July 12, 2008
Intelligent Design evolves into Academic Freedom
The Louisiana legislature passed an insidious bill that, according to NewScientist, seeks to "bestow on teachers the right to introduce non-scientific alternatives to evolution under the banner of 'academic freedom.'" While I'm not surprised that the Louisiana legislature is that stupid, the vote itself jarred me: it passed 94-3.
The passed bill, named the Louisiana Science Education Act, can be read here [pdf], but the relevant portion is below:
The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.The Act then schizophrenically goes on to say the following:
This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.That 93 out of 97 Louisiana legislators apparently believe that this disclaimer rinses the religious purpose from the Act is stunning. But then, we all saw this bill coming--this bill has effectively been in the works for nearly a century. Undercutting evolution was easy at first, when legislatures could simply prohibit it from being taught. But then the courts eventually stepped in and invalidated law after law that sought to insert creationism into public school systems on the basis that these laws violated the establishment clause.
With each judicial rebuke, creationism evolved, first into "creation science," and then into intelligent design, each incarnation stripping away the perceived legally problematic elements. After intelligent design was thoroughly savaged by Judge Jones in the Dover trial, another legally problematic element was shed... which now brings us to Louisiana and its Louisiana Science Education Act.
By itself and free from any context, the act promotes progressive, harmless sounding values; after all, who could possibly be against "critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories"? But the Act's faults don't lie its stated, admittedly neutral-sounding values, but in the implications that flow from the subjects the legislature sees as lacking sufficient objectivity, namely, "evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."
Taking evolution separately for the moment, the problem the legislature will have when this inevitably goes to federal court is that scientists do not view evolution as it is commonly taught in public schools as lacking objectivity. The court is going to ask why these particular subjects were targeted and from that inquiry will spill who--and who wants to target evolution? Biblical literalists and ... well, pretty much just biblical literalists, whose opposition to evolution is heavily documented. How can this be reconciled?
But this bill is not just the next evolved step in the secularization of creationism; when compared with the clumsy attempts by the school boards in Dover and Cobb County, it reveals a sophistication, deliberateness, and insidiousness that may indeed win the day, at least at the trial court level, and perhaps in the appeals court as well. I say this for two reasons.
First, the Act brilliantly targets not only evolution, but origins of life, human cloning, and global warming. This makes the Act harder to defeat as a whole, because while it's easy to find the religious purpose where evolution is attacked, it's less simple to trace back attacks on global warming and human cloning to religion (which is not to say that religious motivations don't also lie behind attacks on global warming and human cloning--they do--but unlike evolution, some varying degree of nonreligious opposition against them also exists). Thus, the Act could be successfully attacked on one front and survive on another. And this is why the presence of "origins of life," alongside evolution is especially scary because of how the two subjects overlap; its inclusion could possibly give Louisiana two bites at the same apple.
If the inclusion of other topics besides evolution is predicated on giving the Act multiple lives, the purpose of the aforementioned 'no-religion' paragraph is to bulletproof the Act. Where §285.1(B)(1) provides for a brand of "academic freedom" that can only be satisfied by maintaining a constitutionally impermissible religious purpose, and §285.1(D) expressly prohibits the promotion of religious doctrine, you don't have a bill so much as an unworkable paradox--a Mobius Loop. Thus, even if a court recognizes the loop, it may still find this section as a sufficient guard against unconstitutional activity, since that's precisely what it purports to do.
But this Act is even smarter yet. It seems possible, and even likely, that the type of religious activity that would naturally occur in the course of administering §285.1(B)(1) would be abstract and ambiguous--and not considered "religious doctrine," which, along with relgious discrimination, is all §285.1(D) prohibits.
I'll have a lot more to say on this particular Act because it seems destined for court, and if it does, many will be watching.
posted by scott pilutik at July 12, 2008 10:41 PM