If it’s not bad enough that Intelligent Design promotes religion and belief in the god of Western, philosophical monotheism, the Dover trial also revealed that Intelligent Design is generally focused on promoting Christianity in particular. Jews, Muslims, and other monotheists — not to mention polytheists, pantheists, atheists, deists, etc. — are excluded. The Dover school board deliberately acted to promote Christianity, their religion.
Judge Jones pointed out many instances where Intelligent Design advocates expressly and unapologetically argue that their efforts are designed to advance the cause of Christianity:
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Phillip Johnson states that the “Darwinian theory of evolution contradicts not just the Book of Genesis, but every word in the Bible from beginning to end. It contradicts the idea that we are here because a creator brought about our existence for a purpose.”
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ID proponents Johnson, William Dembski, and Charles Thaxton, one of the editors of Pandas, situate ID in the Book of John in the New Testament of the Bible, which begins, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” Dembski has written that ID is a “ground clearing operation” to allow Christianity to receive serious consideration, and “Christ is never an addendum to a scientific theory but always a completion.”
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As posited in the Wedge Document, the IDM’s “Governing Goals” are to “defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies” and “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” The CSRC [Discovery Institute’s Center for Renewal of Science and Culture] expressly announces, in the Wedge Document, a program of Christian apologetics to promote ID. A careful review of the Wedge Document’s goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones. ID aspires to change the ground rules of science to make room for religion, specifically, beliefs consonant with a particular version of Christianity.
Offering Intelligent Design, a religious, theistic, and Christian belief, as an “alternative” to evolution creates a false and unnecessary duality:
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Dr. Miller testified that a false duality is produced: It “tells students . . . quite explicitly, choose God on the side of intelligent design or choose atheism on the side of science.” Introducing such a religious conflict into the classroom is “very dangerous” because it forces students to “choose between God and science,” not a choice that schools should be forcing on them.
The Christianity here is not a generic, vague Christianity. Johnson, Dembski, and others aren’t seeking to advance the goals of Catholicism, Unitarians, or Quakers. Intelligent Design advocates have in mind something much more specific: conservative, evangelical Christianity.
Their entire agenda is, fundamentally, an effort to reconstruct American society along narrow Christian lines. Everything secular, pluralistic, and modern must be overthrown and replaced with narrow Christian conceptions of how society should operate — conceptions which exclude the beliefs of many Christians as well as most non-Christians.
It’s not surprising that members of the Dover School Board who advocated Intelligent Design also had much more in mind:
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Bonsell not only wanted prayer in schools and creationism taught in science class, he also wanted to inject religion into the social studies curriculum, as evidenced by his statement to Baksa that he wanted students to learn more about the Founding Fathers and providing Baksa with a book entitled Myth of Separation by David Barton.
Teaching, or even just promoting, Intelligent Design thus serves the political, social, and religious agenda of a subset of American Christianity. These people are certainly entitled to their agenda, but by no means are they entitled to government aid for or endorsement of their agenda. This is what the Dover School Board was trying to accomplish, however, and why the introduction of Intelligent Design was unconstitutional.
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ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.
The idea of “teaching the controversy” has become popular with Intelligent Design supporters and it played a role in the Dover trial as well. However, there is no scientific controversy over the validity of evolution. The only “controversy” is one created by creationists themselves. They put up a fuss about how their religious beliefs aren’t taught as science and then argue that the fuss itself should become part of the science curriculum.
