Wedging Creationism into the Academy

Academe, Jan/Feb 2005 by Forrest, Barbara, Branch, Glenn

Although a vestige of the Santorum language appeared in the conference report, the amendment itself was not included in the legislation that President George W. Bush signed as the No Child Left Behind Act. But proponents of intelligent design and creationists generally construed it as a victory anyway. When the CSC involved itself in a 2003 controversy over the selection of Texas science textbooks, Santorum, Gregg, and Boehner wrote a letter to Bruce Chapman-on congressional stationery-echoing the CSC's interpretation of the amendment. The letter designates Santorum as the amendment's author, but Johnson asserts in his 2002 book, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning, and Public Debate, that he actually drafted it. Yet he earlier told a reporter, "We definitely aren't looking for some legislation to support our views, or anything like that."

The Wedge's political activity, if successful, could have serious repercussions for academic scientists. In his book Icons of Evolution, CSC fellow Jonathan Wells accuses evolutionary scientists of systematically misrepresenting the evidence for evolution, echoing Johnson's quip, "When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble." Wells urges his readers to challenge federal funding of evolutionary biology: "If you object to supporting dogmatic Darwinists that misrepresent the truth to keep themselves in power . . . call for congressional hearings on the way federal money is distributed" by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He also warns college and university alumni, "Voluntary donations by college graduates to their alma maters often go to departments that indoctrinate students in Darwinism rather than show them the real evidence."

The main battlefield for intelligent design's culture war, however, is the public schools. Wedge proponents are already preparing for the inevitable legal clash over the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. In the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that teaching "creation science" in the public schools is a form of religious advocacy and is thus prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Wedge advocates therefore strive to distinguish intelligent design from creationism in the hope that it will survive constitutional scrutiny. The fact that three members of the Supreme Court-Chief Justice William Rchnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas-have expressed dissatisfaction with the Edwards decision is doubtless a source of encouragement.

Meanwhile, despite token concessions by Dembski and Johnson that intelligent design should prove its worth to the scientific community before it enters science classrooms in public schools, and despite the professed qualms of a few intelligent design advocates, there is steady activity aimed at introducing the concept into the public school science curricula-or, failing that, of presenting "evidence against evolution," which is essentially the traditional creationist litany of supposed errors in mainstream science.