American biology teachers insist on atheism?

An American lawyer who is active in intelligent design issues has written me to say that the National Association of Biology Teachers, far from foreswearing atheism, has in fact merely moved some of its former upfront atheistic tenets to the supporting material under its current grand (and relatively innocuous-sounding) statement.

From the May 2004 version:

NABT endorses the following tenets of science, evolution, and biology education. Teachers should take these tenets into account when teaching evolution.

Essential Concepts of Biological Evolution

- The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of biological evolution - an unpredictable and natural process of descent with modification that is affected by natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, migration and other natural biological and geological forces.

Okay, well, wait a minute ... unless we know for sure that there is no meaning or purpose in the universe, how can we possibly know that biological evolution is unpredictable and (purely) natural?

A number of well-respected scientists who, incidentally, do not align with the intelligent design theorists, would dispute the view that evolution is unpredictable, notably Michael Denton and Simon Conway Morris.

Also, if one claims that biological evolution is unpredictable, it may also be untestable and unfalsifiable. That's too bad. I had hoped it would be more than nice graphics. I especially hoped that because I have just finished tickng off playwright Paul Rudnick on account of the fact that I thought his treatment of the subject is shallow. But if it's not science after all, maybe shallow wins.

(Note: Before you waste a lot of time denouncing my remarks in the Comments box, please note the title of this blog: I am not a creationist, as the term is normally understood. I think, from observing the current controversy, that the dogma of Darwinian evolution without design or purpose is primarily designed to serve materialist philosophy, and does not have nearly enough evidence to stand on its own. That said, I do not dispute the current dating of the age of the universe or of Earth—or the idea, in principle, of common ancestry. Whether our origins really happened that way, is, of course, another matter, and it is disquieting to learn that evolution is supposed to be "unpredictable." )

Teaching atheism at public expense?

A commenter has asked me to provide evidence for the use of Darwinism to teach atheism in the school system at public expense. For that, I need only point to a curious episode in the mid-Nineties involving the
National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT).

for more than two years, from April 1995 to October 1997, the U.S.'s National Associaton of Biology Teachers (NABT) declared that "natural" does mean "without God" in their position statement on evolution, which stated that evolution is an "unsupervised, impersonal" process.

And they fought any change. But finally, as Craig Rusbult reports,

After first refusing to do so, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) has dropped the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from its official description of evolution. The group's eight-person board of directors voted unanimously on October 11 to alter the wording of its two-year-old statement in support of teaching evolution — and the board did so just three days after it had voted unanimously not to make the change. Religion scholar Huston Smith and philosopher Alvin Plantinga had urged NABT to make the change, arguing that inclusion of the two words constituted a theological judgment about the nonexistence of God that went beyond the boundaries of empirical science.

Not only Christian scholars such as Smith and Plantinga but the Darwin lobby itself had to get involved to make the biology teachers' organization back down.

So accustomed were they to teaching atheism, one must infer, that it had never occurred to them that they might be challenged on the point. NABTs current statement has dropped all that language and merely insists that intelligent design theory and various types of creationisms are "are outside the realm of science and not part of a valid science curriculum."

So we are back in familiar territory now: The biology teachers know, presumably by faith, that life forms do not show evidence of intelligent design. Hence evidence to the contrary is not really evidence. Therefore, they are justified in refusing to discuss it, even if it's the hottest question of the day ...

I should stress that I think the current statement is a vast improvement. At least we can now focus on whether the NABT attitude to intelligent design is justified, not on trying to explain to them why they MUST NOT teach atheism at public expense.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

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