Science class no place for creationist dogma

SCMP Editorial (19-Feb-2009)

Alex Lo

Academic freedom does not mean university scholars are free to teach whatever they see fit in the classroom. The fact a scientist admits he has been secretly teaching what, by the scientific consensus of his peers, is a pseudo-science and a creationist dogma should have set off alarm bells.

Chris Beling, an associate physics professor at the University of Hong Kong, has appeared in the media to openly attack his faculty for banning him from formally teaching a course on intelligent design and the origins of the universe. He has also complained that the university would not let him invite prominent speakers who advocate such views. He is not shy about telling of holding secret weekly meetings in his office to teach students about the topic. A self-described Christian, it appears Dr Beling feels emboldened enough to go on the offensive and to make it sound like he is being censored.

No one is questioning his faith. As a Hong Kong resident, he must be free to believe in, and openly practise, whatever religion he subscribes to. He should be completely free to teach intelligent design in a church, or even in university classes for theology or philosophy. He should enjoy the same freedom if he were a devotee of fung shui or astrology. Indeed, I applaud him for taking part in an RTHK radio debate last week about creationism and evolution to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday.

By arguing for the contentious doctrine in public, he has performed a valuable service to the community.

However, he is absolutely not free to teach the doctrine as a scientific theory that deserves equal time in a physics or biology classroom. He is no freer to do so than he would be if he were to insist on teaching fung shui or astrology as science. The HKU faculty is absolutely right - and must have the courage of its convictions - to continue to ban him from teaching the doctrine as a physics lecturer and university employee using science faculty facilities and time.

Intelligent design is a creationist dogma posing as an empirical-scientific theory. It has been primarily an American phenomenon, though it is slowly spreading elsewhere. It is not a rival to the theory of evolution and natural selection; and no responsible scientist should teach it as such. Core arguments similar to intelligence design have been around for centuries; they were levelled against Darwin in his lifetime.

But intelligent-design theory today is often clothed in modern biological or physics terminology to make it sound more scientific. Its leading advocates at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute argue 'certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection'. But beneath their rhetoric, they are creationist at the core. They insist on the theory's scientific status because of the peculiar culture and politics in the US. Creationism is practically banned in all American states from being taught as science. So to get creationism through the back door into schools, fundamentalist Christians came up with intelligent design as the camouflaged vehicle.

Centuries ago, the scientific revolution came about in the west by abandoning teleological or intelligence-directed causes as scientific explanations. Now, advocates of intelligent design want to reverse this basic scientific paradigm. Investment in research based on the edifice that Darwin built has yielded compound-interest-like returns in major scientific and medical breakthroughs and technological advances.

If we were to fund intelligent design 'scientists' with all the money we have now and allow them to teach their 'science' everywhere, a century from now, it's a safe bet that their followers would still be repeating the same old arguments with nothing scientifically creditable to show for it. It will be a major divestment in science and cultural enlightenment the day we allow intelligent design to be taught as science.

(Alex Lo is a senior writer at the Post)