Tilghman criticizes intelligent design

In a lecture at Oxford University last week, President Tilghman pointed out potential clashes among science, politics and religion and defended Darwinian evolution against the challenges presented by proponents of intelligent design.

Her remarks at the prestigious annual Romanes Lecture mark the second time in the past month that Tilghman has publicly criticized intelligent design. In an interview Wednesday, she explained why she passionately and frequently defends the scientifically accepted theory of evolution.

"It's one of the two monumental pillars on which modern biology rests," Tilghman said. "When you have a group of people challenging one of the central tenets of biology, it's very serious."

Tilghman said opposition to Darwinian evolution began with "a small group of evangelical Christians" who, after creationist theory failed to gain popularity, "went back to the drawing board" and started pushing intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism.

Proponents of intelligent design assert that Darwinian evolution is only a theory and that their theory is an alternative and equally valid explanation of the same observed phenomena.

Tilghman, however, said the approach lacks the substance of a scientific theory.

"Evolution is a theory that has arisen in the scientific field and has been tested and challenged for 150 years," she said. "Intelligent design is a philosophical position that can be taught in social science classes or philosophy classes, but it's not science."

She also noted that advocates do not follow standard scientific procedures.

"The proponents of intelligent design are not working in the mainstream of modern biology," Tilghman said. "They don't publish papers. They don't do experiments."

According to Tilghman, the methods of intelligent design supporters are comparable to an attack on Einstein's famous E = mc^2 equation from an opponent who suggested a new relationship among mass, energy and the speed of light without any experimental evidence.

When asked what she thinks of those who support teaching evolution and intelligent design in the same classroom, Tilghman responded, "I think they're undermining scientific education."

She argued that an academic comparison of evolution and intelligent design would "require you to compare apples and oranges."

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Tilghman noted that intelligent design supporters have played politics effectively. Because voter turnout for school board elections is typically very low, for instance, a small minority can have a significant influence.

But she praised the recent election in Dover, Pa., in which school board members who supported teaching intelligent design were voted out of office.

"I think it is a very positive sign that the voters of Dover, Pennsylvania, showed up in force ... and voted for the teaching of evolution," she said.

In Oxford last week, Tilghman pointed out that discrepancies between scientific and religious thought are not a recent phenomenon.

"From the very beginning, science and politics, especially religiously inspired politics, had the potential to become 'strange bedfellows,' by which I mean working at cross purposes with one another rather than in harmony," she said. But she added that the "potential for conflict seems greater now than at any time in my career."

This is especially disturbing, she said, because of the extreme importance of Darwinian evolution in biology.

"It is virtually impossible on the problem at hand," Tilghman said. "Time and again in the course of my career, I have encountered a mysterious finding that was explained by viewing it through the lens of evolutionary biology."

In addition to addressing intelligent design as a potential source of academic conflict, Tilghman's speech also touched on political influence in American space exploration.

The Bush administration, she said, has ignored the analysis of scientists and the progress made by unmanned space vehicles, such as the Voyager missions and the Hubble telescope, pursuing instead the "tangible — even romantic" goal of manned space exploration.