Dover's Evolutionary War
Why teach the Bible when you can settle for the next best thing: "intelligent design"?
 

January 17 2005
Counterbias.com
Steve Horowitz

There's no better testament to the divisive, alienating power of religion than Dover, Pennsylvania, a town torn apart in the name of God.

Nightline's John Donvan took a field trip there recently, and found that discord and resentment had replaced
school spirit in this once-peaceful small town. All because a majority of the Dover School Board believes the theory of evolution is just that: a theory. Fossils and decades of overwhelming scientific evidence be damned.

As Donvan explained in last night's broadcast, the board is not trying to introduce "creationism" in its schools' biology curricula. No, they're  playing a craftier game than that, with something called "intelligent design" -- an explanation of the universe that depends on, yes, an
intelligent designer. Not God, mind you, or even a god. Just a designer. With, presumably, a huge drafting table, and one hell of a colored pencil collection.

Remember when it seemed that science would march inexorably forward, curing disease, ending starvation, un-limiting possibilities? Now, polls tell us, a third of Americans believes in the Biblical, six-day-creation work week. Another third believes in evolution. And the last third doesn't know what to think. Suggesting that the march of science is slowing to a palsied shuffle -- and that that's fine with millions of people.

I'm not going to debate the finer points of evolutionary theory; that would be too hard. And I'm not going to gratuitously insult the fundamentalists whose faith is threatened by natural history museums -- that would be too easy. I'm just going to predict the not-far-off day when, emboldened by even small successes in these Scopes-like wars, school board zealots start looking into whether the earth really does revolve around the sun. And whether humans were meant to understand the
chemical and molecular structures of matter. And why civics and social studies need to be taught, since there isn't much about the way societies should function that isn't laid out in the Bible.

And how earth plate tectonics explains the South Asia tsunami, when it could better be ascribed to God's righteous wrath.

(Want to understand "intelligent design"? Check out this critique of its seminal text, "Of Pandas and People." Want to understand the coming decline and fall of the United States as a leader in science, medicine, physics, astronomy and economics? Get the transcript of last night's Nightline.)

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