AIG have advised a letter was drafted opposing the teaching of ID in Australian schools. The letter was instigated by dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales, and known antitheist Mike Archer. The letter was submitted to Brendon Nelson, Federal Miniter for Education regarding the teaching of ID in schools.
Here is the letter and signatories.
Here is the letter and signatories.
Intelligent design makes a mockery of science teaching
As Australian scientists and science educators, we are gravely concerned that so-called intelligent design might be taught in any school as a valid scientific alternative to evolution. While science is a work in progress, a vast and growing body of factual knowledge supports the hypothesis that biological complexity is the result of natural processes of evolution.
Proponents of ID assert that some living structures are so complex that they are explicable only by the agency of an imagined and unspecified intelligent designer. They are free to profess and believe whatever they like. But not being able to imagine or explain how something happened other than by a leap of faith to supernatural intervention is no basis for any science: that is a theological or philosophical notion.
For a theory to be considered scientific it must be testableeither directly or indirectlyby experiment or observation. The results of such tests should be able to be reproduced by others as a check on their accuracy (and, importantly, if repeated testing falsifies the theory it should be rejected rather than taught as part of the accumulating body of scientific understanding). Finally, a scientific theory should explain more than what is already known: it should be able to predict outcomes in novel situations. Evolution meets all of these criteria but ID meets none of them: it is not science.
We therefore urge all Australian governments and educators not to permit the teaching or promulgation of ID as science. To do so would make a mockery of Australian science teaching and throw open the door of science classes to similarly unscientific worldviewsbe they astrology, spoon-bending, flat-earth cosmology or alien abductionsand crowd out the teaching of real science.
Mike Archer
Dean of Science, University of NSW
Bradley Smith
Executive director, Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Sue Serjeantson
Executive secretary, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra
Paul Carnemolla
President-elect, Australian Science Teachers Association