Intelligent Design on Trial

I saw a rerun of the NOVA program that devoted two hours to the court case in which parents sued the school board of a small town in Pennsylvania to prevent the teaching of "intelligent design" in their schools. The court found that Intelligent Design was a rerun of "Creationism", a Christian belief that the Old Testament is literally true and that modern scientific theories of evolution were not. A Supreme Court decision had already decided that teaching Creationism violated the Establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, and the court decided that Intelligent Design did so as well.

Both Creationism and Intelligent Design are based on the premise that species did not evolve by natural variation and natural selection, but rather that species arise from time to time independently, fully articulated, by divine or at least intelligent design.

I tend to like the position which I understand to be that of the Catholic Church, that if ones religious beliefs conflict with ones understanding of the natural world, as informed by science, one has probably misinterpreted the theology or the science.

I was most impressed by the obvious unwillingness of the proponents on Intelligent Design in the local community to acknowledge that they did not fully understand the Theory of Evolution. They seemed more certain of their theology than I could imagine was justified by their study of religion; certainly many people who have devoted their whole lives to the study of Christian theology are much less certain than these Pennsylvania businessmen. I was especially taken by the willingness of one of the former members of the school board to say on camera that the judge in the case and his 100+ page decision was wrong about the Constitution and the Law -- what possible basis did the man have to believe he knew better than the judge?

It is really interesting the way that a community sharing a belief will have members reinforce each other's beliefs, and the way what should be public humiliation by refutation of those beliefs can be turned into reinforcement of belief by the "true believers".