ID on Trial — the New Scopes?

There was an interesting editorial in the October 1 New York Times by Kenneth Woodward that essentially suggests religious believers should accept evolution as explanatory of everything but ultimate questions of causation concerning origins. I’m glad to see a NY Times editorial that doesn’t bash religion, but unfortunately Woodward’s arguments are confusing and confused.

For example, Woodward’s money paragraph is the following:

Simply put, belief in evolution does not compel anything like the personal commitment demanded by religious faith in a divine creator and redeemer. Thus, while it is tempting to pit Genesis against evolution as competing myths of human origins, many Christians, including scientists and theologians, do embrace evolution.

I’m not sure what Woodward means by “personal commitment” here. Does he mean that belief in evolution doesn’t make the same moral demands as belief in a creator? Is he trying to separate “objective” from “subjective” types of knowledge?

Woodward is also unclear about what he means by “evolution” and about what many ID proponents believe about it. For example, Woodward states “The danger in intelligent design is not just that it is bad science, but that it seeks to enlist evidence from science in the service of religious truth while denying evolutionary processes like mutation and natural selection.” Nothing in ID, however, necessarily denies that mutation or natural selection occur; many ID proponents accept that organisms change over time through mutation and natural selection.

Nor does ID, properly understood, promote any particular sort of “religious truth.” A basic premise of ID theory is that it is neutral towards particular religious stories. It simply asks whether the empirical data is more indicative of design than of random development. Specific religious conclusions are a different matter. To the extent the term “evolution” signifies a random, unguided process, then, ID proposes to explore whether the data suggest something else.

Woodward does move towards a useful suggestion when he states that “One way out of the classroom conflict over teaching evolution would be to devise courses that examine the cultural uses to which evolution is put.” This would indeed be a good thing, but it wouldn’t solve the conflict because the false dichotomy between “scientific” (read: “objective”) and other (read: “subjective”) knowledge wouldn’t go away. What we need, in my view, is a comprehensive rethinking of how we understand and teach what constitutes “knowledge.” We need to teach kids that all truth is an integrated whole.

Of course, taking a holistic view of truth means examining moral principles and religious beliefs as something other than mere preferences. As Woodward notes, even his “cultural uses of science” course “would inevitably involve dialogue with religious concepts and perspectives – and thus raise further objections from those who see no place at all for religious ideas in public education.” The ghettoization of religious and moral ideas based on extreme readings of the establishment clause thus contributes to the balkanization of “knowledge.” Any prescription for change must include a more balanced understanding of the free exercise and establishment clauses as they relate to public education.