ARTICLES Three Why's: Religion and Science in School'

In this article, I argue the proposition that educators ought to be including a serious consideration of intelligent design as a counterexample to the scientific explanations of human origins. The article first distinguishes between three different ways people ask "why": the Scientific Why, the Ultimate Why, and the Teleological Why. Al-though science answers the first Why with a high degree of confidence, it does not answer the second or third Why at all. An exclusive focus on questions with empir-' ical answers reduces the education experience, eliminating much of value from it, especially a sense of wonder at unanswerable questions. The thesis of this article is that educators are making a mistake refusing to include a serious examination of intelligent design (ID), not as an alternative scientific explanation of human origins, but as a counterexample that includes some elements of a scientific explanation, but draws inferences beyond the data. It, thus, serves nicely to demonstrate the power of science in its domain, but also the limits of that domain. I first make an uncontroversial distinction between three different meanings of the word, why. I then argue that at least a part of the civil strife over things like teaching of science in public schools is rooted in the fact that the conversation tends to conflate the three meanings in ways that ignore the differences. Finally, I argue that this strife is also rooted in a misunderstanding of the meaning and role of science in people's lives; individuals simultaneously underestimate its power and importance, and overestimate its domain