Despite stalling in the House of Delegates last year, Senate Education Committee again pushes ‘Intelligent Design’ bill
By Matthew Young, RealWV
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The Senate Education Committee met for the first time of the new Legislative Session on Tuesday, with Committee Chair Amy Grady, R-Mason, choosing to begin the year by replaying last year’s discussion of “intelligent design.”
Originally introduced as SB 619 in 2023, the Grady-sponsored bill was passed in the Senate by a vote of 27 to six before stalling in the House of Delegates. Now reintroduced as SB 280, the language of the proposal remains the same: “Teachers in public schools, including public charter schools, that include any one or more of grades kindergarten through 12, may teach intelligent design as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.”
Repeating the same beats from last year, Grady invited Hurricane High School student Hayden Hodge to provide testimony before the committee. Much as he did last February, Hodge told committee members that intelligent design “is not a religious argument.”
“I am not advocating for biblical creationism, or Adam and Eve, or the Muslim and Jewish narrative,” Hodge added, repeating his previous testimony word for word. “This is not a biblical argument.”
Just as he had done last year, Hodge cited the book “Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case For Intelligent Design,” by pseudoscience advocate Stephen C. Meyer. Meyer gained notoriety in the early 2000’s after launching his “teach the controversy” campaign, a marketing strategy designed to falsely convince the public that the theory of evolution is controversial within the worldwide scientific community. According to a New York Times report, published in 2005, “Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists.” Meyer’s work similarly came under fire in 2002 after he allegedly attempted to mislead the Ohio Board of Education into believing they were legally required to teach his theories in public school.
To provide a definition of “intelligent design,” Hodge quoted from Meyer’s book.
“Contrary to media reports, intelligent design is not a biblical idea, but instead an evidenced-based theory about life’s origins – one that challenges some, but not all, meanings of the term ‘evolution,’” Hodge read.
The apparent flaw in this argument, however, is there is in fact no widely-accepted scientific evidence to support the theory as Meyer claims in his book. According to the University of California Berkeley, “Intelligent design has been defined by its proponents as the idea that ‘certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.’ This ‘intelligent cause’ is often assumed to be God. Despite this, some have tried to portray intelligent design as a fledgling scientific theory, almost ready to be embraced by mainstream science. Detractors have argued that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism in disguise.”
“Intelligent design is scientific, and we know this by imploring the principle of uniformity,” Hodge continued reading,“Which, put simply, states that we can know what happened in the past by looking at what happens today.”
“Now, what causes something to be scientific?” Hodge asked. “Is it because a scientist says something? No, something is scientific because it uses scientific principles.”
Part of “scientific principles,” also referred to as “scientific method,” is the evidence collected in support of a theory, as well as its ability to be tested. As the theory is unable to produce sufficient supporting evidence, or to be tested in any tangible way, by Meyer’s own definition, intelligent design is considered pseudoscience, not science itself.
“The purpose of intelligent design is not to refute evolution, in regards to common ancestry or change over time,” Hodge noted. “Its purpose is to propose intelligence as an explanation for how life came to be.”
“Not a religion, not the Bible, not the Quran, not the Torah,” Hodge added. “Its purpose is the same as evolution – an explanation for the origin of the universe and life.”
According to Hodge, not allowing the teaching of intelligent design in public schools discounts the religious beliefs of many West Virginians. Hodge further stated that if intelligent design is “pro-God,” then evolution is “anti-God.”
“When a student is taught one side, when there is another equally plausible theory, then education justice is not being served,” Hodge added, making an argument that could similarly be used to advocate for the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.
Appearing alongside Hodge was fellow Hurricane student Hunter Bernard, who told committee members, “We believe that we should have the liberty to hear about option of intelligent design taught in our science classroom.”
“We believe that we should have the liberty to decide for ourselves about the origin of life and the universe,” Bernard continued. “As it stands we cannot fairly do that because we are taught one naturalistic worldview in our school system. That’s because our teachers are scared about what will happen to their careers if they inform us about intelligent design, and that needs to change.”
At the conclusion of the students’ presentation, the committee voted unanimously in favor of advancing the bill to the full Senate. This includes Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, who was one of the six senators to vote against the bill last year. It should be noted that while the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the teaching of creationism in public schools to be unconstitutional, there is currently no language in either the U.S. Constitution or West Virginia code preventing theoretical discussion of intelligent design.
RealWV will provide updates regarding the status of SB 280 as additional information is made available.
