Intelligent Design in Schools

I strongly support the separation of church and state, and as an activist and ACLU board member I am often involved in this issue--whether I am reading about it, debating it, or examining my own understanding of what it means to advocate for this separation. But I certainly wasn't raised in a home by parents who saw the issue as I do now, as an adult. My mom was an Evangelical Christian who, at the time, strongly believed that our public schools were in a state of decay because of the secular and "anti-Christian" curricula in schools. She felt her kids were in danger of being indoctrinated by liberal propaganda that could, in effect, compromise her children's faith by being exposed to the promotion of ideals that did not correspond to our "pro-family, pro-Christ" lifestyle. So, when I was 12, she took me out of school for two years and attempted to school me at home. I got to sleep in, which early on I was pretty excited about, but in reflecting on this period of my life, I regret that I was never challenged by the work I did, never inspired by the reading material, never had new and exciting school experiences, and was really pretty bored. After about the first year of my home schooling, I really wanted to be back in school with my friends and neighbors. My mom believed that the Bible should be taught in all schools, the Ten Commandments should be posted everywhere, the school day should open and close with prayer, and that certain subjects-- such as evolution and sex education--should be removed and replaced with the teaching of creationism, as well as anti-homosexual and antiabortion subjects. Because our public schools were not doing this to the degree of her liking, she removed me from the classroom. All I can say is, thank god I went to live with my dad in New York two years later, where I was able to start my freshman year of high school in a public school. Even though I had a lot of catching up to do, I tried to mask it as much as possible. I don't think I told any of new friends that I didn't go to middle school. The great thing about moving to a new place and meeting new people is that you have more control over the parts of yourself that others can get to know. I went on to attend 3 other public high schools and, despite the loss of my middle school years and a lot of relocating and transferring of high schools, I graduated with high honors and academic distinction in 2000 before moving on to the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The idea of intelligent design is definitely a philosophical one and not a scientific one. Make room for intelligent design in science? Seriously? That's like wanting to know who builds the homes in architecture--what are the construction workers names, where did they grow up? Sure, ok, research that if you want. But knowing who is building the homes isn’t the concern of architecture--how to build a home is, and knowing the best way to build one, knowing what materials should be used and understanding how the structure can support itself. It's like claiming that just because you don’t know who built all of the houses, that proves that god built all the houses. How can you assert in a scientific context, just because there might be some unanswered questions left by science, that god is the answer to those questions? Sure, god might be the answer, but so might any number of things. If I can prove that my five year old nephew doesn’t know the answer to a math problem, that doesn’t mean I get to pick an answer to the math problem. I would have to solve the problem and be able prove what the answer was. I believe that science might allow for a discussion of intelligent design since Science is about unanswered questions, and the best answers to these questions are constantly changing because of new scientific discoveries. Intelligent design (and god) are fine answers, but to assert them in a scientific context one must provide evidence that points in the direction of god, or intelligent design, not just evidence that shows another theory is incomplete.