IDN Spokesman Urges Teaching Students Criticisms of Darwin's Theory
by Jim Brown
January 17, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A leading intelligent design (ID) proponent is applauding a decision by the Ohio Board of Education to retain a lesson plan that teaches biology students about the debate over evolution and the scientific criticisms of that theory. The board's recent vote is the latest development in a three-year dispute over what to teach sophomore biology students about the origins of life in the state's public schools. The Ohio Board of Education voted 9-8 to keep the science lesson curriculum called "Critical Analysis of Evolution," which encourages students to examine the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. John Calvert of the Intelligent Design Network (IDN) once testified before the board in favor of the lesson plan.
Students need to know evolution is a theory that relies heavily on subjectivity and imagination, Calvert says. Because it relies on these elements, he explains, Darwin's origins theory is highly controversial, and one-sided teaching of the subject only renders it more suspect.
"If you allow students to see only the positive evidence for evolution and none of the scientific criticisms, then in my view what you're doing is promoting a materialistic worldview," the IDN spokesman asserts. "You also have taken evolution out of science because you essentially are converting it into an ideology."
When schools teach students only the evidence in favor of evolutionary theory, Calvert contends, they are effectively promoting atheism, agnosticism, and deism -- ideologies of which evolution is a fundamental tenet. He believes the Ohio Board of Education's decision is important from a religious standpoint because students would otherwise be presented with only a dogmatic atheistic perspective on a central human question.
"Origins addresses the question of where we come from -- a material cause or an intelligent cause," the ID proponent says. "Evolution posits a material cause. Well, if we come from a material cause, that's going to have a dramatic effect on what we choose about where we go."
But if, on the other hand, people believe "that we come from an intelligent cause," Calvert continues, "that will similarly have a dramatic impact on where we believe we should go." Therefore, he insists, how evolution is taught to high school students has both scientific and spiritual implications that go well beyond the classroom.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
