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Opinion

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Approach It Intelligently

M

ore than 200 years
ago, philosophers
came up with the
concept of a Divine watch-
maker. Just as the complexity of
a watch implies that someone
must have designed and made it,
they argued, a complex universe
indicates there must have been a
Creator.
Even though it has been refut-
ed many times as a flawed anal-
ogy, the watchmaker theory has
been kicking around for a couple
of centuries. Only now it's called
intelligent design.
Just as its original formula-
tors were trying to reconcile
the unsettling ideas of the
Enlightenment with belief in a
Supreme Being, today's advocates
say they only want to bring sci-
ence and religion into harmony.
Especially when it comes to
teaching the theory of evolution.
A federal judge ruled last year,
however, that the Dover, Pa.,
school board could not mandate
the teaching of intelligent design
in its biology classes because it
was not provable, had no basis

in science and was, in fact, a reli-
gious belief. It was simply anoth-
er way of prying the school door
open to creationism, or belief in
the literal truth of the opening
chapter of Genesis.
It was a hard-fought trial, with
the sort of examination that was
characterized in a New Yorker
article, as "cheerful merciless-
ness."When the decision came
down, though, Dover abided by
the ruling and also voted out of
office the school board members
who had sponsored intelligent
design.
Still, its advocates in the
Michigan Legislature appear
to be trying to get around this
legal problem by presenting the
teaching of intelligent design as
an exercise in academic rigor. A
House bill on educational reform
sets new guidelines for course
content in public high schools.
This bill overall contains
some positive developments for
education in Michigan. But the
language in its science section
needs to be clarified or amended.
It stipulates that science classes

would "critically evaluate scien-
tific-theories ... and formulate
arguments for and against those
theories."
No description of any other
course contains language that so
explicitly encourages challenges
to a generally accepted system of
knowledge. So it is not unreason-
able to suspect that the scientific
theory this bill's supporters are
particularly eager to challenge is
that of Charles Darwin.
Intelligent design based on
complexity theory does have
interesting aspects for those who
try to reconcile science and faith.
If they want to believe it privately
and in the places they worship,
that's their absolute right.
But it should not be presented
in schools as an alternative
— and the only alternative — to
the Origin of Species and evolu-
tion. ❑

Dry Bones

AND MAMAS
REJECTS A
TWO STATE
SOLUTION! WOW!

MAMAS
REJECTS
THE OSLO
ACCORDS!

A LOT LIKE
SHARON'S
ONCE WAS,/

THE MAMAS
POSITION
IS NOW

7

E-mail letters of no more
than 150 words to:
letters@thejewishnews. corn

WWW.DRYBONESBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM

Reality Check

It's A Puzzlement

A

few simple questions I
have a hard time get-
ting answered:
Do Palestinian Christians
believe they're still in the game
now that Hamas has been voted
into control of their presump-
tive homeland? When I asked a
local Palestinian apologist about
Muslim extremism a few years
ago, she responded that she'd
worry about that when the time
came. I'd say the time has come.
Did declining television rat-
ings mean that Americans have
grown bored with the Olympics?
Or did it simply mean they
rejected NBC's pre-digested pap
that kept flitting mindlessly from
one event to the other? Given
the choice between that and
American Idol ... well, maybe I
wouldn't go that far.
Let's see. Four major Oscars

in the last two years
have gone to actors
portraying Ray
Charles, Katherine
Hepburn, June Carter
Cash and Truman
Capote. Does this
mean that Rich
Little will be up for
an Academy Award
soon?
Those were won-
derful stories about the new
housing planned for Detroit's
east riverfront. Unfortunately, you
had to read way down in the fine
print to learn that the funding is
not yet in place. Now where have
I heard that before? Oh, yeah.
Maybe in about two dozen other
projects in the city.
Fast-food restaurants flocked
to put "healthy choice" selec-
tions on their menus a few years

ago. Unfortunately,
a recent report indi-
cates that hardly
anyone is choosing
them. Fruits and veg-
gies are rotting in
storage. So does this
mean that "public
interest" lawyers will
agree that these res-
taurants made a good
faith effort and can
now discontinue the items as a
rational market decision without
fearing future lawsuits? I know, I
know. I just can't help being silly
sometimes.
Can anyone tell me exactly
what "public interest" means?
My accountant says that if the
typical crowd at Comerica Park
were given a vote, 80 percent
would say they'd rather be at
Tiger Stadium. Is he wrong?

Why is the United States
regarded as malicious for want-
ing to tighten security on its
southern border with Mexico
when Mexico has even more rig-
orous restrictions on its southern
border with Guatemala?
Why did so many people who
now compare Israel's security
fence to the Berlin Wall have
nothing to say about the original
Berlin Wall when it was standing?
How can the United States be
engaged in nation-building in
Iraq? To do that, don't you have
to start off with something like
a nation? Iraq is lines arbitrarily
drawn on a map by the Allies
after World War I and populated
by groups of people who detest
each other. Couldn't someone
have figured that out before all
the jubilant pre-war forecasts?
Will the cartoon riots finally

iN

lift the blindfold from the eyes of
the European Union? Last year
it rejected a report that Muslim
groups were behind much of the
anti-Semitic violence in Europe.
Now maybe they understand that
it's not only Jews for whom the
bell tolls. It tolls for their free-
doms, too.
How can anyone feel confident
about Democrats picking up
seats in this fall's congressional
elections when Howard Dean is
leading the party? This is like
signing up for a walking tour of
Grand Canyon led by a lemming.
And could I still write a col-
umn if someone swiped the ? key
from my word processor? Li

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com.

March 16 G 2006

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