Judge Jones' Ruling

 

In 2005, Judge John E. Jones decided the groundbreaking Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which a public high school was charged for planning to include a disclaimer in the following year’s ninth grade biology curriculum. In a nutshell, the disclaimer included pointing out that evolution is “only a theory”, not a fact, and that a textbook presenting an alternative theory known as Intelligent Design (ID) would be available for students to read. Judge Jones’ decision was that the disclaimer would be an act of religious favoritism and violate the First Amendment, and I couldn’t agree more with the verdict and the reasoning.  

The defendants’ main argument was that ID is a scientific theory without any necessary religious connotations. To this point, both the scientific community and professional theologians disagree. The theologian John Haught, for instance, “succinctly explained to the Court that the argument for ID is not a new scientific argument, but is rather an old religious argument for the existence of God. He traced this argument back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century” (Kitzmiller v. Dover 24). Most people who are familiar with Aquinas’ argument have probably heard William Paley’s adaptation, in which someone finds a lost pocket watch and infers from its precise, interlocking mechanisms that there must have been a designer who created it. Likewise, one can look at the world’s complexity and infer that the entire world must have had a designer as well. Both men have famously used this argument to demonstrate God’s existence, which directly contradicts the claim that ID isn’t tied to religion. The link between them is strengthened by Dr. Barbara Forrest, the author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse, who “provide[d] a wealth of statements by ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical, and cultural content” (Kitzmiller v. Dover 26). Such statements include Philip Johnson saying that “theistic realism” and “mere creation” are defining concepts of the ID movement, William Dembski calling ID a “ground clearing operation” to bring Christianity more serious consideration, and Michael Behe saying the “plausibility for the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God” (Kitzmiller v. Dover 28). There is nothing inherently wrong with scientists talking about how their work relates to their religion, but clearly the ID movement considers religion – Christianity in particular – to be a necessary component of their ideas.  

From the other end of the spectrum, we learn that proponents of ID tend to have a serious misunderstanding of the scientific method. A common misconception is that science’s “ground rule”, methodological naturalism, is synonymous with ontological or metaphysical naturalism. That is, it is a belief that the natural world is all that exists. However, philosopher of science Robert Pennock explains that this is not true; rather, methodological naturalism simply “requires scientists to seek explanations…based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify” (Kitzmiller v. Dover 65). Evolution is based on mountains of evidence (literally and metaphorically) and generates testable hypotheses that lead to observable results and furthers research. This is what makes it a “theory”, which in science is the highest status an idea can receive; it is not simply a “hunch”. ID, on the other hand, has been discredited and does not provide any avenues for research, as demonstrated by its lack of peer-reviewed publications. In general, supernatural explanations don’t gain much traction in the scientific community - not because it is inherently against religion, but because such explanations are consistent with any observable data and therefore don’t improve our knowledge about the natural world. One does not need to be a naturalist, an atheist, or a materialist to be a scientist, but they do need to be curious about nature.  

Ideally, one of the main purposes of school is to teach kids to become better critical, independent thinkers, and proper scientific reasoning is essential for this. Perhaps my favorite quote from this case comes from a reference to Dr. Kenneth Miller, an evolutionary biologist and devout Christian: “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 areligious 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” (Kitzmiller v. Dover 49). In a society that claims to promote and value both the freedom of religion and scientific progress, it is irresponsible to assert or imply in the classroom that the two are fundamentally at odds. It is true that specific claims made by religious people (for instance, taking the Genesis account literally) is contradicted by modern scientific findings, but it should be up to the individual students to figure out how to reconcile this information themselves. It is not the job of public schools – funded by taxpayers who almost certainly differ in their religious views – to sacrifice teaching scientific literacy and developing curiosity to “protect” students from “incorrect” interpretations. Such an attitude undermines our commitments to science, freedom, and to education itself. We not only rob our students of our current knowledge, but also discourage them from learning more for fear that the wrong discovery will disprove their religious worldview.  

Judge Jones made the right verdict; ID is obviously religious propaganda, not a scientific theory, and therefore has no place in a public-school science curriculum. I am glad that Dover High School will continue teaching evolution, but I think it is much more important to dedicate more time to teaching students what science truly is. It is not a set of facts to be memorized and a commitment to disregard illogical religious ideas; rather, it is a refined use of methodological naturalism that involves making testable hypotheses with observable results, and ironically building a desire to be proven wrong in the peer-reviewed process. It is more important to find out what is true about the world than to have the right answer before everyone else. Darwin himself stood on the shoulders of giants who came before him, and he would be ecstatic to see how far evolutionary biology has come today before rushing to the nearest lab to learn more.  

Works Cited 

Kitzmiller v. Dover. No. 4:04-cv-026880-JEJ. United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. 20 December 2005. Memorandum Opinion. 

 

  

Methodological Naturalism

 

Methodological Naturalism    

 

Rob Pennock’s Tower of Babel is partially a response to the confusion surrounding methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. Chapter four, entitled Of Naturalism and Negativity, specifically addresses this confusion and Creationists who fall prey to these misunderstandings when talking about evolution. The key difference is that ontological naturalism is a philosophical position about what is and isn’t in the world, while methodological naturalism is a way to learn more about the world.  

Early in the chapter, Pennock points out how, historically, the term “naturalism” has had a wide variety of definitions: “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, naturalism has often been associated with various forms of secularism, especially epicureanism and materialism, but it has also been used as a label for religious views such as pantheism, as well as the theological doctrine that we learn religious truth not by revelation but by the study of natural processes” (Pennock 189). He adds a few sentences later that naturalism also became associated with logical positivism and phenomenalism in the twentieth century. The point is that “naturalism” does not have a universal definition, and therefore isn’t tied to specific ontological claims. One can be religious or irreligious, Christian or deist, scientist or construction worker and still be a “naturalist” in some sense of the word. The way Creationists use the term often falls back on what Pennock calls “metaphysical” or “ontological naturalism”, which “makes substantive claims about what exists in nature and then adds a closure clause stating ‘and that is all there is’” (Pennock 190). While ontological naturalists exist, and typically they are atheists, they do not have to be, as evidenced by Hobbes and Spinoza. All that is required is a general statement that nature is all that exists. Even ontological naturalism – a legitimate philosophical position and not a methodology – does not require one to give up their religious beliefs (at least not all of them).  

On the other hand, methodological naturalism “does not make a commitment directly to a picture of what exists in the world, but rather to a set of methods as a reliable way to find out about the world” (Pennock 191). This includes the methods of the natural sciences and, by extension, any conclusions they indirectly discover. Unlike ontological naturalism, knowledge gained from methodological naturalism is always tentative and open to revision should new evidence arise. For example, when we learned about evolution by natural selection, this changed the conclusions drawn from methodological naturalism. However, there were probably some ontological naturalists who remained ontological naturalists after this new discovery, because it was still explained within the confines of the natural world. The philosophical stance is different from the epistemological method. To make the distinction more explicit, one can be a methodological naturalist and believe in supernatural interference; Mature-Earth Creationists, for instance, believe that the Earth is about six thousand years old based on literal Biblical scripture, but accept that the scientific evidence points to an older Earth. In other words, God made the Earth “recently” by geological and astronomical standards, but He made it look old. One could, theoretically, be a Mature-Earth Creationist and a methodological naturalist if they accept that God made it seem like there are natural laws at work forever everywhere (although such an individual is incredibly rare in real life. I admit this view is extreme, but I use it anyway to better illustrate the point). Unfortunately, conflating philosophy and methodology is a common mistake, and Creationists do it so often that people like Pennock must write books like this in response.  

Most significantly, natural theories tend to provide more explanatory power than supernatural theories. As Pennock explains, “science is based upon a philosophical system, but not one that is extravagant speculation. Science operates by empirical principles of observational testing; hypotheses must be confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to empirical data. One supports a hypothesis by showing that consequences obtain which would follow if what is hypothesized were to be so in fact” (Pennock 195). It is important to reiterate that science doesn’t “prove” anything; all claims are tentative based on available evidence, and a theory or natural law provides value if it can make (correct) testable predictions. Supernatural theories don’t provide such value, because gods can make anything happen at their will; they can strike with lightning, create life, send hurricanes, or build planets “for some purpose”, regardless of whether their actions are consistent with our proposed natural laws. In other words, they are “unfalsifiable” explanations, because they can’t be proven wrong.  

Pennock makes this clear when he says that “allowing appeal to supernatural powers in science would make the scientist’s task just too easy, because one would always be able to call upon the gods for quick theoretical assistance” (Pennock 196). On the surface, that sounds like a good thing (it can be embarrassing to be proven wrong), but because such explanations can’t tell us with accuracy that is better than chance whether something will happen, they are useless. Again, one can be a methodological naturalist and still believe in gods or other supernatural entities. Although, since these explanations don’t have empirical evidence nor provide us with practical value, they tend to be dismissed by the natural sciences. Therefore, evolution is accepted while Creationism (and Intelligent Design) is rejected in science; not only does evolution have overwhelming evidence in its favor, but it allows us to make testable predictions that provide us with value for anatomy, medicine, psychology, zoology, history, and countless other fields. By contrast, Creationism can explain everything by saying that God created it. That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t provide any avenues for further research and discovery.  

Science and methodological naturalism are secular. This means they have nothing to do with religion; it does not mean that one is required to abandon their religion while using them, except as empirical explanations of natural, observable phenomena. This is based not on a commitment to ontological naturalism, but on the recognition that a supernatural explanation would be unfalsifiable and therefore wouldn’t provide us with much value beyond the experiment in question. I would be upset if we stopped teaching evolution in public schools, but I think it is far more important to drill this understanding into students of any science class. Science is not inherently against religion, but it is inherently in pursuit of truth and new knowledge, which can only happen if an idea can be subjected to rigorous testing.  

 

Works Cited 

Pennock, Rob. Tower of Babel. 1999.