The US Supreme Court on Teaching Evolution in Public Schools

In a previous post, I showed why school boards and teachers should make decisions based on Edwards v. Aguillard, and ignore the Kitzmiller decision. A previous post looked at Anthony Kennedy's views on how to decide "church and state" cases and his "coercion test," and why that was crucial. Here is one more related post.

The voting pattern in the recent partial birth abortion case provides further confirmation of my views expressed previously. The New York Times has an article providing further support to my position here:

AFTER the 5-to-4 decision last week in which the Supreme Court reversed course on abortion, upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many court watchers were wondering what to expect next.

For guidance, law professors and Supreme Court specialists looked to lists of 5-to-4 cases in which Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired last year, had been the swing vote. One list, compiled by Martin S. Lederman at Georgetown University, had 31 entries, with cases on religion and race, elections and crime, medicine and free speech.

Last week’s abortion decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, demonstrated the court’s new math. With the justice who took the O’Connor seat, Samuel A. Alito, in the majority, and the new swing justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the decision, the court upheld, by a single vote, the abortion act.

The majority on Edwards who said you cannot teach "Creation Science" had this to say, and this still controls:

We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. Indeed, the Court acknowledged in Stone that its decision forbidding the posting of the Ten Commandments did not mean that no use could ever be made of the Ten Commandments, or that the Ten Commandments played an exclusively religious role in the history of Western Civilization. In a similar way, teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction. But because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious doctrine, the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

Putting the seven person majority together with the two who whould have allowed teaching Creation Science, you have a unanimous court explicitly approving teaching scientific critiques of evolutionary theory. And now you have a court that may support Kennedy's coercion test.

Schools and teachers should put aside "intelligent design" and simply present students with all the scientific evidence for and against macroevolutionary theory. They would be on very solid ground.

David Brooks' Evolution Revelation

Logan Gage took the words right out of my mouth. I noticed some commentary on the David Brooks piece that I quoted in my last post, and thought that Brooks was being misunderstood. Gage had the same reaction, and posted it before I got around to it. I have some further observations.

I do not think that Brooks is endorsing the Darwinian cosmology. He seems to be merely commenting on an epiphany of sorts that he had while visiting a museum: even though many people think we live in a "post-modern" culture, many people have "willy nilly" adopted and "unconsciously submit to" a Darwinian meta-narrative. Here are the key sections:

Though it's dense and dry, it rekindled the University of Chicago flame that lingers in every graduate's soul and got me thinking all sorts of Big Thoughts. I also had the sensation - which I used to get during those sweeping old Western Civ courses - of seeing my own time from the outside, from the vantage point of some ancient spot.

And it occurred to me that while we postmoderns say we detest all-explaining narratives, in fact a newish grand narrative has crept upon us willy-nilly and is now all around. Once the Bible shaped all conversation, then Marx, then Freud, but today Darwin is everywhere.

. . .

Looking at contemporary America from here in Jerusalem and from the ancient past, it's clear we're not a postmodern society anymore. We have a grand narrative that explains behavior and gives shape to history. We have a central cosmology to embrace, argue with or unconsciously submit to.

I think that it is clear the Brooks does not think that any cosmology should be adopted as a result of willy nilly creep or unconscious submission. He is describing the situation, and saying that we should consciously embrace this cosmology or argue with it. Arguing with it is what many ID proponents are doing. It think that Brooks now recognizes that there are important issues here that need to be critically examined and debated. I agree.

One key point he is making is that evolution is more than a scientific theory. It is also a meta-narrative and a cosmology, which means that it has moved into the realm of metaphysics and is functioning like a religion. This is precisely the point that Michael Ruse, and many others, have made in the past. My post on Michael Ruse and his view that evolution in the form of "Evolutionism" must be considered a religion is here. Ruse says in part:

Popular evolution--evolutionism--offered a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans in the scheme of things. At the same time, it delivered moral exhortations, prescribing what we ought to do if we want things to continue well (or to be redeemed and a decline reversed). These things hardly came by chance or in isolation. In asking about origins, evolutionism was answering a question posed by Christianity (and Judaism before this), and in focusing on the status and obligations of humans, evolutionism was trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.. . .

To use a phrase invented by Thomas Henry Huxley's biologist grandson, Julian Huxley, the evolutionists were truly in the business of providing a "religion without revelation"--and like all fanatics, they were intolerant of rivals.

I really hope you read the full quote. I closed my post with this:

This raises an important question: what exactly is conveyed to students when they learn about evolution in public school and when the evidence that undermines macroevolutionary theory is banned? Do students get pure science? Or does a little religious "evolutionism" seep in as well? If it does seep in, how does that affect the constitutionality of teaching it with no alternatives? How can public schools avoid establishing evolutionism as a state religion?

Are kids learning just the scientific theory in class, or is the Darwinian cosmology being taught as well? If it is, this would violate the US Constitution.

Biologist Morality and the Darwinian Cosmology

My recent post on Richard Dawkins' analysis of criminality and moral responsibility based on Darwinian principles is especially important to consider, given the report in the The New York Times only a few weeks past, which included the following:

Biologists argue that . . . [animal] social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

My comments on that report are here.

My post on the moral reasoning of biologist PZ Myers is here.

Finally, David Brooks had an Op-Ed piece in the Times and the International Herald Tribune, which was published the day of the Virgina Tech Massacre, on the Darwinian Cosmology, which he called a "newish grand narrative." He said, in part:

[I]t occurred to me that while we postmoderns say we detest all-explaining narratives, in fact a newish grand narrative has crept upon us willy-nilly and is now all around. Once the Bible shaped all conversation, then Marx, then Freud, but today Darwin is everywhere.

Scarcely a month goes by when Time or Newsweek doesn't have a cover article on how our genes shape everything from our exercise habits to our moods. Science sections are filled with articles on how brain structure influences things like lust and learning. Neuroscientists debate the existence of God on the best-seller lists, while evolutionary theory reshapes psychology, dieting and literary criticism. Confident and exhilarated, evolutionary theorists believe they have a universal framework to explain human behavior.

. . .

According to this view, human beings, like all other creatures, are machines for passing along genetic code. We are driven primarily by a desire to perpetuate ourselves and our species.

. . .

Evolution doesn't really lead to anything outside itself. Individuals are predisposed not by innate sinfulness or virtue, but by the epigenetic rules encoded in their cells.

Looking at contemporary America from here in Jerusalem and from the ancient past, it's clear we're not a postmodern society anymore. We have a grand narrative that explains behavior and gives shape to history. We have a central cosmology to embrace, argue with or unconsciously submit to.

It behooves us to consider where we end up when we take this cosmology to some of its logical conclusions.