Kansas School Board lacks faith

I half expected the news that the Kansas School Board OKs Evolution Approach to live in infamy with the Onion's Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory. Sadly, I know the truth to be different.

While Intelligent Design is purposefully non-denominational, it is promoted by the Christian Right. It is a stepping stone to a more fundamental world. I interpret the Christian Right's fight to limit human knowledge to a literal interpretation of the Bible as a profound lack of faith.

If God is God, then God cannot be explained by any amount of human effort, scientific or otherwise. Every truth discovered both adds to the body of human knowledge and deepens our understanding of what we do not know. Every successful experiment simply moves the knowledge horizon farther away. In a very powerful way, science can contribute to the view of God as designer by exposing the miraculous precision with which our world was created. However, this view itself is a spiritual view not a scientific view. Science provides the evidence of things seen, or empirical truth.

Spiritual truth is an entirely different matter. The result of a personal quest for spiritual truth is a topographic map of the human heart. Individuals spend their whole lives mapping; each makes his own. Universal spiritual truths are rare but they exist. Religions seek to identify them. A personal quest for spiritual truth may include one or many religions. Individuals determine the validity of a universal spiritual truth as it pertains to their own map. Individuals often evaluate spiritual truth through the lens of faith and prayer. This is an intimate exercise, not readily shared, even within religions.

Empirical truth and spiritual truth are equally valid but determined by different means. The means to arrive at empirical truth, the scientific method, has given us a body of knowledge. This body of knowledge is not related to any one faith or interpretation of God. It has produced facts. Facts are not ideological. I doubt very much that any proponents of intelligent design sit in their cars and pray for them to start. I imagine they use a key to trigger the spark that ignites the fossil fuel that makes their cars move. In their actions they affirm science, evolution in fact, to get where they need to go.

Conflating science with faith weakens both. Confusing spiritual truth with empirical truth results in a weaker spirituality and faulty empirical processes. Thus far we have rightly accorded them two separate places in our society. Our search for empirical truth and our stewardship of the body of knowledge is centered in public shcools and universities. We decide as individuals where and how we will search for spiritual truth.

The idea of Intelligent Design has no empirical basis in fact. It does not belong to the body of empirical knowledge. Intelligent design is at the center of each person's attempt to map his own heart. It does not belong in science classrooms. We do not seek to teach nuclear physics in churches, for example. Why should we seek to teach faith, especially one faith, in schools?