The Intelligent Design Controversy


Roger Bissell

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The Intelligent Design Controversy

in the Libertarian-Objectivist Media

Reported by Roger E. Bissell

The Orange County Register, which has been my newspaper of preference ever since moving to Southern California in 1985, frequently carries columns and op-ed pieces by Libertarian and Objectivist spokesmen, such as Tibor Machan.

During the month of December, 2005, two very good pieces were published on the controversy swirling around the current form of creationism known as “intelligent design.” One centered on the philosophical aspect of the controversy, the other on the political aspect. Both did an excellent job of focusing on the fundamental issues involved.

Keith Lockitch, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, wrote a rebuttal to an atheist who critiqued Lockitch’s recent public speech about Intelligent Design. Lockitch’s talk, which my wife and I attended in November, 2005, is available on DVD from the Ayn Rand Book Store. Lockitch wrote (Dec. 11):

With atheists like Robert Camp, who needs theists?

In his Dec. 2 Orange Grove, “Atheists can’t prove it, either,” Robert Camp criticized my Nov. 17 lecture in Irvine on “intelligent design” creationism, though without mentioning me by name [Editor’s note: Mr. Camp says he was indeed writing about Mr. Lockitch, but points out the debate is about issues, not personalities.]

Camp was unhappy that, in addition to discussing the flaws of “intelligent design,” I also criticized religion in general. The creationism controversy, he feels, is a “scientific and pedagogical issue,” not a clash between reason and religion.

But the view that “intelligent design” is a scientific position, to be answered with scientific arguments, is precisely the view its promoters are desperate to convey. The argument is carefully calculated to appear scientific and non-religious. Why? In hopes of skirting the constitutional ban on religion in public schools. The title of my lecture (which Camp also failed to mention) was “Creationism in Camouflage: The ‘Intelligent Design’ Deception.”

What makes “intelligent design” an inherently religious viewpoint is its appeal to a supernatural “designer.” This appeal brings it directly into conflict with reason, because the very notion of the supernatural – or something “beyond” nature that defies natural laws – is a contradiction. Although Camp, himself, claims to be “intellectually opposed to supernatural ideas,” he finds it troubling that I would dare to proclaim in a public lecture that the idea of the “supernatural” provably contradicts the facts of reality. Ssshhh! Don’t let the religious folks hear you!

Especially troubling to Camp was my rejection of the belief that supernaturalism is necessary for morality – the belief that without God there can be no absolute standards of right and wrong. “The last thing we need,” he explains, “is a bunch of people who believe they have no internal moral compass to be running around without their external one.”

What he ignores is the possibility of a scientific, provable code of ethics – a moral philosophy based neither on subjective “internal” feelings nor on “external” religious dogmas. My lecture was sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute (my employer). Rand’s ethic of rational egoism provides precisely the alternative moral system that Camp ignores in his critique.

Rand, in her philosophy of Objectivism, locates absolute standards of right and wrong in the objective requirements of human life. In her view, morality arises from the fact that we, like all living beings, must pursue values in order to survive.

To guide our choices in life, we need a code of moral principles – principles based on the unalterable facts of human nature and of man’s long-range survival needs.

Camp finds it “reasonable” to be an atheist, but not to defend the view that atheism, or any other idea in philosophy, is a provably rational viewpoint. He seems to think it is “unreasonable” to defend the importance of reason.

What his viewpoint dismisses is the essential difference between reason and faith. In reason, one accepts only conclusions one can prove to be true – conclusions based on sensory evidence and logical inference from such evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is belief unsupported by facts or logic – the blind embrace of ideas despite an absence of evidence or proof.

The only ideas that are reasonable to believe are those you know by reason to be true. And when you know them to be true, it is perfectly reasonable to argue in their defense and fight against false ideas, like creationism, that stand opposed to them.

Shortly after the December 20, 2005 federal court ruling against the teaching of Intelligent Design in the public schools, Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, weighed in on the deeper political issues involved. (The Cato Institute has on occasion participated in functions with The Objectivist Center, a rival organization to the Ayn Rand Society.) Under the heading “Government schools perpetuate conflict,” Coulson wrote (Dec. 23):

Intelligent design, the notion that the Earth was authored by a supernatural being, came up lemons this week in a Pennsylvania court.

This, obviously, is a defeat for intelligent design’s adherents and a victory for proponents of evolution. It is also a loss for America.

The problem with the judge’s ruling is that it can do little to end the battle over evolution v. creationism, because it doesn’t address the root cause of that battle: our monolithic government-sanctioned schools.

By combining a pluralistic society with a one-size-fits-all education system, we have created a perpetual conflict machine. There is no way, within the structure of our existing system, for people to get the sort of education they want for their own children without having to force their preferences on their neighbors. Voila. Instant conflict.

Even the First Amendment’s ban against a government-established religion has not prevented fighting over the teaching of human origins in our government schools for close to a century. And a host of other flash points in the culture war lack even that legal arbiter to facilitate a settlement. Consider sex education, textbook and library book selection, the treatment of homosexuality, “whole language” vs. phonics, etc.

So long as there is a single official government school system, these zero-sum ideological death matches will continue. For every winner there will always be a loser.

But just as the root cause of the problem is simple, so is the solution. America will remain a pluralistic society for the foreseeable future, but we can easily reform our schools so that parents can obtain the sort of education they value without needing to impose it on others. It’s called parental choice.

By offering tax relief to middle-income families and tuition scholarships to those with lower incomes we could bring independent schooling within reach of every family. Such a system can be designed, using tax credits for both personal use and for donations to private scholarship funds, in such a way that no government money is spent on education. Both types of programs already exist in several states. By combining and expanding them, we could eliminate virtually all of our long-running education conflicts.

There are a few common objections to this idea. Some argue that state-run schools are necessary to foster racial harmony or democracy, but the falsity – and indeed the irony – of this notion should be evident from the current context.

As for being indispensable to our democracy, state-run schooling began in the latter half of the 19th century, jumping – as economist E. G. West put it – into the saddle of an already-galloping horse.

Others argue that some areas of knowledge are simply too important to be left to parental discretion, and that the (presumably all-wise and all-knowing) state must ensure that these are taught to all children.

In addition to being patently un-American, such an authoritarian approach to education is both ineffective and short-sighted. Evolution has been the sanctioned curriculum for several decades, and only a third of Americans think it is well-supported by the evidence. Slightly more than half adhere to the biblical creation story. So we’ve tried the official-knowledge thing, and it doesn’t work.

Surely, in the freest country on Earth, it’s time to give educational freedom a chance?

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