Intelligent design? Not on this campus

Penn offers over 30 courses focused on evolution, and countless others cover the theory in some respect.

What Penn does not offer, however, is a course exclusively covering intelligent design.

As the movement to incorporate the religion-based explanation of life into classrooms across the country has gained momentum, Penn professors have been largely resistant to teaching the concept.

The absence of intelligent design -- which makes the assertion that certain features of an organism are so complex that they might be the work of an "intelligent designer" rather than the result of a process such as natural selection -- from most Penn syllabi is perfectly fine with Michael Weisberg.

Weisberg, a Philosophy professor, and Paul Sniegowski, a Biology professor, have been particularly outspoken against the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

Weisberg says that teaching intelligent design in science courses is misleading to students.

"I think it is extremely inappropriate to teach it in biology classes," Weisberg said. "There is little to no published literature backing its claims."

"Teaching intelligent design in a science course is like the equivalent of teaching alchemy in a chemistry class," he added.

Janet Monge, an Anthropology professor who teaches "Introduction to Human Evolution," makes her students aware that there is a debate, but she does not teach intelligent design as a viable alternative to evolution.

Many Penn students, like College senior Nina Mirarchi, are on the fence when it comes to intelligent design.

"I don't know that I know enough about intelligent design to make a fair judgment about it," she said. "I would say that it is a discipline, but not really a science."

But Mirarchi, who is active with Penn's Newman Center -- a Catholic hub on campus -- did not express her beliefs regarding evolution.

Michael Uram, a conservative rabbi trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the associate director of Hillel, does not believe that intelligent design will ever make its way into science courses at Penn.

"I don't think intelligent design belongs in the classroom at Penn, not because it is wrong, but because it rests not on theory or fact that can be tested, but on faith alone," he said.

Monge called the intelligent-design movement "a little blip in a particular agenda" and said that in its current state, intelligent design "is not important enough to demand an entire class."

But at other schools in Pennsylvania, professors have been devoting entire classes to the idea.

Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., is one of intelligent design's strongest proponents.

Behe, who received his doctorate in biochemistry from Penn in 1978, teaches a course that covers intelligent design, entitled "Popular Arguments on Evolution."

Behe says that many of his students enjoy the course, which is only offered every other year.

"Students that take the course like it -- they wouldn't be taking it unless they were interested in the subject," Behe said.

Not everyone, however, is a fan of Behe's teachings.

"Many of my colleagues here disagree with intelligent design," Behe admits. "But everyone agrees that I have the right to speak my mind about it."

Sniegowski says that teaching intelligent design as science undermines the value of the scientific method.

"Science has made progress by taking things that could not be explained and working very hard to try to explain them," Sniegowski said.

"Teaching intelligent design is doing a tremendous disservice as teachers and scientists to our students," he added.

Monge, although she does not agree with intelligent design, feels that as a teacher, it is important to make sure that students are able to understand and seek out the necessary information to make their own judgments.

"I would say that it is kind of a responsibility to not just teach science, but also to teach the social context of science," she said.

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