Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Intelligent Design Case

By now you may have seen the opinion Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the intelligent design case just handed down yesterday from the Middle District of Pennsylvania.  I spent my subway-strike day at home musing over the lengthy text. 

My overall impression was that this was an easy case.  For the “secular purpose” analysis under Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), the record here was dripping with evidence that the school board’s purpose in adopting the statement was religious.  The fact seemed particularly bad here on failures to effectively distinguish between intelligent design and creationism.

I thought one of the most interesting lines of analysis was the court’s concern with presenting only “dualities” rather than a range of critiques.  By presenting to the students only one other option (ID) rather than a host of arguments which might help them probe the contours of the theory of evolution, the Dover statement simply fell too neatly into the pattern of previous cases where courts had stuck down as unconstitutional efforts to include creationism in the science curriculum. 

For example, take a look at the discussion of McClean (at Kitzmiller 21-22), where the court found it was especially problematic to present only two possible explanations—either the scientific theory of evolution or biblical creationism, and to treat the two as mutually exclusive such that “one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution,” and accordingly viewed any critiques of evolution as evidence the necessarily supported biblical creationism.

Perhaps one of the most important cultural challenges we face now is how to move beyond the dualities that “culture war” type conversations seems to foster.

Justice Blackmun once mused, “easy cases make bad law.”  O’Bannon v. Town Court Nursing Center, 447 U.S. 773, 804 (1980) (Blackmun, J. concurring in judgment).  I don’t think Kitzmiller is an example of “bad law,” for I agree with the conclusion and much of the analysis.  But I do think that because the case was so easy, it did not prove to be a good vehicle to probe some of the more nuanced angles of the current debate about the relationship between science and religion.

For example, the court eloquently concludes its analysis:

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

I bet many of us agree wholeheartedly with that statement.  Many interpretations of the theory of evolution do not conflict in any way with belief in God as creator.  As theologian John Haught, who testified as an expert for the plaintiffs, explained in his book, Deeper than Darwin, there are different ways to “read” the text of creation—science is one kind of grammar, and philosophy and religion come at the text in different but complementary ways. 

But because this case was “easy,” it didn’t really probe the contours of how the presentation of scientific theories might foster the harmony between scientific and religious perspectives, or at least make an effort not to denigrate religious perspectives. 

While theories of evolution do not necessarily conflict with biblical accounts of creation, what was absent from the Kitzmiller narrative was any acknowledgement that scientists have, at times, overstepped their bounds, and presented as science what is actually philosophical reflection on the origins of life.  For example, when biologist Richard Dawkins claimed in River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference,” he was certainly venturing into philosophy, far beyond the bounds of scientific method. 

As John Haught warned, “the leap from ‘Darwin got it right’ to ‘Darwin tells the whole story’ has proven increasingly irresistible.”

When some parents express concerns about “scientific materialism,” I think they may be reacting not so much to having their kids exposed to scientific method, but to the extent to which some scientists have ventured into more philosophical reflections on the origins of life, and have claimed to “tell the whole story,” to the exclusion of religious narratives. 

For example, at the end of the Dover statement, students were informed: “The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families.”  The Kitzmiller court was concerned that this was too similar to the Frieler case which rejected a similar statement as unconstitutional, because, among other reasons, it “‘reminds school children that they can rightly maintain beliefs taught by the parents on the subject of the origin of life,’ thereby stifling creative thinking that the class’s study of evolutionary theory might otherwise prompt, to protect a religious view from what the Board considers to be a threat.” (Kitzmiller at 44, citing Frieler at 345).

While this may reflect an understandable concern that students are at some point exposed to scienctific method, I think schools need to be careful not to insist that biology classes "tell the whole story," to the exclusion of religious narratives that children may learn from their parents.  Our real challenge is to find ways to express respect and space for both.  Futher thoughts?  Amy