One of the biggest problems in the dialog about teaching intelligent design in public schools as an alternate theory to evolution is that we are focusing the debate on whether or not intelligent design is a theory, and we’re loosing.  The impression I get is that proponents of intelligent design feel like (or want us to believe they feel like) their ideas are being disparaged by scientists and evolution is just a theory too so why can’t intelligent design be part of the dialog and have a fair chance at teaching our theory.  This reasoning seems to be winning and has lead to the creation and growth of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) in retaliation, Huzzah.

Engaging in this type of debate makes it seem to science outsiders that intelligent design and evolution are equivalent in every way and represent equivalent methods of thought to arrive at each idea.  And scientists, perhaps in an attempt to not piss off a bunch crazy uneducated gun fanatics or perhaps because they forgot what science really is, have taken that bait and occasionally concede that intelligent design is a theory and sure perhaps it deserves to be talked about but not on public dollars, not in public schools and it shouldn’t be taken as seriously as evolution.  This problem was partially created by us.

String theory and its popularization may be in part to blame.  Too often we hear that string theory doesn’t predict anything new, can’t be tested but should be accepted as a paradigm for reality because of its elegance.  I personally have never worked in this area of physics but I think if we try hard enough we could find something to calculate or predict that is similar to fine structure of the atom and eventually test it.  To tell the public that they should simply believe in string theory but also accept its un-testability is to tell the masses right to their face, we have stopped being scientists and we don’t care.  This is not acceptable.  I personally don’t believe that string theorists believe this, they are hard working physicists trying to solve unsolved problems in high energy theory, search for a unified field theory and they are concerned with proof based on observation and data.  But that’s not the story the public is getting from the popular literature.

Considering intelligent design arguments for even a minute has given them some leverage, credibility.  By not pointing out the true issue we have allowed their foot to remain permanently in the door causing the warmth of reason to leak out of our house leaving a cold dead confusion in its wake.  And by not addressing the true issue we are giving non-scientists the impression that this is the beginning and end of the story!

So what is the true issue?  The issue is that we are not promoting what science really is.  Science is a thought process, an objective process that can be written down.  Like a procedure for programming your entertainment system (which is beyond my comprehension) science teaches a procedure for drawing conclusions based on observation, data, pattern recognition and reason regardless of the particular race, religion or other cultural orientation of the user.  The true test of a scientific conclusion (theory or model of a system) is that given the afore mentioned thought procedure anyone would arrive at the same results!  And seeing past their ego draw the same conclusion.  Another point I don’t hear being expressed enough by scientists is the fact that all scientific theories (models, ideas, beliefs for lack of a better term) are objectively falsifiable by the same procedure that led to them.  That is to say all we know to be true about the universe is through our eyes and ears or technically sophisticated extensions thereof and as we get better at “seeing things” we need to continually retest our previous conclusion to ensure they still hold.  If they don’t we are compelled to abandon them because our world view is more enlightened.

I don’t hear any of this being discussed.  The consequences of this lack of dialog is that our opponents really don’t know what we do and frankly we appear to be confused about our own position.  One problem with communicating these ideas can be understood by the comparison to programming a vcr (I’m old).  It’s difficult, very difficult to learn these procedures.  All of this gives power to the opposition, even in the eyes of moderate centered people.  Since the masses don’t really know how we do what we do they won’t appreciate our position.  It seems like a losing battle.  Worst of all, simplifying physics, math, and all the other physical and natural sciences doesn’t make it better.  We water down our world view so much that the audience is probably walking away with an even worse image of us.

To get back to the point of this rant, evolution is not a theory like intelligent design.  Evolution is a conclusion drawn from reason applied to observations and data.  We may occasionally be wrong about certain details (another publicity nightmare) but the conclusion is on firm ground.  Intelligent design does not deserve to be moved into the sphere of scientific thought simply because by definition it is not a scientific thought.  It was not a conclusion about data and patterns based on observation and reason.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t a nice idea or even a valid idea but it is not a scientific idea.  I, for one, have never been opposed to teaching religion in public schools (all of them) as they are an important part of life (like it or not) and I’m not opposed to teaching intelligent design but it must be where it belongs.  No where near a science class!

Before leaving I’d like to address another point that sometimes makes our plight difficult.  It is true that we are often wrong and scientific theories evolve as we learn more about the world.  This doesn’t mean that the scientific method is flawed but unfortunately it appears that way because of how we, scientists, communicate our changes to the non-scientific masses.  It can appear that we are simply changing our minds on a whim or have resolved ourselves to the notion that there are no absolutes.  On the contrary I think most scientists would say we are searching for absolutes but our search needs refinement as we learn more.

To help illustrate the difference between a true absolute truth and a technical detail think about the mechanics of moving objects.  Based on all we had observed, all data gathered and all possible patterns discovered at the time, Newton developed his famous laws of motion and universal gravitation.  As time went on a few violations of Newton’s world view were observed.  Einstein’s law of gravity eventually replaced Newton’s law of gravity and a new version of Newton’s Laws of motion were developed by Einstein.  On a separate front other paradoxes required a new world view we call quantum mechanics.  This was not the end of the story, quantum field theory needed to be developed to solve problems with quantum mechanics.  And the story isn’t over.  One nice thing is that we are sometimes able to recover older theories from the newer ones.  In other words, sometimes as our world view expands due to scientific discovery modern theories frequently encompass the results of older theories as an approximation.

As this evolution of mechanics occurred one or two consistent truths emerged.  The principle of least action and Noether’s theorem.  While we loose the forest for the trees by arguing over the details we sometimes miss this point.  It would seem that the principle of least action and Noether’s theorem, i.e. symmetry and conservation laws are related, are guiding principles in any theory of how particles move about.  No matter what theory or model we put together based on data and observation we have not yet seen a reason to abandon either of these principles.  In anthropology we have made similar changes to the details of our evolutionary tale, especially in the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens (modern humans).  We used to think our evolution was linear and Neanderthals came first.  Later we thought Neanderthals were an offshoot of modern humans that became extinct.  Based on the latest information it seems they are alive in us.  Neanderthal DNA appears in ours.  Details changed with more evidence and better analysis tools but the absolute remains.  Evolution is a truth.

So in closing intelligent design should not be taught to anyone as a valid alternate scientific theory to evolution as it simply isn’t science.  It would be the equivalent to saying soap is valid alterative to chocolate.  Go ahead and teach it, claim it is what it is, do what you want with it but don’t lie and say it’s science.  It does not compute.