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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that intelligent design is not fit for science classes. But I.D. remains rooted in U.S. schools, where science teachers are pressured to address God in the classroom.
Dec 21, 2005 | In a remarkably unequivocal decision Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that teaching intelligent design in public science classrooms in Dover, Pa., is prohibited by the constitutional separation of church and state. In the decision, Judge John E. Jones III declared that the school district's claim that I.D. is a scientifically valid alternative to evolution is simply wrong. "Intelligent design is nothing less than the progeny of creationism," he writes.
The judge's ruling was not a surprise to those of us who had spent time at the trial, which had earned the nickname Monkey Trial II, a reference to the famous 1925 court case in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution. In the Harrisburg, Pa., courtroom, we could see from the first week that the trial was going badly for I.D. proponents. That the school board intended to promote their religious views was evident, as was the strong scientific consensus that the basic tenets of evolution were unimpeachable.
The much ballyhooed scientific defense of I.D. -- the idea that some aspects of the natural world are best explained as designed by some unnamed intelligence rather than as the products of purely naturalistic processes -- was also a dud. Then came an article in the Dec. 4 New York Times suggesting that I.D. may be losing some academic ground in the evangelical Christian colleges that were assumed to be its base.
Despite Jones' ruling, the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based engine of the I.D. movement, is claiming victory. "Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," says John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, in a press release. "Americans don't like to be told there is some idea that they aren't permitted to learn about. Banning intelligent design in Dover will likely only fan interest in the theory."
Although it seems far-fetched to spin I.D.'s loss in Dover as a triumph, I.D. remains firmly rooted in mainstream culture. After all, 2005 was a banner year for the theory. Pope Benedict XVI embraced the "intelligent project" that he said underlies nature, and President Bush endorsed teaching I.D. alongside evolution. The Kansas School Board decided to alter its definition of science to accommodate I.D., and several school boards around the country promise to follow suit.
Perhaps Tuesday's ruling will cause people to think differently about I.D., but polls taken earlier this year suggest that most Americans consider I.D. or some form of creationism a plausible alternative to evolution. A growing majority thinks it should be taught as an alternative to Darwin's theory in public science classrooms.
Most significantly, given that I.D. has reached a tipping point in the United States, nearly every high school biology teacher, community college instructor and college professor is being forced to deal with it in one way or another. Some dismiss it outright, but others are striving to craft intelligent ways to incorporate it into their classrooms, including the controversial approach known as "teach the controversy." As recently as 10 years ago, few could have guessed that science teachers would be wrestling with how to weave God into their curriculums. But thanks to the publicity surrounding I.D., many teachers say they don't have much choice.
Intelligent design did not spread through culture on its scientific merits. It got a big push from religious and political advocates. Funded by millions of dollars from some of the same religious supporters that helped put President Bush in the White House (conservatives like Philip F. Anschutz, Richard Mellon Scaife, and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson), the Discovery Institute has pushed a fringe academic movement onto virtually all the front pages and TV sets in the country. The New York Times has reported that the institute has granted $3.6 million in fellowships to 50 researchers since 1996. Those investments produced 50 books on intelligent design, innumerable articles, and two I.D. documentaries that were broadcast on public television.
Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins has said that Darwin's theory of evolution made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. Intelligent design, it seems, has made it possible for many fundamentalists to be intellectually satisfied creationists. Wesley Elsberry, a biologist at the National Center for Science Education, says millions of evangelical Christians craved a more science-like, sophisticated yet Bible-friendly theory to explain the diversity of life on earth.
"Discovery's early documents say that they consider the Christian community to be their base," Elsberry says. "They mean people who are in some sort of fundamentalist faith community, which takes a literal approach to Genesis. That's by far their biggest public base and it was ready-made for I.D.," says Elsberry.
In fact, I.D.'s advance has been one of the great coups of modern public relations, says Barbara Forrest, philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. She points out that plenty of bad science has been launched into the orbit of public consciousness -- Ronald Reagan's space-based missile system, for one -- but intelligent design is different. "I.D. is not bad science," she says. "It is non-science." With her Southern accent, she pronounces it "nonsense."
Intelligence design "is not just non-science -- it's anti-science," says Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, who testified against I.D. at the Dover trial. It doesn't merely defy the definition of "science," which limits explanations to naturalistic causes, but also stops research in its tracks by attributing complex problems to supernatural causes.
Yet the I.D. movement has infiltrated the mainstream with "good slogans and sound bites," Forrest says, adding that I.D. advocates' "most intuitively compelling argument is their appeal to the American public and to parents to let their kids hear both sides of the debate. But it's a bogus appeal: There's nothing fair about trying to teach children something that isn't true."
West bristles at the idea that I.D.'s success is due to good P.R. "Darwinists like Forrest don't seem to understand that by caricaturing I.D. they ultimately undercut their own efforts," he says. "When students or scholars who have been exposed to Forrest's straw-man version of I.D. actually read science journal articles or academic books by I.D. scholars, they suddenly discover for themselves that the evidence and arguments for I.D. are a lot more impressive and sophisticated than they've been led to believe. And once they start to engage the real issues raised by the scientific evidence, the spin and scare tactics pushed by Darwinian fundamentalists like Forrest don't cut it."
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