Publication: Georgia Journal of Science
Publication Date: 22-SEP-05
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Aliff, John V.
Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
A symposium titled "Teaching Evolution and the Challenge of Intelligent Design" was presented at the 66th annual meeting of the Southeastern Society of Biologists, University of North Alabama, Florence, AL, April 16, 2005. The symposium was arranged, introduced and moderated by John V. Aliff. The advent of a "scientific theory of intelligent design" has created conflict in religious denominations, public school educators, and within the community of scientists who are being threatened by the imposition of a specific religious view. Intelligent Design theory is a new form of creationism that abandons the biblical inerrancy of the older scientific creationism in favor of a neutral position on the age of the earth. Intelligent Design theory is not a valid scientific theory for these reasons: 1.) Its hypothetical, intuitive and religious assumption of the intelligent design of complex systems is not testable or falsifiable using the scientific method, 2.) ID "theory" cannot develop hypotheses, and 3.) ID theory does not predict new discoveries as a true scientific theory does. More simply put, ID cannot explain natural phenomena beyond the intuitive and religious assumption that "God did it." The participants in the symposium--Barbara Forrest, Massimo Pigliucci, Taner Edis and Keith Miller--have written and edited leading papers and books on the challenges of creationism to the teaching and practice of science. The author lists 14 deceptions commonly used by scientific creationists and ID creationists in their propaganda.
Keywords: Symposium, teaching evolution, intelligent design, creationists, Cobb County evolution stickers, supernaturalism, scientific method, scriptural inerrancy.
INTRODUCTION: CREATIONISM AS A RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT
I reflect back upon my own experience in arranging a similar symposium on "scientific creationism" at Emory University in Atlanta in 1980 that featured a scientist, a historian and a theologian. That symposium was a traditional academic reaction to the theological and purportedly scientific content of creationism and a response to a proposal in the Georgia legislature requiring the teaching of scientific creationism in the public schools. The proceedings of that symposium were distributed to the senate and house of the Georgia Legislature who actually passed HB 690 slightly different versions of the bills, but failed to enact a compromise bill in joint session (1). Georgia legislators retired to their districts with a record of voting for God without the state having to defend their action in court as would happen later in Arkansas and Louisiana (see below).
A few days later a woman, who attended the last session at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta, appeared at my office with some tapes she wanted to let me hear in an effort to convert me to scientific creationism. The tapes were oral chapters of John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, (2), with Reverend Whitcomb reading. As one with a southern religious upbringing, I heard a powerful, mythological siren-like call to adhere to the simple proposition that the Judeo-Christian Bible is not only "God's Word," but scientific revelation as well. In a reaction to "blind faith," the scientific creationists substituted a materialist definition of faith by demanding that science confirm scripture and scripture confirm science, while simultaneously attacking the materialism of scientific explanation. Also applying the principle of scriptural inerrancy to science, we now have young earth Islamic creationists (Harun Yahya) and old earth Islamic creationists on the internet (3a, b, c, d, e). Henry Morris, who entered a Ph.D. program in geological engineering with the express purpose of proving the scientific accuracy of the Biblical "flood" account (4), followed Genesis Flood with a series of books that blame the theory of evolution for a multiplicity of evils including Nazism, Communism, religious heresy, abortion, crime, gay rights and women's liberation (5). And most...
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