Natural Theology Redux: “Intelligent Design”
Clearly, biblical creationism was going nowhere in the public school classroom. Once again, the creationists changed tactics. In 1989, a small textbook supplement was published entitled Of Pandas and People: The Central Questions of Biological Origins by Davis and Kenyon. Many historians of science credit this book as launching the “intelligent design” movement that argues that living things are too complex to have arisen through evolution, that they show evidence of “design”, and that design implies a designer. If this argument sounds familiar, it is (see section 1). Intelligent design is an updated version of William Paley’s Natural Theology.
Pandas is intended as a textbook supplement, and scrupulously avoids the earlier mistakes inherent in books like Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity. It does not refer to the Bible or to Genesis. It does not name the designer. It instead tries to cast doubt on evolutionary theory and to establish that there is a real scientific “controversy”. Inherent in the Pandas sales pitch is a demand that we “teach the controversy”, meaning the manufactured controversy surrounding the validity of evolutionary theory. The ultimate goal of the organizations that promote the use of Pandas (the Foundation for Thought and Ethics and the Discovery Institute) is the formation of something called “theistic science”, which is a very thinly veiled version of creation science.
These tactics are bearing fruit. In the fall of 2004, Dover, Pennsylvania became the first school district in the country to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in its written curriculum and the book chosen for instruction was Pandas. School boards across the country are even now debating again whether or not to teach evolution, and how to do it. The sound of the debate is eerily similar to the one that took place in the 1920’s and is fundamentally about local control over what is taught in the classroom. Several other states are introducing legislation to encourage the teaching of ID in the their school districts.
The legality of using Pandas in Dover was tested in the federal court case Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Area School District in the fall of 2005. In his decision, Judge John Jones III found that the policy of the Dover School District was inherently religious and that ID was not science. His ruling can be seen as an extension of the Supreme Court decision of Edwards vs Aguillard. In his decision he chastised the defendents for lying on the witness stand and said that the “teaching the controversy” approach to ID was “disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.” He concluded that “ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” Technically, Judge Jones’ ruling only effects the Dover Area School District and it will not be appealed. Time will tell what long-term effect this decision has for the rest of the country but we can expect opposition to the teaching of evolution to exist for many years to come.
Read the book on the Internet Archive
To read Internet Archive books, you need to create a free Internet Archive account
