Don’t we need to teach our high school students how to become citizens capable
of assessing scientific controversies, particularly when these controversies have deep
moral, religious, and political implications? Here, I think, Coulter and the intelligent
design folks have a good point: the proponents of Darwinian biology too often assume a
stance of arrogant superiority and dogmatism that suggests a fear of real debate and free
inquiry.
And yet there is a justified fear that allowing high school biology teachers to teach
the controversies surrounding Darwinian evolution will open the science classroom to
Biblical creationism. Most of us would surely agree that teaching the Creation story from
the first chapters of the Bible would not be appropriate in a public school biology class,
and probably unconstitutional in violating the establishment clause of the First
Amendment. Advocates of intelligent design insist that intelligent design theory is a
purely scientific position that does not depend on Biblical creationism. But as the recent
case in Dover, Pennsylvania, illustrates, it is often hard to disentangle the intelligent
design movement from Biblical creationism.
The Dover Area School District had required that a statement be read to students
in the ninth grade biology classes, a statement indicating that there was controversy over
Darwin’s theory of evolution, and that they could consider “intelligent design” as an
alternative theory by reading a reference book in the library—Of Pandas and People.
Some parents sued the school district, arguing that this was an unconstitutional
establishment of religion, because “intelligent design” was not a genuine scientific theory
but a religious doctrine.
49
Convention