SWNID Is Back: The ID Decision

We announce our return from a week of semester-end grading, attending unimportant meetings scheduled at the most inopportune season, last-minute shopping, holiday preparations, and--finally--making merry to celebrate the nativity.

Meanwhile ...

A federal judge has issued a 132-page ruling that the Dover (PA) school board can't require in high school biology classes of a statement qualifying evolution as a theory with a rival, namely, intelligent design. Per the judge, ID is creationism renamed.

Lefties are applauding this because it's everything they've asked for. Specifically, they've wanted a decision equating ID and creationism, as "creationism" is already off limits in case law. Never mind that "creationists" and ID advocates spend much of their time criticizing each other. The courts say that they're as identical as, say, Christians and Jews.

We refer gentle readers to two writers who summarize well the significance of this decision. The first is law professor Paul Campos, whom we have linked before. Campos lays out nicely the legal and philosophical weaknesses of the ruling. We quote, rather extensively:

Consider some of the justifications put forward for the proposition that it's a great day for truth, justice and the American way when a federal court makes it illegal for teachers to mention the existence of a dissenting point of view to their students:

• Science has refuted theories such as intelligent design, because science is based on the postulate that theories such as intelligent design cannot be true. It says a great deal about the power of orthodox thought that many people of normal intelligence are apparently incapable of seeing what's wrong with this argument. To quote the philosopher Bertrand Russell: "The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages. They are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil."

• Intelligent design is not a scientific theory, because it cannot be refuted. This claim is true only in the trivial sense that no scientific theory can be refuted from within the theory itself. Consider the theory of naturalism, which undergirds the argument in the previous paragraph. Naturalism assumes that all events have natural causes. Is there any evidence that could refute this theory in the eyes of someone who
adheres to it? Obviously not, since any evidence such a person examines will always and already be interpreted within a framework that excludes the possibility of a supernatural cause.

• Metaphysical orthodoxies about the origins of life, the universe, and everything become something other than a form of religious belief when you use the word "science" instead of the word "God." Even more preposterously, it's asserted that requiring one particular form of metaphysical orthodoxy to be presented in public schools as The Truth allows the government to maintain "neutrality" toward religion.
But, as has been noted in another context, no one ever expects the Spanish Inquistion.

Also worth reading is Jay Cost's blog over at RealClear Politics. Cost is devastating to the epistemology that denies consideration of ID, and notes well the way that "science" is used as an ideological cudgel in public discourse. Again, we quote:

In other words, rationality outside of science is quite possible, and has been around for a long time. How do you think humanity invented science in the first place? We surely did not do it scientifically. Science as we know it is the product of millennia of philosophical debate -- from Aristotle to Lakatos. Science depends upon philosophy, which itself is unfalsifiable and unscientific.

The debate about ID has been blown way out of proportion because of the social status that science has acquired in 21st century Western society. For better or for worse, deserved or undeserved, science is a very powerful concept. It is quite coercive. If somebody tells you that you are not being scientific, you will probably take that as a criticism. You should not necessarily, though. The fact of the matter is that, despite the message of our culture about the authority of science, it is not the end-all-be-all of rational thought. Science is a very limited form of inquiry that produces results that are, from a certain perspective and with certain assumptions, reliable. But they also do not tell us all of the things we need, or want, to know about life. Man cannot live by science alone.

Neither, for that matter, can science. Do you have a snarky friend who thinks that science is the only legitimate type of inquiry? Tell him to prove that one scientifically!