Law & Society Blog

We have pointed out before the parochial flavor of the current debate over intelligent design in the USA. Further proof comes from the Vatican of all places, reported today by the New York Times:

“If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another,” Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L’Osservatore Romano [the official Vatican newspaper].

“But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science,” he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. “It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious.”

While this is not an official position the Vatican has taken, it echoes the tenor of statements from Catholics (as reported in the Times article) that the science of evolution and the belief in a creator are not incompatible—a position I’ll call the Compatibility Thesis. The Discovery Institute (that’s the intelligent-design movement’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) was quick to discount the article as an attempt to put words into the Vatican’s mouth.

The interesting point is that the Compatibility Thesis goes to the heart of the Intelligent Design/Creationism movement in the US, which rests on what Judge Jones called a false dichotomy in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District:

ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. This argument is not brought to this Court anew, and in fact, the same argument, termed “contrived dualismǃ? in McLean, was employed by creationists in the 1980’s to support “creation science.ǃ? The court in McLean [McLean v. Ark. Bd. of Educ., 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258 (E.D. Ark. 1982)] noted the “fallacious pedagogy of the two model approachǃ? and that “[i]n efforts to establish ǃÚevidence’ in support of creation science, the defendants relied upon the same false premise as the two model approach . . . all evidence which criticized evolutionary theory was proof in support of creation science.ǃ? McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1267, 1269.

From the perspective of science, the Compatibility Thesis means that science determines what makes a scientific theory, and what is part of scientific discourse. While lawyers, philosophers, and the faithful may discuss the philosophy of science, its role in law and society, and its relation to religion, it should be science that defines itself. The current battle being fought before American school boards is a battle over the definition of science itself.

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