Intelligent Design

An article that appeared in the Washington Post Magazine on February 5, 2006 (Eden and Evolution) covered an event that occurred in a classroom at NVCC Annandale. The article prominently featured the thoughts and teachings of a former adjunct faculty member at the college – a person who promoted the idea of “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution by natural selection. The article, in my opinion, damaged our academic reputation and raised questions about how and what we teach

I want it to be perfectly clear to the community at large that it is not the normal or accepted practice of faculty at NVCC to teach non-scientific material in science classes. The pseudo-scientific idea of “intelligent design” is a faith-based viewpoint that has no place in a modern biology classroom at a state-supported college. Any faculty member who promotes such an idea and, further, directly contradicts the most fundamental concepts underlying modern biological thinking is not doing his or her job and is not teaching established course content. The principle of academic freedom carries with it protections and responsibilities. It does not protect faculty who couch their personal theistic philosophy as a scientific alternative to evolution.

I am fully convinced by the accumulated evidence of nearly a century and a half of research that supports the concept of evolution by natural selection. To me, evolution is not “just a theory” but a fact, the only questions remaining are the exact mechanisms involved in the complex processes that are on-going in the living world. I would find it impossible to teach Biology 101 or any other biology course without repeatedly using terms like “evolve,” and “adapt,” to both explain and give context to the fascinating, wonderful, and often bizarre characteristics of life on Earth. The more I learn about biology the more it becomes clear that there is no clear “design” but rather a constant bending and adapting of features and functions to new purposes.

A key problem that underlies the apparent conflict between evolutionists and creationists (and intelligent design advocates) is a misunderstanding about what a “theory” is. In science, one starts with an observation, formulates an hypothesis to explain the observed phenomenon, then designs and performs experiments or makes further observations to test the validity of the hypothesis. Only after this process has continued for some time and evidence to support the hypothesis has been gathered by many independent researchers can one legitimately start calling the explanation a theory. If a theory withstands many, many experimental challenges it might eventually come to be called a model or a law. Some argue that evolution by natural selection has reached that level of support. Intelligent design neither has nor ever will have such a status because it is, by its very dependence upon supernatural intervention, not subject to verification by scientific experimentation. The existence or lack of existence of a supra-normal entity like an intelligent designer is simply not something that science can address. It is therefore quite unacceptable to refer to the “theory” of intelligent design. I have and will continue to strenuously object to the teaching of topics like intelligent design as science in biology classes at NVCC.

Robin Wilson Gorham, Professor of Biology