Theoretically Speaking

The flap of the day seems to be the President’s statement that he found no problem with “intelligent design” being taught in schools beside the theory of evolution. The spinning and convoluting about the issue is remarkable. First, because the President, despite being the most powerful man in the entire world, is not the arbiter of public school curricula regardless of what authority we might mistakenly ascribe to him. And, second, because the conflict over these competing “theories” is absurd.

I was educated in Catholic schools until I entered college. I spent years at the mercy of the Sisters of St. Francis in elementary school and then four years trying to avoid being disciplined by the Christian Brothers at St. Patrick’s High in Chicago. I came out of the experience being able to read, write, do math all the way up to the doorstep of calculus, and with a pretty good grasp of the history, geography and philosophy of the modern world. Yes, we started and ended the school day by standing beside our desks and reciting some prayers. We also recited the Pledge of Allegiance (but without “under God” in the verbiage in those days.)

The conflict between Genesis and all of the evidence of archeology, paleontology, astronomy, biology, geology and modern science was never much of a problem. We asked the nuns and brothers which was correct—the evolution of millions of years or the creation in a busy week? The answer was simple. The bible was written as an allegory, a metaphor for the wonders that we cannot understand. While all scientific evidence indicates that the world was not created in a week, the fact is that no one has yet unraveled the conundrum of an “uncaused first cause.”

The vilified Religious Right and the evil humanistic Left can’t explain how to jump start a universe if there is an initial nothingness. While evolution and an expanding universe can certainly be supported by a lot of evidence, the whole business founders when we continue to ask the simple question of “what caused that.” Eventually you get to the Big Bang or the first atom in the entire sequence and then the question of cause goes wanting.

Similarly the premise of “intelligent design”—that the universe is too complex, diverse, orderly and remarkable to be a product of randomness—depends upon the existence of a Supreme Being, an uncaused first cause. Ask “where did God come from” and you get the same answer as “what caused the Big Bang?”

To continually assert that “evolution is just a theory” is only partially true. It is a theory that accounts for an incredible amount of what we can physically support with research. Most science starts with theorizing. Then research is conducted to determine if observation supports the theory. There’s not much you can do to fault evolution as an explanation for a lot of what we observe. Did man evolve from apes? We can point to a lot of evidence that says yes, and we can challenge a lot of evidence to conclude no. We can, however, show that even over the short term, man is evolving. Check the statistics for average height and weight of an American male today versus 100 years ago. The 1903 Springfield rifle that was the standard weapon of the Army in World War One is dimensioned for the average soldier who was five feet three inches tall.

Intelligent design used to be called “Creationism” in most circles. The new moniker is a subtle attempt to circumvent the obvious conclusion that virtually nothing we observe in the universe can literally fit the strait-jacket of a seven day creation spree. So, we get “intelligent design;” a claim that the complexity of what we observe indicates a master plan. Well, sure! But try to get the “theory” to account for dinosaurs or the particular flora and fauna of the Galapagos or even Australia.

If we are to educate our society, we need to be willing to discuss ideas, theories and alternatives. That’s what the President said. We also need to stop drawing either/or lines in the intellectual sand. The danger is not in teaching children about evolution or teaching them about an intelligent design. The real danger is establishing a system in which only one faction’s frame of reference is taught as undeniable truth. But, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the real danger is simply teaching kids to think, question, and then conclude based on measurable evidence. Wouldn’t that be something to behold?