of the importance of scientific consensus in determining what is science is awfully conclusive. The Scientific Consensus Strongly Supports Evolution Con’s case is rather weak when it comes to questioning whether the scientific consensus strongly supports evolution. Con’s biggest attempt at negating this premise was to cite the “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” statement. According to the National Center for Science Education: “Few [of the signers] were from biological subfields associated with organismic and population-level biology-the divisions of biology most closely associated with the study of evolution... Should one draw the conclusion from the advertisement that there is a growing movement of scientists who doubt evolution? Hardly; many of the names on the list are not new to anti-evolutionary activity. Ironically, if one were to conduct a survey of scientists who accepted evolution, the size of that list would swamp by tens of thousands this list assembled by the Discovery Institute!” [5] An article in the New York Times headlined also mentions that a great many of the dissenters are not directly involved in evolutionary studies and only a quarter of the signers at the time of the article were biologists according to the Discover Institute itself. [6] Remember, Daubert specified that consensus should be from the “relevant scientific community.” Additionally, I fail to see how Con’s second citation of Gould really helps his case. While Gould’s essay explores the possibility of larger, rather than smaller changes, it does not dissent from evolution in any way.Given that I cited several statements by reputable scientific organizations supporting evolution over ID, not to mention the numerous other statements of this nature beyond my citations, Con’s opposition fails to give this premise a true challenge. Is ID Science? Con argues that ID “is undeniably a scientific theory.” I question this claim. According to the NAS, the requirements for something to be a scientific theory the thing is: “A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypothesis.” [7] The only part of this standard that ID seems to fit into is the inferences category. Con’s notion that ID has been tested through CSI seems patently false as it seems to only be based on the assumption that what appears to be complex is designed. This is, of course, not necessarily the case. Con has also argued that ID does not necessitate a supernatural creator. I beg to differ. If something is intelligently designed, there must be a designer, and since it is proposed that this designer designed the natural world, it would seem that his designer must be of the supernatural sort. It is also on these grounds that I reject ID being classified as science, since an important tenet of science is that it relies on natural explanations. Additionally, a supernatural agent also fails to meet the scientific standard because it is unfalsifiable (failing yet another standard of the Daubert test). [7] I reject ID being classified as science for the same reasons as Judge John Jones III who said the following of ID in his decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case: “We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.” [8] Regardless, whether or not something is science is something that ought to be settled in the scientific community before it can be called science in the classroom.And I'm out of space.