So today the judge ruled against intelligent design saying it is fundamentally religious in nature. Despite my philosophical musings about the difficulty of objectively separating scientific and religious explanations this was obviously the right decision. I think the judge and most people who approached this issue without bias intuitively saw that this was an attempt to foist a religious ideology on students in school. This intuition is correct but the issue is a lot more complicated than intelligent design (ID) simply not being science. While ‘ID is not science’ makes for a nice slogan it isn’t a good justification to ban ID from the science curriculum. Not only is it perfectly okay for schools to include more than science in their scientific curriculum (e.g. history, engineering, math) but despite the judge’s generally excellent opinion the ID thesis is a scientific hypothesis (The judge really needs to read some Kuhn). The resolution of this confusion is to realize that the status of ID as science is mostly irrelevant to the issue and covering ID in a science classroom isn’t in and of itself a violation of the establishment clause, rather it is the way ID is presented which is problematic.

Suppose instead of randomly injecting a special objection to evolution a school really considered all the competing religious theories whenever they discussed a subject. So when talking about conception, cosmology or any other subject with a competing (or perhaps even interpretive) religious explanation the school would note the science was only a theory and summarize the alternative theory. Additionally suppose any criticisms of the scientific theories were fairly balanced by similar criticism of the religious explanations. For instance any critique of the mechanism of evolution would be balanced by presenting the students with the various arguments against the existence of god as well as alien visitors or other potential designers. In this case I think there would be no reason to believe there was a constitutional violation. The students may not learn much science but they have no reason to think the school is endorsing one of the crazy theories they heard about.

Unfortunately, despite the benefits of making everyone see potential flaws in their own belief system such a system has no real political possibility. The only practical use of ID in a science class involves, like the Dover case, only facially equal treatment of ID and evolution not to mention a complete lack of other religiously based alternative explanations. However, as the treatment of the Bush espionage scandal demonstrates all too well, facial equality often means substantive inequality. When most people hear an argument from some authority they assume further information won’t reveal that argument to be ridiculous, i.e., they trust the authority not to be misleading them about the facts they can’t check. Not only does the presentation of ID in the classroom use this trick to endorse this theory by not mentioning arguments against the existence of god it also leverages the social tendency not to treat god as a scientific hypothesis to give the impression that only evolution is vulnerable to concerns about mechanism.

In other words the problem is not teaching ID in a science class but hiding a partisan religious endorsement in the particular way ID is presented. If indeed the school was willing to uniformly present these sorts of differing religious theories and critiques against these theories there would be no constitutional problem. Unfortunately many people have trouble understanding how facial equal treatment of two sides in a debate can actually be extremely biased so this argument is hard to make. Instead they argue that ID isn’t science but really a type or religion so teaching it in a science class is an endorsement of religion. However, as I will explain below this argument doesn’t really make sense and I fear that by knocking down this strawman the pro-ID people appear to have a good argument (luckily my blog search for pro-ID arguments suggested that most ID supporters aren’t smart/rational enough to take advantage of this).

Is Intelligent Design Science?

Whether or not intelligent design should count as science is a very complex issue. Certainly if we understand science to be the current practice of scientists ID clearly doesn’t qualify. However, a great deal of what is taught in science classrooms isn’t to be found in scientific journals or used by active scientists. Besides one has to admit it is pretty absurd to think the operative legal requirement is that school districts use the word science in the same way professional scientists or anyone else use the word. If this was the case all the school district would need to do is change the name of the course. Quite simply whether or not ID would be called science by a normal speaker of english or has the blessing of ‘scientists’ isn’t (directly) relevant to its constitutional status (note: being scientific is not incompatible with religious).

Of course I don’t think that most of the people in this debate think being called ‘science’ is what matters. Rather they have in mind some category the word science picks out and it is the fact that ID isn’t in this category that makes it unconstitutional to teach it in science class. Since any category defined by the practice of some social group would have no constitutional significance if the argument is valid we need some deeper analysis of what it means to be science than ‘that which scientists do.’¹ Thus the practice of scientists is pretty much irrelevant to whether or not ID is a science in the sense of the word that concerns us². It seems if we are to get anywhere with this argument we need some sort of analysis of what it means to be science in this sense. Unfortunately the problem of demarcating science from non-science has proved remarkably intractable resisting virtually all attempts at characterization for the last 100 years. In my opinion this is because ‘science’ like ‘game’ just doesn’t have any one defining property.

However, intuitively the basic statement of intelligent design does seem to be a valid scientific hypothesis. Imagine we looked into our ‘junk’ DNA and found some coded representation of the primes followed by some message, e.g., the sort of thing which would be totally convincing if it was picked up as a signal in a SETI program. Surely if this occurred mainstream scientists would start postulating theories about ancient alien visitors and forming hypotheses about the type of technology used. Moreover, the ID hypothesis does suggest certain results (we will never find fossil remains of many missing links) and serves as a guiding principle suggesting new experiments (looking for cellular machinery showing irreducible complexity and looking for non-evolved patterns in them). So unlike creationism ID makes predictions and is more testable than many sorts of additional evolutionary theories, e.g., evolutionary psychology. Since some discoveries would give us very high confidence in ID, fossil evidence can decrease our confidence in ID and it would suggest promising avenues of research if true it is hard to see how ID fails to be a valid scientific hypothesis.

Finally I should point out that the motivations of the people who proposed ID are irrelevant to its status as science. Plenty of real mainstream science was first proposed by scientists with strong religious convictions and in some cases even motivations. If Tycho Brahe’s model of the solar system had turned out to be the best one it would be easily accepted as a valid scientific theory despite the fact that it was likely proposed to further a religious objective (keep the earth at the center of the solar system consistent with catholic teaching).

Where the Judge Went Wrong

While the opinion excellently explains how the statement of ID amounts to a government endorsement of religion the judge strangely seems to believe he needs to show that ID isn’t science for a violation of the first amendment (p. 63-64). Although part of the motivation here may be just an excuse to further wail on ID and set precedent I think there is some assumption that teaching science in a science course can’t be a violation of the establishment clause. Presumably this is based on an analogy to a state offered course in Buddhist theology at university but this rests on a confusion of endorsement with factual presentation. The judge had already shown that ID amounted to a government endorsement of religion whether or not it fit within the purview of the course is irrelevant. If the government sponsored a course titled, “Why you should be a Christian” and in it told you (i.e. someone understood to be speaking as a representative of the government) that all good americans are christian it would be unconstitutional regardless of the title. It is a good thing the judge didn’t need to show ID wasn’t science since all his arguments to this effect are incorrect.

In the opinion the judge concludes that ID isn’t science for three reasons, all of them flawed. The last two justifications basically amount to his observation that the arguments in favor of ID are flawed, have been refuted by the scientific community and aren’t the subject of any scientific articles or research programs. However, this only establishes that ID is bad/unjustified science or unpopular science not that it isn’t science. Despite being false Lamarkian evolution still counts as science and unless we want to deny that people like Faraday or other scientific rebels weren’t doing science so long as they were only investigating a hunch and mocked by the scientific establishment this doesn’t do anything to jeopardize the scientific status of ID.

Admittedly the judge was probably in a bit of a bind here, he wanted to say the evidence was against ID but political considerations blocked him form saying anything that might be interpreted as saying ID was false. Even saying that the available scientific evidence reduces confidence in ID would be dangerous as many people interpret “the evidence is against blah” as meaning “blah is likely to be false.”

The more interesting argument he makes is that science is characterized by “methodological naturalism” (only natural causes) and since ID essentially rests on supernatural involvement it can’t be science. The first problem with this argument is that it assumes just because something is a ground level assumption for most practicing scientists it is a necessary qualification to be science. This is where the judge could have used some Kuhn. Unless one thinks that what counts as science changes every time there is a scientific revolution we should be prepared to accept some things as science despite their conflict with bedrock assumptions of current scientific practice. In this particular case I think we have reason to believe this assumption is going to change. The search for the neural correlate of consciousness is going to require the use of non-physical entities in causal explanation. Unless finding the NCC doesn’t count as science this had better not be a necessary condition to be science. Of course one might just try and define your way out of this by saying that mental states still count as part of the natural world. However, in this case methodological naturalism begins to look like a moving target that always stays ahead of current scientific practice. Besides ID doesn’t require any supernatural intervention even if this is the common interpretation. Just as modern cosmology says something caused the big bang ID says something designed life. Even if everyone at the time had assumed the big bang was caused by god that wouldn’t have stopped it from being science and so to the assumption that the designer is going to be god doesn’t stop ID itself from being scientific.

Conclusion

It is too bad after writing such a compelling opinion the judge had to screw it up by adding this stuff about science. He very rightly criticized ID for making a false dichotomy between ID and evolution but seems to read in his own false dichotomy between religiously motivated theory and science. Most modern religions have beliefs with worldly consequences, be it major things like giant floods or specific historical or miraculous claims. These claims can be supported or refuted by science and their entanglement with religion makes them no less science. However, even if these claims are perfectly valid scientific theories (say ones about the baltic sea undergoing a great flood) undue promotion of these theories by the government is endorsement of religion and unconstitutional. ID is just an extreme example happening to be really bad science making the violation of the first amendment exceptionally clear.