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Kansas Unintelligently Designs
by Simon
The Kansas Board of Education has decided to put intelligent design into its curriculum.
This makes me so angry, for no other reason than that it's an abuse of English.
the·o·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (th-r, thîr)
n. pl. the·o·ries
1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.
3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics. [P.S. math is awesome -Ed.]
4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.
5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.
6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.
- Dictionary.com
At best, Intelligent Design fits definition 2, but certainly not definition 1; The idea of intelligent design has countless counter-examples working against it, meaning it does not stand up to scientific rigor. It's a fine philosophical or theological idea- there could be an intelligent designer who created our wondrous and imperfect(as many see it) existence for reasons we don't know- but this is not science, as it is neither provable nor disprovable.
So in addition to making mush of a significant English word and its important and conflicting definitions, allowing Intelligent Design into a science curriculum demonstrates to kids that sometimes scientific theories don't require rigor. We might as well throw out definition #1.
Through its serious affronts to English and Science, the biggest lesson learned from the inclusion of intelligent design in a science curriculum is that nuance doesn't matter.
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