China and Intelligent Design
I read this article about how the Chinese government is increasing the restrictions on Inernet use in their own country and preventing their people from reading “approved” news sites. Previous to this, Chinese bloggers had to register with the state—this is just going to the next logical step, really. No surprise there.
I got really angry when I read this. Angry exclamations about freedom and personal choice rang in my head, and I left that page open so I could blog about how Chinese people should have access to any information they want.
Then I came across this article about Pennsylvania’s court battle over intelligent design and how the school board is being taken to court by a group of parents and the ACLU to prevent this thinly veiled attack on the separation of church and state from getting set into the school curiculum.
I got really angry when I read this. Angry exclamations about freedom and personal choice rang in my head, and I left that page open so I could blog about how Pennsylvanian students should not be taught intelligent design in their schools by their science teachers since this just isn’t science and how the court should rule against the intelligent design folks.
Then I paused for a sec.
“What’s the difference here?” my mind asked me (creepy, I know). “So Chinese people should be able to get any information they want but Pennsylvanian ninth graders shouldn’t hear about alternative theories in science?”
And that’s when the mystery cleared up for me: the key word in that last question is science. Intelligent design is not science since it has no hypothesis that can be tested through repeatable experiments. Also, the court isn’t saying that intelligent design as a concept is anathema and can never be spoken of or researched; they are saying that our schools will not teach it. This idealogy isn’t forbidden; it is just not available in schools.
So, yeah: the Chinese people should have the freedom of information access that they deserve and ninth-graders in Pennsylvania should have the science education that they deserve.