In the introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut tells friends that the novel concerns his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden:

I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, "Is it an anti-war book?"

"Yes," I said, "I guess."

"You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?"

"No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?"

"I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'"

The country is going through another of its episodic legal paroxysms over the teaching of evolution, with daily updates, breathless press releases, and he-said-she-said-blow-the-lid-off-revelations. In the end, the whole noisy business will make very little difference. As I said to Michael Ruse last month, if the debate about origins could have been resolved by litigation, that would have happened long ago. Michael agreed, and we walked on into the sweltering Miami night. Lawsuits about science teaching, evolution, and “creationism,” are the judicial equivalent of anti-glacier books. Kitzmiller v. Dover (KvD) may bring a good, bad, or simply goofy precedent. What it won’t do –- you can count on this –- is stop the ice from moving.

Don’t believe me? Keep reading.

1. Is this Scopes II? Scopes III? Scopes IX? Hey, which Scopes are we doing today?

For some time, I’ve been on the record as opposing the teaching of ID in public schools (see for instance this article, from a couple of years ago; scroll down to the end of the story). Thus I can write now, while KvD is still ongoing, with no worries about being accused of sour grapes if the trial and subsequent ruling go south for Dover and their Thomas More lawyers. I've never supported the teaching of ID in public schools, and still don’t.

“But, Paul, you wimp -- you’re an ID theorist! If ID had any merit, surely you’d want it taught in science classes. Right?”

I don't know about that. My memories of middle and high school biology are pretty much straight neo-Darwinism. What many ID advocates (and opponents) don't realize is just how gravely evolutionary theory suffers from being a state-supported monopoly. A few days ago, I returned from lecturing in Sweden. Until recently, Sweden had a tax-supported state church. But those churches are largely or entirely empty -- I passed several on Sunday morning, on my way back to Arlanda airport in Stockholm, and they looked like well-tended, silent museums -- with a strikingly high percentage of the public professing atheism. The same is true for state-supported religions elsewhere in Europe. They’re moribund.

Michael Balter, a Paris-based correspondent for the journal Science, appears to grasp this reality with respect to the evolution monopoly. Think about the bright, science-curious teenagers you know. Then consider Dialogue Number 1:

Student: I heard about this idea, intelligent design --

Science teacher: Excuse me, we can’t talk about that.

Student: But there was this article in Nature --

Science teacher: What did I just say?

Student: Sorry.

Science teacher: Now, where were we? Oh, yes...Darwin saw that the finches [blah blah blah].

Were you paying attention during catechism class? Didn’t think so. But did you want to learn all about ideas you weren’t allowed to discuss? Yup.

It’s hard to say what would happen if the evolution monopoly in schools ended. What’s clear is how remarkably wrong, for instance, 1987 post-Edwards v. Aguillard predictions were (see, e.g., Boxer 1987):

“What else can they do?” says Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, a long-time champion of evolution and dogged foe of creation science. For all intents and purposes, he says, "it's all over."

18 years later, and the zombies are still running around. (I'll get back to the anti-glacier metaphor below.) Indeed there may be more of them.

2. Die, zombies, die! Look, we really mean it this time. Die already.

The climax of zombie movies occurs when the normal folks finally figure out what stops the walking undead. "Shooting 'em don't work, Mildred, 'cause they're already dead! You just gotta keep 'em away from the biology textbooks, and sooner or later, they'll shrivel up." In the endless zombie movie called the American controversy over evolution, the normal folks believe that the undead hordes only want the schools, and within them, the most sought-after zombie elixir of all, the science curriculum. The schools, the schools -- we must protect our schools! So that's what happens, and "creationists" -- the zombies -- lose one court case after another. Yet they keep coming, lumbering with arms outstretched across the town square.

"Jesse, they ain't going away like you said they would!"

"Heck, Mildred, maybe it's not about the schools after all."

As my daughters would say: Ya think? The American controversy over science teaching stems from the interaction of a constitutional peculiarity, namely, the First Amendment, with the seeming absence of metaphysical or theological content in naturalistic theories of evolution. "Hey," says the science establishment, "we're not the people talking about God or design -- this is nothing but straight biology. It's those creationists over there who want to promote their religion." This interaction creates what will very likely be a permanent legal advantage favoring naturalistic evolution in public school science curricula. The party that appears to be saying nothing about "religion" gets to teach the kids.

"But what if naturalistic evolution turned out to be false?"

Paul shakes his head with a rueful smile: Yeah, what if? So much the worse for science education, I guess. Every high schooler will learn his or her evolutionary catechism, and no one will believe it (which may be happening already). As a young graduate student, I spent hundreds of hours assisting the lawyer Wendell Bird on the preparation of the Louisiana side in Edwards v. Aguillard. [Note to Nick Matzke: By my reckoning, you were a grade school kid at the time. Now you're going through the same experience with KvD, and even with a big win for the ACLU, you'll find out how pointless it all is. Will the Nicholas Matzke who as a Valparaiso University science undergraduate contributed regularly to this evolution-and-design discussion list suddenly lose interest in the intellectual debate about origins? Not a chance.] When the Edwards v. Aguillard 7-2 majority opinion came down in 1987, it held that the Louisiana law under scrutiny "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." So, out the school door -- or out the science classroom door, anyway -- that idea must go.

Now, think about this, carefully. I vividly remember reading the opinion in 1987, sitting in my Hyde Park apartment. Viewing the question dispassionately, it might be the case that, empirically speaking, an intelligent being did design and create humankind. Such an inference could stand at the end of a chain of scientific reasoning. That is, the "religious belief" at issue could also turn out to be the case. One might believe for religious reasons that God created the sky to be blue, but when we look out the window on a sunny day...okay, you get the point. (If you doubt this as a matter of abstract principle, ask yourself if you assert the negation, namely, that evidence shows that no design was involved in the history of life on Earth. Then, by logical symmetry, the position you reject [design] might also have been the case, even if that position turns out to be false. What evidence can refute, evidence can support.) I realized that while American constitutional jurisprudence requires definitions of "religion" and "science" to do its work, those definitions have no more bearing on empirical reality than a Whistler watercolor. Humanly-enacted laws and their consequences are what they are; empirical reality, or truth...well, she serves no one, least of all the United States Constitution and its current interpreters.

So "creationism," even if true, could not be taught in science classrooms. Thus spake the Supreme Court, and too bad for science classrooms. If the evidence leads elsewhere, American public school science teaching, at least where origins is concerned, will eventually become a dull farce. Which, as noted, may already be happening.

Hypothetical: Suppose the US Supreme Court bangs its collective gavel and says, "Creationism or ID or whatever such ideas are called these days will never, EVER, be taught in American public school science classrooms." What difference would that make to the ongoing intellectual debate, a debate that in one form or another has been alive since antiquity?

None. As in: none.

To illustrate, here's Dialogue Number Two; the setting is an agora in Athens:

Plato: Got a draft of my new riff, the Timaeus, here. Give me your opinion of this:

"Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the creator, whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form..."

Atomist: GACK! Stop, stop! Church-state separation! Creationism! Religion in scientific clothing! Athens, arise!

Plato: Oh for crying out loud. Have some more wine and sit your ass down.

Or imagine Immanuel Kant, painstakingly writing out the Fourth Conflict of the Transcendental Ideas ("There belongs to the world, either as its part or as its cause, a being that is absolutely necessary" -- or not, said Immanuel to himself with a mischievous grin, dipping his pen). Suddenly one of his students bursts into Kant's study, to tell him to forget about all that "creation, yes or no" business. In the future, says the student, no one will care, because the US Supreme Court is going to rule...

"Geh' zum teufel, dumkopf!" shouts Kant in a rare outburst, flinging the inkpot at his pupil.

Wesley, Nick, Eugenie, Ken, Barbara, Jeffrey, all you guys...I see more zombies on the lawn.

3. Okay, wiseguy -- just what does matter, then?

Before we get to that, here's Dialogue Number Three. This is my personal take on why, in the USA, poll numbers about the acceptance of naturalistic evolution don't change much from one decade to the next:

Scientist: Science can only explain by natural laws.

Dissenter: Hm. Well, I disagree.

Scientist: That’s because you’re a total idiot.

Dissenter: Oops -- forgot about that. How silly of me. Now I agree with you.

Just a friendly tip.

So what does matter? Here's a short list, off the top of my head; the implications are left as an exercise for the reader:

• The life cycle of any parasite is probably a splendid example of irreducible complexity.




• Mike Behe and Bill Dembski think universal common descent is probably the case. Jonathan Wells and I and other ID theorists do not.




• No design detection proposal has yet been tested using accepted research protocols (double-blind, randomized methods, et cetera).




• What is the unit of design? The universe as a whole? If yes, how do we know? If no...same question.




• Is the Flying Spaghetti Monster the designer? If it isn't, why not?

That will do for a start. Notice that public education, and KvD, are not on the list.

The glaciers are moving. They haven't stopped since Athens, or Jerusalem, and they won't any time soon.

Reference

Boxer, Sarah. 1987. Will Creationism Rise Again? Discover Magazine, October, pp. 80-85.