Teaching Science in America
Published by marco on
Having Fun With Intelligent Design by David Morris (AlterNet) offers some good advice to teachers charged with spending time on alternative theories to evolution. The crux of the matter is that in two states so far, Pennsylvania and Kansas (big surprise there), teachers must address a theory of the world known as intelligent design. This is not religion; it is a pseudo-scientific justification for a God-like being.
“Intelligent design is not creationism per se. It holds that higher forms of life are so complex they must have been created by an unspecified higher power. The key word here is “unspecified.” Many school board members who support an intelligent design mandate believe that higher power is Jesus. But they aren’t forcing anyone to teach that in schools.”
Morris suggests that enterprising teachers can hold students’ attention, teach good science and get a dig in on the puritanical school board by critiquing evolution from a scientific basis. A good place to start, naturally, is sex; start a discussion as to why when “ it comes to the human female orgasm … evolutionists are stumped”. When you’re done with that one, open another theme that evolution has trouble explaining: homosexuality.
“The theory of natural selection should guarantee the disappearance of males that don’t reproduce. But they keep hanging around, in considerable numbers, in every culture and every era.”
The alternative explanation offered by intelligent design would naturally have to credit “an intelligent power” with creating and maintaining homosexuality through the ages, “Does that mean God is gay?” Surely a subject to hold the attention of young minds for an hour or two. This would probably also be a bang-up way to schedule an exit from your teaching position, but it would be hella fun.
The next step is to analyze creationism as a possible intelligent design theory, poking holes in the paucity of empirical evidence that backs up the claims made in the Bible: “the scientific evidence for the-heavens-and-the-earth-and-all-life-was-formed-in-six days theory of the origins of life is virtually nonexistent”. Once the Bible’s explanation is shown to be dubious at best, replace it with another theory that also has many adherents: “[l]ife derived from outer space”. Swiss writer Erich von Daniken has “amassed an enormous amount of evidence to substantiate his thesis [that] evolutionary seed or seeds, were planted by space travelers”.
Hell, if you’re feelling frisky, drag a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics in and have a ball. For most kids, the lessons in critical thinking you impart will serve them better than the science you’re charged with teaching. In the America that’s taking shape today, you can’t start too early learning that 90% of what you hear is crap.