Scopes Trial
Evolution on Trial. Photo uploaded by Candlemaker.

More or less everywhere I read is celebrating the victory at Dover. It’s being interpreted as a crushing defeat for the Intelligent Design lobby. When the judge calls you ‘inane’ it’s hard to put a positive spin on it. Nevertheless it seems to me that the decision has caught both sides off-guard.

It clearly surprised the Discovery Institute. Their press release following the decision is, to be charitable, poor:

The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won’t work,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute

Press Release from the Discovery Institute.

…which clearly showed he hadn’t read the ruling. Or else hadn’t the wit to come up with a better line of argument after the (George W. Bush appointed) Judge Jones stated:

“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court,”

Say what you like about the Discovery Institute, but they do do a good line in obfuscation. Their response looks like it was whipped up in a panic. How did they misread the case so badly?

Father of ID, Phillip Johnson, showed the problem when he stated:

“This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.”

Source:http://www.leaderu.com/pjohnson/world2.html

The creationists fought on the wrong ground, science. It’s something they don’t understand and so perhaps it’s not a surprise they’ve been caught napping. However, even though ID has been ruled to be scientifically bogus, it doesn’t make it a victory for science as far as the creationists are concerned. The scientific content is irrelevant to creationism. Discovering that they’ve lost a law suit based on scientific reasoning will derail them as much as discovering the ACLU ping-pong team hammered the Discovery Institute 15-0. No creationist will take it as proof that the concept is flawed, merely as evidence of suppression of a very narrow religious world view loosely based on Christianity.

There’s no doubt a win for the creationists would have been a triumph, but as William Dembski noted back in September, it really was a no-lose scenario. It’s simply given them another method to hit the media. If they’re not victorious and thus correct, then they’re persecuted and thus correct. This comes out in the DI press release when it talks about “government-imposed censorship”. This ignores that there is perfect freedom to teach creationism in all its forms in a religious studies class. Over at the ironically-named Evolution News its business as usual. Evidence to the contrary has never been an issue before, why on earth would it matter now?

How did this mess happen and why won’t the Dover case change a thing? This is what bothers me, not because of what it means for America, but because I’m concerned about the same intellectual malaise travelling to Europe.

There is one place where the DI press release is right, and that’s where it says that the legal decision has no effect on the reality it talks about. The reality is that a large number of people think that the existence of giant creator pixies who work with a “puff of smoke” is a plausible scientific theory. As Dawkins would say the large majority of these people aren’t lying and they’re not morons. They are ignorant of the theory of Evolution, but they certainly aren’t stupid. If they’re not exposed to science then why should they be ridiculed for falling back on religion? Doesn’t this suggest there is something wrong with the education system that urgently needs to be fixed?

In the UK we’re moving our GCSE Science courses away from the whole theory mathematical stuff to concentrating on the important thing that matters. How does science interact with society. A cynic might point out that if you don’t understand basic science then that’s an impossible question, but I accept I’m in a minority on that one. Presumably there’s going to be a re-working of GCSE French where we no longer study French, but the influence of Frenchness on society. Just imagine how useful that will be for anyone travelling to France. It’s clear how useful GCSE Science will be in dealing with science.

This really is the problem: A lack of literacy and understanding. In the name of freedom there’s a reluctance to mandate the teaching of Evolution in schools or anything that might offend. It’s held to be important that acceptance of scientific principles is a matter of choice and so should not be forced in schools. It’s a powerful argument only undermined by the fact it’s utter gibberish.

We enforce the tuition of English in schools because children will need to know English to interact with current British society. We enforce the tuition of Mathematics because there’s also a belief that Mathematics is important. It’d be even better if we taught kids relevant mathematics like basic probability and statistics, but that’s an issue for another rant. Can you really build a case for not teaching science? Specifically if you are going to have debates about cloning or GM crops, wouldn’t it be a Good Thing if people were informed about the basics of Biology? Evolution is the basic organising principle of how ecosystems work. You may not agree that it explains life, but if you’re going to participate in a reasoned debate then you have to learn the language.

If I were American I’d want to use the positive publicity of the case to push on for improved science teaching. The Dover ruling isn’t a victory for science, it’s an emphatic and comprehensive avoidance of a defeat. A victory for science would be something that actually improved teaching standards. Wouldn’t it be good if the NCSE had managed to push on that back of the court case?
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