Introduction
Over the years, there were two main contending theories in the United States concerning the emergence of life: evolution and creationism. Evolution characterized science’s view of how creation began, and creationism presented the religious elucidations. Later, came the intelligent design theory, also referred to as the design theory. This is the opinion that nature displays concrete signs of having been devised by a preexisting intelligence. The intelligent design concept purports that an unsystematic natural process could have developed life by no chance. Rather, only the direction of an intelligent power can explicate the intricacy and diversity evidenced today. Since the inception of the intelligent design theory, there have been a range of debates. The proponents of this theory have continued to push for the concept to be initiated into science classes of public schools and be taught together with the theory of evolution as a scientific explanation. However, this has remained an issue to be debated on over the year. The intent of this paper is to explore more on this contending debate.
I think that intelligent design should not be considered as a reasonable scientific explanation to the source of life. Over the past decade, public schools in the United States of America have continued to face a dilemma whenever they tackle the issue of biological origin. The teaching of this subject has exposed the public schools in a discomfited role of determining a controversy that splits scientists, tutors and the judicial system. The answer as to whether specifically the intelligent design theory should be taught in public school still needs to be answered. In answering this controversy, I still feel that intelligent design should not be taught in public schools alongside the Darwinian evolution theory. This is because of a number of reasons that demerit this specific theory.
First, the intelligent design theory in itself is not a science. Science refers to standards and procedures for the methodical quest of knowledge consisting the realization and creation of a problem, the accumulation of facts through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. If this theory were to be regarded as a science, it would mean that a whole transformation on the definition of science is required. This theory does not qualify to be considered as science because is it not backed by any scientific findings. Precisely, the intelligent design theory is not founded as a scientific theory and its deduction is not a scientific build up. Because of this, the concept cannot be regarded as a valid scientific explanation to the origin of life. In fact, intelligent design is only but religion disguised as a science. This therefore means that if the theory is to be taught, it should be done under comparative religion but not alongside evolution theories in a science class. Intelligent design also lacks strong scientific evidence. It doesn’t give explanation of who the designer really is and most importantly, who created the designer. It also follows therefore that the intelligent design theory lacks enough content which is not acceptable in reasonable scientific explanations. Also, the intelligent design theory does not create any experiment based testable hypothesis. Because of this, it would be wrong to teach this theory in science classes of public schools alongside the evolution theory.
More outstandingly, intelligent design should not be considered as a logical scientific explanation, and therefore not be taught in science classes of public schools because it is not productive as a science. Its assumption of a designer having done something, in fact puts a stop to it being regarded as a reasonable scientific explanation. Scientific explanations in themselves happen to be methodogical since science operates by presupposing blind law which it seeks to find explanation to. Putting issues directly, present day biologists purport that the Darwinian evolutionary theory functions and it is well experimented despite few controversies. This makes the evolution theory to be quickly accepted as a science. The intelligent design theory on the other hand, makes no contribution to the existing store of scientific knowledge. It actually does not encourage the pursuit of further knowledge. Rather, the intelligent design theory proposes that when humans cannot find an answer or an explanation to a given concept, it is best to attribute it to a higher power. Therefore, this theory is only encouraged for the reason that individuals have religious beliefs they treasure, and this is purely not the foundation of reasonable science.
It has also been observed that to date, the intelligence design theory has not been able to build up an origins representation with systematically testable contentions and falsifiable forecasts. There is not any Intelligence design theory that explains the history of the universe and of life. Notably, there lacks intelligence design guesses about what scientists should find out in their examination of the evidence of nature. Because of its lack of an experimental model, the intelligence design theory fails to provide guidance to prospective scientific explorations. Model-construction and model- processing activities are the characteristic attributes of science. Because of this, the intelligence design theory does not qualify by any chance to be regarded as a reasonable scientific explanation to the origin of life. Therefore, this theory should be put far from any science classes of public schools, and not be taught alongside the evolution theory. This is because of the difference in the scientific build up between these two theories
The paper presents arguments as to why intelligent design shouldn’t be considered as a reasonable scientific explanation to the origin of life. It goes ahead to propose that this theory shouldn’t be taught in science classes of public schools alongside the Darwinian evolution theory because of its flaws. If the design theory is to be included in the public school syllabus, then it should be taught as comparative religion or philosophy but not in a science class. Inexcusable presentation of the theory as a valid option to the learning of evolutionary biology would be against the agreement of the international scientific community.
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Scott, Eugenie C., and Glenn Branch. 2006. Not in our classrooms: why intelligent design is
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