I'm grateful to Jason Flory for taking the time to respond to my column about the controversy over science education in Kansas (NPJ, 5-26-05, p. 16). I hope that our dialogue stimulates critical thinking about these issues. He wonders first about my credentials--I have earned a Bachelors degree in Secondary Education and a Masters in Divinity. I am not a scientist, and I certainly don't expect anyone to just take my word for it when I comment on scientific issues. That is why I suggested the www.ICR.org website. I have met some of the scientists whose work may be studied there. Dr. Kurt Wise, for example, earned a double doctorate from Harvard in Invertebrate Paleontology and Macro-Evolutionary Theory--I suggest that his thoughts on the matter ought to be taken at least as seriously as Mr. Flory's, and I'd hardly classify him in the same group as people who believe the earth is flat. Another site, which is not limited to scientists with a young-earth perspective, is www.discovery.org/csc. The scholars writing there reflect the broader Intelligent Design movement (ID)--which embraces critics of evolution regardless of their theological views.
    Mr. Flory insists the hypothesis of intelligent design (ID) is unscientific. Interestingly, the Kansas School Board is considering which of two definitions of science should be adopted: Is science  "a human activity of systematically seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us;" or is it "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."? My education includes a graduate course in the Philosophy of Science, and I'd like to point out that an argument about definitions is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one.  The whole controversy swirls around the use of the word "natural" versus the word "adequate". Evolutionists are fighting tooth and nail for the word "natural" which, if adopted,  would neatly render the ID hypothesis "unscientific" by definition. The game is won by not allowing the other team on the field!  It seems that evolutionists don't want anyone examining the adequacy of their theory--they expect us to take it on faith.
    The founders of modern science were believers in creation. Newton, Boyle, Mendel, Pasteur, Faraday, Joule--one wonders how they made such progress without the blessings of evolutionary thought! Even today, creationist chemists perform research experiments the same way chemists who believe in evolution do. The scientific method depends on experiments/observations that can be replicated. But the events that, according to evolutionary belief, turned dinosaurs into birds (and similar phyletic transformations) would have been unique occurrences in the unobserved past--they cannot be replicated today. Science is a powerful tool for studying natural processes in the present, but philosophical assumptions become enormously important when scientists try to interpret data relating to the unobserved past. While it is quite true that a majority of scientists believe in evolution, only a small percentage need to rely on its assumptions in their research. If someday this naturalistic paradigm is abandoned by most, the collapse of modern civilization imagined by Mr. Flory will certainly not transpire.
    The proponents of ID are not asking that religious dogma be taught in science classrooms, and they agree that students must be taught about evolution. They are merely asking that students evaluate the scientific data relevant to the only two real options for explaining the origin of living things. Are time, chance, and the death of the unfit--the heros of the evolutionary story--sufficient? Or was the action of some supernatural intelligence necessary? An example may be of help here: The information content of this article is not dependent on the physical properties of ink and paper--the same material could be employed to convey a very different message. The information on the DNA molecules in every living cell is of the same sort--a coded language. No scientist has ever observed such information arising by purely natural means. (Genetic mutations corrupt existing information--they do not explain where the information came from in the first place.) Now as far as anyone has observed, coded information always has its origin in intelligence. So what is the best inference about the unobserved origin of DNA? Such exercises in critical thinking will produce better scientists than the usual evolutionary indoctrination. And again, if the facts really do support evolution, students will tend to come away from their lessons with a firmer belief in the theory.
    Allow me to reassure Mr. Flory  that I am not accusing all believers in evolution of atheism. However, the claims of theology and evolution do overlap on the question of origins--we cannot separate our knowledge of the world into neat little boxes that never intersect. The popular British evolutionist Richard Dawkins says Darwinism "makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." The Apostle Paul says, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:20  NIV)." One of these men is wrong.

Pastor Charlie Scott
c. 2005