Constitutional Law, Courts, Religion, Science

Redefining Religion

Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger

“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further in the pursuit of the truth.”

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Hymn of the Universe,” (Harper and Row, 1961).

It took the jury fewer than fifteen minutes to convict substitute teacher John Scopes of the crime of teaching evolution to Tennessee public school students in 1925.  It was the last victory of Christian fundamentalists in their war against the disciples of Darwin, and a hollow one at that.  Although the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, it reversed the verdict because the trial judge had imposed a $100.00 fine on Mr. Scopes, contrary to a provision in the Tennessee constitution requiring a jury to assess fines exceeding $50.00.  In sending the case back, however, the court made the unusual suggestion that further prosecution not be pursued.  Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 289 SW 363 (1927).  It was not.

Fundamentalists were emboldened by the Scopes verdict.  In 1928 Mississippi and Arkansas adopted similar laws and in the ensuing years, the subject of evolution was effectively dropped as a topic in many high school science courses, a trend that was not reversed until the Sputnik scare in 1958 led to a revamping of science curricula.  It was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court decreed that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools violated the Establishment Clause.  Epperson v. Arkansas, 397 U.S. 97 (1968).

With direct bans no longer available, fundamentalists pursued a new strategy, the adoption of “balanced treatment” legislation requiring that teachers provide time for the exploration of the Genesis story of creation as an alternative explanation of biological origins.  In 1983 a federal district judge threw out Arkansas’ balanced treatment statute, concluding that creationism is “not science because it depends upon a supernatural intervention which is not guided by natural law.  It is not explanatory by reference to natural law, is not testable and is not falsifiable.” McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1267 (E.D. Ark. 1982).  Several years later, Louisiana’s balanced treatment statute was also found to violate the Establishment Clause under the Lemon test.  Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987).

Efforts to recast creationism as science under the name “intelligent design” were rebuffed in the now famous case of Fitzmiller v. Dover Area School District,  400 F. Supp.2d 707 (E.D. Pa. 2005), in which the court succinctly stated that “[intelligent design] cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” 400 F. Supp.2d at 765.

But the war is far from over.  Creationists are once again in court, and this time they are urging that the teaching of evolution in the public schools is itself a violation of, inter alia, the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses because evolution theory incorporates the “core tenets of Religious (‘secular’) Humanism.”

Cope (a/k/a Citizens for Objective Public Education, Inc.), et al., v. Kansas State Board of Education was filed on September 26th in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas.  The case seeks to enjoin implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards adopted by the Kansas Board of Education in June of this year.  Those standards are objectionable under the First and Fourteenth Amendment, according to the plaintiffs, because they endorse the “orthodoxy” of scientific materialism, which “holds that explanations of the cause and nature of natural phenomena may only use natural, material or mechanistic causes, and must assume that, supernatural and teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid.” (Complaint, para. 8)  Plaintiffs contend that teleological and materialistic explanations of the natural world create “competing religious beliefs.” (Complaint, para. 75).

The allegations are absurd on a number of levels.  First, Plaintiffs have adopted a definition of religion which eliminates any requirement for belief in a supernatural entity.  Second, Plaintiffs’ reasoning, if pursued to its logical conclusion, would virtually preclude the teaching of science in the public schools because their objections go to the basis of what we understand as the scientific method.  Third, Plaintiffs rely upon the same flawed dualism that taints most fundamentalist arguments, the false assumption that acceptance of the findings of evolutionary biology are incompatible with religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular.  The great paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, for example, who is quoted above, regarded evolution itself as part of the process of divine creation.

This latest assault on science is not the first time that creationists have relied on the Secular Humanism argument  In Crowley v. Smithsonian Institution, 636 F.2d 738 (D.C. Cir. 1980), the court rejected the claim that a museum exhibit of evolutionary processes constituted a governmental endorsement of Secular Humanism.  The court held that the Establishment Clause does not prohibit a science display which may happen to be in agreement with a tenet of a particular religion.  And in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, supra, the court observed, “Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.” 529 F.Supp. at 1274.

Fundamentalists have failed in their attempts to create science out of religion.  There is no doubt that they will also fail in their attempts to create religion out of science.  The only serious remaining question is why we must continue to have the discussion.

 

 

 

141 thoughts on “Redefining Religion”

  1. Gene, I began reading your last post and at first I thought we disagreed with one another. Then I read on and thought that we agreed with one another. Then I read on and thought we disagreed with one another. Then I read on and thought we agreed with one another. Then I read on and thought…I’d just say my prayers and go to sleep. Good night all.

  2. Anthony,

    I think you misunderstand how the Higgs boson fits in the Standard Model. I blame the clowns who decided to call it “the God particle”. Even Peter Higgs doesn’t like that name. Finding a particle that explains mass says absolutely nothing about God or a Prime Mover of any sort, but it did sell a lot of books for Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi.

  3. Anthony Viera:

    For someone who proclaims himself informed and engaged, your description of my quote from Teilhard de Chardin is astonishingly ignorant. He was a Jesuit as well as a scientist, and certainly not a materialist. You obviously never heard of the man in that well-informed world in which you dwell.

    BTW, I am also a lawyer and have tried cases and argued appeals for forty years. I have met brilliant judges and complete duds. I have had judges who were quite capable of relying on reason and the law, as well as judges whose decisions were predictable from the outset. And, so what? The truth is that fundamentalists reject anything which conflicts with their view of biblical inerrancy.

  5. “And, in the end, “science’s” denial of God is no more observable, testable, or repeatable than are affirmative theological proofs of God’s existence.”

    Anthony,

    I’ve got to go with Mike on this one. Science doesn’t deny God. Many scientists are people of faith. Darwin himself was a religious man. Science says it cannot prove or disprove God because a God doesn’t have to follow the rules of nature – which is what science seeks to unravel and reveal. That is what supernatural means; attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature. Science cannot speak to God’s existence because the lack of observable evidence and repeatable experiments simply make he/she/it an impossibility for study using the scientific method. Theology, on the other hand, is a rhetorical area of study. Physical evidence is not required. Theological proofs may have logic, even internally consistent logic, but it is well established that logic can be counter-factual. This is why logic is only one component of the scientific method along with valid representative data and repeatable experimentation. Conversely, theological proofs can’t really prove anything other than they “sound good” to a believer.

    Not all standards of proof are created equal, but then again, that is why it’s called a “belief”; an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially without proof.

  6. Gene,

    Of course COPE will be tossed out … Calvert’s just angling to stay on the Tea Party chicken dinner circuit.

  7. Yeah, if cows could, they’d give Milnot. People who believe in a god should be able to explain why. I have never heard anyone explain the whyfor. When they say that “Its written in the Scriptures” then I respond that they need to disavow science completely. Forget medicine and going to hospitals for treatment. Pray for rain. Pray for the Redsox. Pray for us sinners. Yakkity yak, don’t come back.

  8. Mike, give me a break. You open with a quote exalting materialism. Its right there. I’m looking at it as I write. Holy smokes guy! Please don’t act to the contrary. I’ve heard the illogical and philosophically unsustainable nonsense forever…all is matter and molecules and an infinitie prior hain of causes and effects – Damn the notion of infinite regress – Higgs-Boson to the rescue – who needs a prime mover? Right? The truth is, you and all your like do believe that a conflict exists between science and religion. I disagree. I believe the conflict is between religion and scientists who’ve tried to wade into areas of theology and philosophy they are ill equipped to understand. Fortunately, I am a lawyer so I am neither obliged nor inclined to respect any boundary whether of naturalism or of metaphysics. I am more than willing to trample on sacred cows your humanistic beef included.

  10. Blouise,

    Derek Schmidt, the current KS AG, is not exactly my choice for many reasons (taking Koch money for one thing) but he at least isn’t in denial about science like that tool Phill Kline. I don’t think COPE stands a chance.

  11. But but but . . . that would require people question their beliefs in the face of mountains of contrary physical evidence and repeatable experiments, Mike! 😉

    And everyone knows theology comes from (their) God and is ergo infallible.

  12. COPE has only been in existence since March of 2012 and is just one more attempt by John Calvert (formerly of the now pretty much defunct IDNet and Tea Party favorite) to grab a little bit of the waning spotlight. He lost big time both in Kansas and in Ohio. From what I understand this lawsuit lacks any citations to relevant case law and the board has asked the state’s attorney general to defend the case. This is just Calvert yelling, “Look at me, look at me … I’m still important! Yes, yes, I’m still accepting speakers fees … when do you want me to talk to your group?”

  13. Anthony Viera:
    Since you are informed and engaged, then you will understand that the function of science is to seek an understanding of the natural world. That process neither implies nor demands the “denial” of God or religious belief. What I find most surprising in the debate over evolution is why no one appears willing to discuss the possibility that the conflict between science and fundamentalist theology is not a consequence of bad science but of bad theology.

  16. Mike, I agree, it seems, with 99% of what Turley (and his guest bloggers post). I think Turley and I would be great friends laughing at, mocking, and being disgusted at those who would dismantle our constitution…and then, for me…things take a 180. My views always diverge from your herd at one particular point. Where the discussion of religion raises its head it seems that I always find myself reading a bunch of misinformed, narrowminded, and canned propaganda. This is what you’ve authored. The sideways discussion of Scopes begins your silly set of arguments. Your citations to “appellate authority” regarding what creationism is and is not is even more laughable. I stand before judges nearly everyday. I read apppelate opinions nearly everyday. The authors are only men and are beset with the same frailties of bias and prejudice and self-validation that you and I have – their words mean nothing persuasive. And, in the end, “science’s” denial of God is no more observable, testable, or repeatable than are affirmative theological proofs of God’s existence. Your post adds no new arguments nor new information to the debate and only threatens to dumb it down for those of us who are already informed and engaged.

  17. ”Religion”……… Scrape up all the ‘Crud’ of the World, put it in a bottle, and see who’ll be willing to drink from that bottle. That’s religion

  19. I would love to see David or Hubert C., write their view of this topic. It would be very interesting to see both ‘sides of the plate.’ 🙂

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