Alien vs Predator
[2005-12-11 08:45]

(I posted this blurb on Slashdot, but I thought I'd repost it here because, well, I'm too lazy to blog anything else.)

There has been quite a stir lately about including the theory of Intelligent Design in high-school science classes in America. Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the theory of Evolution is flawed and, thus, alternate theories should be given equal time in the classroom.

I too tend to believe that there's more to life than simple biomechanics, but, in my opinion, the fuss isn't about Evolution vs Intelligent Design or Science vs Religion.

Many (and I'd hope most) of the scientists, teachers and professors who object to including Intelligent Design in science classes aren't objecting because they think Evolution is 100% correct, or because they think Intelligent Design is wrong. They object because Intelligent Design isn't science, by definition of the term "science".

There are two purposes to any science class, in my opinion: one is to teach students what are currently believed to be the most accurate scientific theories, but the other (and perhaps more important) purpose is to teach the scientific method: the method by which those theories are developed.

The main components of the scientific method are observation and experimentation. That is, you observe something, formulate a hypothesis, develop experiments that you can run to test the hypothesis, run the experiment and then see how well your hypothesis holds up. Typically, you'd find that something wasn't exactly the way you thought it would be, so you'd tweak your hypothesis, develop new experiments, and repeat the process ad infinitum. Through this process, you'd inch closer and closer to "the truth".

With Intelligent Design, however, there aren't any experiments that you can run to reliably test the hypothesis. If God is omnipotent, God can alter the outcome of any experiment. Thus, you can never prove or disprove the theory (which, is the whole point of Faith, as I understand it). While that doesn't mean Intelligent Design is wrong, it means it doesn't fit the definition of Science.

Now, many people (including Senator John McCain) wonder why teachers and scientists are so opposed to including Intelligent Design in the curriculum. The problem is that doing so would be an inherent contradition and, as a result, teachers would not be teaching the scientific method, which is the whole point of the class. It would be like teaching that beef is a vegetable in a botany class.

That's not to say that the current scientific theories are all correct. In fact, we know that they're not. One hope of teaching science is to develop the next generation of scientists who can test and refine or change the current theories (or develop new ones) and bring us closer to "the truth". If we teach students that it's acceptible to ignore the results of scientific method in favor of theories that are untestable, then we are crippling our own progress and will slip further and further behind Germany and Japan (for example) in fields like Engineering. Would you want to fly in an airplane whose design was based on theories that are not testable and which contradict what we believe to be the laws of physics? Or, more succinctly, would you fly in an airplane whose design was based on faith?

This is not to say that we should never discuss Intelligent Design at all. I've heard many scientists say that it is a valid topic, just not for a science class (or, at least, not a high-school level science class, in my opinion).

Interestingly, many scientists feel the same way about String Theory as well (which is why this isn't about Science vs Religion). String theory is an attempt to rectify some of the inconsistencies between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The problem is that there's no observable tests for String Theory. So, while it might be true, there's no way we could test it to find out.

At one point (and it may still be the case) there were five versions of string theory, all of which seemed equally valid. But some of those theories contradicted the others. Since none of them could be tested, how would you know which one is correct? Similarly, even if the universe were created by an Intelligent Designer, which theory of Intelligent Design is the right one to teach?

One might argue that there are classes about String Theory, otherwise, how would people ever know about it? So, in the same vein, why can't we discuss Intelligent Design? Well, again, I think we can -- it's just not science, so I think a high-school science class is the wrong place to do so.