An Intelligent Person's Guide to Intelligent Design Theory

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Intelligent Design Theory Steve Fuller Why Americans Fear Creationism More than Racism The public debates surrounding the legitimacy of Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), popularly known as "Creationism," have been so far limited to the United States. However, this is not because America uniquely suffers from antiscientific backlash. This backlash is now fairly widespread in the Western world, but usually it is driven by eco-warriors who nevertheless share the Creationists' holistic orientation to nature. In fact, the controversial status of IDT has very little to do with the relationship between science and religion, which, after all, has been largely symbiotic in human history. Rather, it relates to the contingencies of America's birth and the perverse twist that its founding myth has taken in the development of the nation's legal system and political culture. The religious persecution endured by the early English-speaking settlers provided the background against which the much-vaunted separation of church and state became the core of the Constitution's protection of civil liberties, especially freedom of expression. The exclusion of religion from public school instruction was supposed to allow students the space to develop their own views without pressure to conform to a particular faith. Of course, in practice, one creed was given precedence , namely, belief in the United States itself, which remains emblazoned in the minds of all Americans over 30 as the "Pledge of Allegiance" that used to be recited at the start of each school day. The idea of America as a secular faith became especially important in the second half of the nineteenth century, as waves of immigrants from outside northern Europe flowed into the country. In this context, religious difference was no longer seen as something the law should protect; rather, it became a potential source of divisiveness that demanded, in turn, an ideology that would enable Americans to transcend, if not eliminate, their religious differences in forging a world-class nation. This "melting pot" turned out to be mandatory eduSteve Fuller is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Durham in Durham, Great Britain. He is the founder of the journal Social Epistemology. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 1, No. 4,1998, pp. 603-610 ISSN 1094-8392 604 Rhetoric & Public Affairs cation in the natural sciences, and the long-term effect has been to create a hostile public environment for views about the natural (and social) world that have affinities with religious modes of thought. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, when commentators have wanted to capture the "pre-scientific" character of religious thought, they would refer to its allegedly tribal qualities that inhibit the combined efforts needed to build a technologically advanced civilization.1 I have dredged up this ancient history because I believe that IDT would appear much more benign today had the original settlers been escaping ethnic or racial, rather than religious, conflict. All else being equal, Americans would now be living under a Constitution that separates race and state, one that officially bans the teaching of racial hypotheses in public school science classes and unofficially discourages mainstream publication of works propounding racist theses. To be sure, we would be living in a land of political correctness, but also one that probably would have never imported Africans as slaves, Asians as indentured servants, or slaughtered most of the native inhabitants. In short, a United States founded on the separation of race and state, instead of church and state, would have probably had a morally more acceptable history.2 Indeed, considering the divisive role played by racism in American history, it is amazing that serious discussion continues to be given to books that allege a strong causal link between race and intelligence, even when they are written by behavioral psychologists and political economists—as opposed to people with the relevant expertise in physical anthropology or human genetics. Of course, I allude to The Bell Curve, 1994's contribution to a depressingly long line of prominently published books that desperately turn to race to explain persistent differences in the human condition.3 When raising these matters, it is customary to say that it is a testimony to...