Intelligent design has a place in the intelligent classroom

After reading recent articles about the debate over intelligent design (ID) versus evolution, I am convinced that people have a phobia of anything that hints at religion and God.

I think this is because issues dealing with religion and God can't be proven and people don't like the thought of agreeing with something they can't rationalize in their mind.

Referring to the Dec. 20 ruling by U.S. District judge John E Jones III that the concept of ID being taught in a public school in Dover, PA, as an alternative to evolution is religious and unscientific, I make my first point.

The judge's reasoning seems to rule out the teaching of ID because it has religious connotations, concluding that what is not based on science has no place in the classroom.

People always cite the First Amendment as justification for not having ID and other religious doctrine taught in public schools, but I think they use it abusively, screaming separation of church and state.

The first part of the amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It does not say teachers cannot teach about certain religious doctrine in public schools or that doing so is an infringement of a person's rights. Besides, teaching about ID is in no way making a law requiring students to believe in that school of thought.

Rather, the statement in the beginning of the First Amendment is setting boundaries so that it prohibits the government at all levels from officially adopting a specific denomination or religion.

Therefore, using the separation of church and state argument and interpreting it to mean that issues pertaining to religion cannot be taught in public school classrooms is ludicrous.

This leads me to point two.

According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dated Jan. 4, Judge Jones is said to have commented that the real purpose of the Dover School Board was to "promote religion in the public school classroom."

If one considers providing students with two sides of an issue, in this case evolution as opposed to ID, and discussing it in a classroom setting as promoting an agenda, you're missing the point of what education is supposed to be about.

Students should be able to exercise their minds in a way that questions the status quo, their own current beliefs and the beliefs of others around them.

But they can't do that if they're prohibited from looking at both sides of an issue.

Besides, ID is not just a religious issue but one of logic.

The idea of a creator God who brought the universe into existence, creating nature and all complex biological structures is evident.

For instance, consider the rotation of the earth and sun, aligned in such a way so that there is day and night and changes of season. The detailed design of a spider's web which provides it with a method of catching food or the skin of a lizard as it changes color to protect it. Both are illustrations of living things whose methods of existence hardly seem a product of gradual change without a God behind their creation.

Under evolution, there could have been lizards that in the middle of evolving had feathers but couldn't yet fly. Clearly, the species would die as it could not survive in that state.

In the public school system, our students should be allowed to engage themselves and their fellow classmates in these types of debates in order to find out where they stand on these issues. If they are prohibited from doing this in the classroom, our public education system is failing.

Aimee Hornberger is the Columbia Basin Herald's health and education reporter.