The Latest From The Culture Wars

The latest round in the evolution/intelligent design debate is being played out in Dover Pa: "A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit."

Frankly, the suit looks like a tempest in a tea pot, since here is all that it is really about:

The legal battle came to a head on Oct. 18 last year when the Dover school board voted 6 to 3 to require ninth-grade biology students to listen to a brief statement saying that there was a controversy over evolution, that intelligent design is a competing theory and that if they wanted to learn more the school library had the textbook "Of Pandas and People: the Central Question of Biological Origins." The book is published by an intelligent design advocacy group, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, based in Texas.

I am no intelligent design devotee (see this earlier post) and I tend to agree with Steven Stough, who is quoted as comparing the debate over intelligent design to a "debate" over whether we are tied to the ground by gravity or rubber bands. But, I have to say that we probably do neither our children nor the cause of science much good by trying to hide the fact that there is controversy. After all, the students themselves already know there's controversy. Ignoring that controversy makes the class a bit irrelevant.

It seems to me that there is a "teachable moment" in all this. Rather trying to bury the controversy, why not bring it right out into the open and use the controversy to teach the scientific method: "OK, we have two theories here. Let's see what the evidence for each is."

My sense is that the best way to end this debate is not to hide intelligent design from, but rather to expose it to, academic consideration.

I am reminded in this of a very famous statement by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his dissent in Abrams v. United States:

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe . . . that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas - that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

In the free marketplace of ideas, I have little doubt that evolution will triumph over intelligent design. By refusing to allow the competition to be waged, however, we give intelligent design a patina of fearsomeness that, perversely, makes evolution appear weak and intelligent design strong.