The evolution debate is about to surface in Utah as a local senator drafts a legislative bill to revamp The State Board of Education’s pro-evolution position.

Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said he is tired of concerned parents calling him to ask why their children are only being taught about evolution. That’s why he is drafting a confidential bill to challenge the way evolution is taught in Utah schools. The current science curriculum is a form a censorship because students are taught nothing but evolution, he said.

“There are several theories of how life began,” Buttars said. “Yet the only one [schools] teach is evolution. That’s censorship.”

When asked if the bill would require teaching intelligent design, the idea that a designer directs life and creation, he said he would decide to include it or not at a later date.

Buttars said he is keeping the details of his bill confidential because he has a few issues he would like to address first. He wouldn’t say what those issues are, but he said he would unveil his bill Jan. 14 at the Utah Eagle Forum convention.

Although he said intelligent design shouldn’t be taught in science class, Buttars said he agrees with President Bush that intelligent design should have equal footing in school because evolution is an incomplete theory.

“Why don’t [scientists] plainly say ‘We don’t know how man has become’?” Buttars said. “All they want to do is tell you that [man] has evolved as fact, and they have no fact that man evolved from any other species. The missing link is still missing, in fact the whole chain is missing.”

Duane Jeffery, BYU professor of integrative biology, said it is unfair to use intelligent design as an alternative to evolution because it is not a theory in the scientific sense.

“Intelligent design claims to be an alternate theory to evolution,” Jeffery said. “It cannot qualify as a theory.”

A scientific theory, Jeffery said, is a broad summation that pulls together massive amounts of data and gives direction for future testing. The problem with intelligent design is it cannot be tested for validation, he said.

“You can’t test anything with intelligent design,” he said. “There’s no way you can do science with it. Nobody has been able to.”

Jeffery said it is essential to continue to distinguish between hard science and speculation so students become competitive on the international level.

”There’s no question that science is the radical force in society,” he said. “It’s the only thing we have for conserving our natural resources; it’s the only thing that pushes progress. If we teach young students that science is inimical to their religious beliefs then we will fall behind, and we already have.”

Marta Adair, an integrative biology professor with 21 years experience teaching all grade levels, said proponents call intelligent design a theory when it is more appropriately termed a hunch.

She also said she supports the Utah Board of Education’s position on evolution as it stands, which states, “As a fundamental scientific concept, evolution is a necessary part of science classroom instruction.”

“I support it completely because it uses science as we currently understand it,” she said. “It uses the model for good science, that it is testable, and it’s not speculative.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 28 Nov 2005