Month: March 2011

The Constitution, Intelligent Design/Creationism, and social Darwinism

Posted on by John Keegan in Intelligent Design

Salvador Monteagudo in his February 23, 2011 blog post “Creation and Evolution: What is the debate about?” at Goodnewseverybody.com (which I highly recommend) linked to one of my posts on Intelligent Design: “More on Ben Stein and Expelled”, so I read his post. I was intrigued and posted the following comment.

“Ben was just focusing on how the education system in America is just one-sided (e.g. not open to Creation) ….”

Intelligent Design/Creationism is inherently religious in the Judeo-Christian sense; therefore, it cannot be put on equal footing with evolution in the science classroom. To do so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and thus the Separation of Church and State. Because the public school is an agent of the state, if the school taught Intelligent Design/Creationism in the science classroom it would be promoting a specific religion. That is what a Federal Court found in Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al 2005.

Intelligent Design/Creationism is not science. The main postulate of Intelligent Design is a preexisting intelligence, which cannot be proved, nor disproved by observation or experiment. As such, any preexisting intelligence would be outside the hot big model of the universe, and any actions taken by such a preexisting intelligence would have been before the beginning of time. Therefore, according to the law of economy, a preexisting intelligence should be cut out of any model of the universe, for any actions taken by it cannot be observed. Intelligent Design/Creationism is a political issue; therefore, the proper place for it to be discussed in the social studies classroom. Religion in general plays an important role in American society. How religion affects society by shaping political issues should be and is examined in the social studies classroom from the Early Colonial Period of American history, to Civil War, and from there to twenty first century current events. Intelligent Design/Creationism is just another issue in the course of that examination.

“I feel this Evolution theory of `survival of the fittest’ bring on prejudice, like racism-see personal story, classism, etc.…”

There is a different between scientific theory of evolution and social Darwinism. The scientific theory of evolution tells us that the process of natural selection “creates” a group of animals that is best able to survive in a given area. To be sure, this is very simplistic definition. Natural selection embodies an extremely complex set of natural processes which have created the ecosystems we observe around the world. Social Darwinism and concept of survival of the fittest are dependent upon the postulate that humans are animals or machines bound by natural laws, which goes back to Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathan, 1651. In it he gave a materialistic view of mankind. Hobbes stated:

Life without a government—the state of nature is war… every man against every man… and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Government is instituted to deliver man out of the state of nature, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau would agree. Rousseau differs in his definition of the state of nature. Social Darwinism, then, is a nineteenth century political theory, which draws on Hobbes’ definition of the state of nature. However, social Darwinism postulates that eternal conflict is necessary for social and political progress. This view was expressed by Hegel and then Hitler which is where racism comes into play. Any state that is dependent upon conflict for social progress is also dependent upon perpetual prejudice and racism. To legitimize those concepts, dictatorships and totalitarian governments have distorted the scientific theory of evolution.

Supporters of Intelligent Design/Creationism often distort the scientific theory of evolution. They maintain that science is atheistic, and evolution is an example of that atheism. Evolution is not atheistic; neither is science. Evolution does not say there is no God; nor does it say if one accepts evolution one must be an atheist. Intelligent Design is used to promote Christian convictions, and bad science. In and of themselves, Christian convictions are not bad, nor is Intelligent Design. But, it must be said that some people who support Intelligent Design as science want nothing less than a Christians only America because they know what is best for all.

Links