Science, faith should be kept separate
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, May 30, 2008
(http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/May/20080530Comm001.asp)

I am not a scientist, but, akin to most other folks, I rely on scientific discoveries every day: traveling about, using the Internet and even such mundane things as washing my face and brushing my teeth.

Many years ago, clever people learned how to propel vehicles by means of the internal combustion engine. All of a sudden, horse-drawn vehicles and buggy whips became things of the past. Now, most of us get around in and on various vehicles dependent upon that scientific invention. Likewise, when we wash our face, we don’t use lye soap. Tooth-brushing with sassafras twigs and baking soda was replaced with toothbrushes and toothpaste. The Internet replaced, well, nothing.
"Intelligent design" doesn’t attempt to explain any of these things as rational developments but rather says there must be a Designer responsible for gasoline engines, mild soaps, modern toothpastes and search engines. One of the central themes in intelligent design is that any advancement we make in our daily lives or in our cerebral cortex is planned - designed.

The other central theme in intelligent design is that there are many things we just do not understand and those non-understood issues can be explained by trusting in the Big Designer.

There are, of course, several things wrong with trying to explain advances as the plan of some vague Designer and other things wrong with trying to explain unknowns as things in the hands of this same Designer.

Evolutionary theory is all about science, and one of the primary tenets of science is that new discoveries must be replicable. Cold fusion is an example. When a couple of scientists claimed to have found a way to create fusion of radioactive material without resorting to several million degrees of heat, that claim was found by other scientists to be bogus because no one could replicate that method. Cold fusion was not accepted by the scientific community. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done except by an Intelligent Designer; it just means the methods detailed by the two scientists was not the way to do it.

Scientific theory also is unlike what the rest of us think about when we use the word "theory." A scientific theory - say the theories of gravity or magnetism or various theories developed by Nicola Tesla - is used as a valid means of explanation of all sorts of phenomena. Objects don’t float off into space but go down. No one really understands magnetism, but the theory of magnetism is not doubted, and, sure enough, there are at least two types of electricity and all sorts of wavelengths.
But intelligent design is based on a belief and is not supported by replicable experiments, but by faith. Then there’s science, which is supported primarily by replicability.

It is one thing to believe that unexplained matters fall into the hands of the Designer. It is another thing to say we don’t now understand certain matters, such as gravity or magnetism, but those theories explain a lot, and we fill in the gaps almost every day. Yesterday Thor’s hammer was believed to cause thunder; now we know it is lightning.

One of the prime arguments against evolution - and for intelligent design - is that the fossil record doesn’t show "transitional" creatures. That argument doesn’t hold water. Numbers of transitional fossils have been found, demonstrating the evolutionary chain from cave-dwelling knuckle-draggers to today’s Homo sapiens and from primitive to complex plants. Recently it was discovered via DNA testing that today’s birds are descendants of long-thought-to-be-extinct dinosaurs.

Intelligent design is based on beliefs - religion. Science is based on observable and replicable events. A belief in intelligent design doesn’t negate science’s findings. The findings of science don’t negate beliefs in religion. They’re just two different things.

Science should be taught in school. Religious matters should be taught in church and at home.