With the opening last week of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District in a Pennsylvania federal court, the age-old battle between science and religion returned to national prominence. The latest installment in this historically innate conflict addresses the validity of the "theory" of intelligent design. Specifically, should intelligent design be mentioned in Dover School District biology textbooks as a legitimate alternative to the theory of evolution?
One basic point is key to understanding the intelligent design controversy: in the battle over official government policy and the public school curriculum, religion has, in general, been defeated by science. In the 80 years since the Scopes Trial, legislators, educators, and judges alike have found that in the interest of constitutional principles and in pursuit of the best possible education for American children, religion must be kept separate from science.
The quandary, then, for opponents of science and rational thought, is how to infiltrate a system from which they have been ejected. The answer appears straight out of Homer's Odyssey. While Creationism is far too overtly religious to be widely accepted in the public school system, Creationism without any mention of God and propagated by institutions and individuals pretending to be members of the scientific community would serve as a sort of Trojan Horse for fundamentalist religious activists. A faux "theory" of the origins of life which holds onto the major principles of Creationism while still sounding scientific may be able to infiltrate high school biology textbooks and undermine evolution.
This is the role of intelligent design. Because it doesn't mention God, or even god, and because it is promoted by right-wing "scientific" organizations like the Discovery Institute, it is considered by some, most publicly the Dover Area School Board, to be an acceptable way to acknowledge and sate religious hostility and discomfort with the theory of evolution.
The problem with intelligent design, of course, is that it quite clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with science. A scientific theory is based on observable evidence, and hence is testable. Intelligent design is based on precisely no evidence, only blind faith, and is therefore not testable. Observing phenomena, such as the rich biological diversity and complexity on earth and seeking to explain it through the creation of some unseen force or entity is a completely valid way of understanding the world. However, that type of reasoning is religious or philosophical rather than scientific in nature. What advocates of intelligent design do not understand is that the consequences of confusing religion and science can be catastrophic.
Religious fundamentalists seem to have little regard for the value of rational, objective thought and scientific truth. They see the world through the Manichaean window of good and evil, and are compelled to impose their value system on their neighbors regardless of evidence, empirics or utility. To the Christian right, society's ills are caused by the general failure of people to accept Jesus as their savior. This reasoning may be valid to a person who can look back fondly on the filth, feudalism, and state of perpetual war that was Christian medieval Europe, but to those Americans who are not members of the Republican Party, science and rational thought are all that stand between 21st century America and a new Inquisition.
