President Bush and Sen. Bill Frist support the idea that schools should
teach the theory of “intelligent design” as an alternative to Darwin’s
theory of evolution. The theory of “intelligent design” urges that there
are things in nature that are so complicated that they could not have
“evolved” incrementally through natural selection, as was proposed by
Darwin. American culture these days is powerfully impacted by the fact that
very wealthy people who have some pet ideas can bring these into public
discourse by giving huge sums of money to so-called conservative think
tanks which then pay people to write articles advancing their ideas.
To find out who’s behind the “controversy,” follow the money. A major
player has been the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture,
financed by ultra-wealthy Christian conservatives such as Roberta and
Howard Ahmanson, Phillip Anschutz and Richard Mellon Scaife. Their funding
has fostered some 50 books on the subject and intense lobbying and is
spearheaded by an argument that evolution is a theory contested by other
scientific theories.
But the funders are not advocates of science. They are Christian ideologues
such as the AMDG Foundation, whose acronym reflects a Latin phrase “to the
greater glory of God,” and the Stewardship Foundation, an evangelical
Christian outfit. These and other groups have settled on a “teach the
controversy” strategy, designed to weaken the theory of evolution although
no legitimate controversy exists among scientists.
Darwin’s observations urge that biological changes have been random and
therefore a matter of chance. The fact of biological change in response to
altered conditions is undisputed. As we know, medicines are developed to
kill disease organisms that then mutate to become immune to the medicine.
The successful mutations “evolve,” and over long periods of time can become
more complex species. The people who advocate “intelligent design” are far
more successful at politics than science, but their target is the element
of randomness, or chance, in Darwin’s theory of evolution and the strategy
is to create doubts about evolution in the political arena.
“Intelligent design” proponents, including presumably Bush, urge that some
biological phenomena are so complex they could not have happened by
accident or chance; that they must have originated from some kind of plan
or design. It is a seductive proposal, especially to people who hope it is
true. Opponents of “intelligent design” argue that it represents religion
cloaked as science, that it’s impossible to subject it to scientific
methods of inquiry and that its proponents offer theological and
philosophical arguments that are not scientific.
The argument brings to the surface ancient conflicts over belief systems.
Many of the ancient cultures — perhaps most — expressed a belief in the
idea that chance drives events.
Numerous ancient North American religions were elaborate on this point. The
ancient Iroquois, for example, told stories of how spirits of the universe
struggled over the fate of life on the planet, and the pro-life force was
challenged by the indifferent-to-life force to settle the matter with a
game of chance. The chosen game was dice played in a bowl, and in the
“great gamble for life” the spirit who created human life won. In this
view, the survival of human life was the product of a great game of chance.
Indeed, all life was a product of chance. Iroquois logic had it that the
people of the earth should be grateful that they were beneficiaries of that
good fortune, and they created a ceremonial complex of thanksgiving to
celebrate.
According to some versions of an ancient teaching about the beginning of
life, the creator of life departed from the earth and left it to run on its
own. It would be a small step to interpret this to mean the creator of life
created evolution.
There are, I confess, scientific theories I don’t like. The land bridge
theory comes to mind. It doesn’t explain, for example, how peoples of
Australian origin came to be found in Tierra del Fuego. It implies that
there was but one migration and tends to deny alternative routes. Some
scientists will deny this, but for the most part this is what people
experience when talking to them about it.
But if I had $100 million, I wouldn’t spend it hiring mercenaries to write
articles deconstructing it the way the Christian conservatives who support
“intelligent design” are doing. If you really believe something of this
nature, you don’t need to “fix” the intelligence. The “intelligent design”
position ultimately supports evangelical beliefs of an all-seeing,
all-controlling supernatural being and leads us to an “intelligent
designer” who has a plan and, presumably, doesn’t make mistakes. The fossil
record presents an insurmountable obstacle to scientific acceptance of that
idea.
There is extensive, overwhelming evidence that great numbers of animals and
plants have existed in the past that do not exist now. Some of these
existed successfully far longer than humans have inhabited the earth, but
then they went extinct. We don’t know why most of them went extinct, but if
there was an “intelligent designer” guiding their biological development,
there is plenty of evidence that there were dead-end designs, which could
easily be understood to represent mistakes. Pointing that out to teachers
of religion usually evokes a response that we must have faith that the
supernatural being works in mysterious ways beyond human comprehension and
that everything worked out according to plan. If that is the case, then the
creator of the universe is an intelligence beyond human comprehension, a
“great mystery.” Many indigenous cultures believe that.
The purveyors of “intelligent design” are challenging the idea of evolution
because, ultimately, they believe not only that the plan of the great
mystery is knowable, but that they have exclusive insights into what it
means and what its design is. They want it both ways: an incomprehensible
mystery and an intelligence which can be revealed to humans. But if it’s a
mystery, then it can’t be understood; and if it can be understood, it can’t
be a mystery.
A mystery which cannot be subjected to scientific methods of evaluation
cannot be scientific. The people who are being seduced into thinking that
there is a debate and that students should hear all sides are not giving
adequate attention to the motives of the groups and institutions which have
bought and paid for the popularization of their ideology. We should all
ponder why the United States is walking a path toward a faith-based science
and where it will lead.
John C. Mohawk Ph.D., columnist for Indian Country Today, is an associate
professor of American Studies and director of Indigenous Studies at the
State University of New York at Buffalo.