In a leading news item this past Christmas season, a federal district court judge in Pennsylvania held that the Dover Area School Board violated students’ Constitutional and civil rights by requiring teachers to inform their science classes that there are gaps or problems in Charles Darwin’s theory and other theories of evolution.1/ The 139-page opinion has been hailed as a “strategic defense of Darwinian theory” that “will be extremely useful . . . to science teachers and others who are struggling against . . . tremendous pressure to bring religion into the classroom.” 2/ Darwin’s detractors, it is said, have been left “wounded” and in “dismay.” 3/
As a parent, an American and a lawyer, there is much that troubles me about the outcome in Dover. As a father of young children, I am concerned by the scientific establishment’s desire and ability to squelch this attempt to open, ever so slightly, the in-school treatment of evolution. Can evolution’s foundations be so vulnerable as to need iron-clad protection from any intelligent inspection? As an American and a lawyer, I am concerned by the continued drift of Establishment Clause jurisprudence from any connection with common sense. Can the republic’s commitment to the free exercise of religion really be so fragile that theocracy likely will reign in Dover, Pennsylvania, if science teachers disclose that there are gaps or problems in evolutionary theories?
As serious as they are, these concerns pale in comparison to my distinctively Christian concerns. As a follower of Christ, I am most troubled by Judge Jones’ confident assertion that:
many of the leading proponents of [Intelligent Design] make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general.4/
It is startling that a well-educated, thoughtful member of the federal judiciary could undertake a careful, exhaustive analysis of these issues and still fail to appreciate the clash of worldviews at the core of the conflict. Judge Jones is right to elucidate his understanding of the presuppositions of Intelligent Design proponents. But he fails to complete the analysis with respect to proponents of Darwinism. If we put the advocates’ presuppositions side-by-side, it should be clear that they are fundamentally opposed to each other.
