Brief extracts from a recent book by a Professor of Biology at Stanford University who is an Episcopalian (Anglican for those not too familiar with USA denominations):

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I keep finding more and more Christians who are opposing “Intelligent design”. The latest is Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Sciences and of Geophysics (now there’s an unusual combination) at Stanford University.

I thought people might like to read a few extracts from her recent small book (155 small pages).

Her book _Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist_ (Island Press, Washington, 2006) is mostly pretty reasonable. Chapter 9, “To-Do List for Theorists”, mentions some of the unsolved problems in biology, and concludes with the sentence:

Intelligent design makes up problems with evolutionary biology that don’t exist, while ignoring the deep problems that do exist, like those we have just explored, those concerning what an “individual is.

The next chapter is entitled “Intelligent Design”, and here it seems that she is just able to keep her feelings under control. I’ll quote a few bits, starting with the first paragraph of this chapter on page 80.

In 1991, Phillip Johnson, a professor at the University of California Berkeley Law School, published _Darwin on Trial_, a short book advertising that he would look “at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would.” I reviewed the book in 1992 at the request of the journal _Ecological Economics_ and concluded that the book added “little light to the creationist/evolutionist debate, but its sarcasm and condescension do add heat.” Nonetheless I predicted that “students of the environment will have to be somewhat conversant with it for the near future.”

She then talks about the way this book kicked off the ID movement, and the politics and funding behind ID. When it comes to problems in biology she points out what is needed, in a paragraph on page 91.

My favorite marvel is a chameleon’s tongue, several body lengths long, which sticks out in a flash to catch bugs far away. How could this possibly evolve? A medium-sized tongue would be useless, because a lizard couldn’t get close enough before the bug flew away. So, how does a chameleon’s tongue get to be so long? Offhand, I don’t know, but appeal to an “intelligent designer” is simply a cop-out, a way to avoid doing the hard work of figuring out whether there are any relatives with medium-sized tongues, what else tongues are used for, what fossil tongue lengths are, and so forth.

Of course, since soft tissues like tongues rarely fossilise, looking for the lengths of fossil tongues, especially coiled ones, isn’t going to be easy. After some more in this line Roughgarden gets to her conclusions. Here she is rather less polite than Cheryl Capra and I were in our article in _Queensland Science Teacher_ earlier this year. On page 99 she writes:

I ask that conservative Christians think about what intelligent design really is, and question whether it’s worthy of their support. If intelligent design succeeds as a movement, Christianity will be hurt. Intelligent design says that the facts of nature offer a better testimonial to God than the Bible does. It will substitute science for the Gospels. The weekly sermon will be about new data on the biochemistry of flagella, not on Jesus’ parables.

Let’s conclude with whether intelligent design should be taught in our schools and, if so, where. Intelligent design doesn’t qualify as adequate science. “No data? Not science,” pretty much says it all. Intelligent design makes up problems with evolutionary biology that aren’t there, like explaining eyes, ears, and flagella, while ignoring problems that do exist, like individualism and individuality discussed earlier, and gender and sexuality which I’ll discuss next.

Nonetheless, what I’ve learned from the political success of the intelligent design movement is the need to teach what makes bad science bad. I favor teaching intelligent design as an example of bad science. I don’t favor simply tossing both Darwin and intelligent design to students and saying, “Hey, you decide.” That would be irresponsible. We have to say why intelligent design is junk science.

The second last paragraph in this chapter, on page 101, reads:

I also favor teaching intelligent design in a religious studies curriculum as an example of junk religion. That’s the point. When a crossover movement turns up that mixes religion and science like intelligent design does, it must be examined carefully in both domains. Its shallow religion matches its empty science. Its danger to Christianity overshadows its emptiness for evolutionary biology.

It would be interesting to see what sort of reviews, if any, this book gets on creationist sites. Let me make a prediction. I tried “joan roughgarden” on Google to see if I could find a list of her publications – I didn’t manage to get much help direct from Stanford University. As well as a publication list, this turned up assorted things about Roughgarden’s support for the gay community in USA. If any creationist actually reviews the book, I predict that she will be criticised – along with the Episcopalian community of which she is a member – for this, as being a much more significant reason all “true Christians” should ignore what she says.

————-File about Roughgarden’s book ends here—————

Salaam

Ken Smith

December 2006

— Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … “In order to `think outside the square’ it is first necessary to decide the meaning of `the square’, and then familiarise oneself with current thinking `inside the square’. ” Internet aphorism, 21st century