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Intelligent Design and Challenges of Modernity

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Intelligent Design and Challenges of Modernity The Question of Legitimate Authority: Considerations of Intelligent Design in Public Schooling by Sandra Riegle, M.A. A Dissertation In CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSLPHY Approved Douglas Simpson, Committee Chair Barbara Morgan-Fleming Margaret Ann Price John Borrelli Dean of the Graduate School August, 2007 Copyright 2007, Sandra Riegle Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iv LIST OF NOMENCLATURE vi CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 Intelligent Design, science, and questions of legitimate authority 1 Background to the problem 1 Considerations of authority 3 Modernity, Darwinism, and the problem identified 8 Intelligent Design, pedagogy, and power 12 II. LITERATURE REVIEW 16 The challenge of modernity: Religion, education, and the institutionalization of school 16 The early republic and religion: The church as moral education 17 The emergence of the State as the new republic, and the development of the common School: Identifying a means of unification through education 24 Education and the efficiency expert 28 Technique and the character of knowledge 31 Technique and a new education 34 Legitimate authority, the new science defined, and the challenge of modernity 42 ID and the problem of naturalism 44 III. METHODOLOGY 46 ii Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 A philosophical approach 46 Is all of modernity the challenge, or merely one particular aspect? 46 Is the inclusion of intelligent design in public school science curriculum a battle for power over hegemonic discourse and institutions of societal re-production? 58 Limitations 62 IV. INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND A HISTORY OF IDEAS: SYNTHESIZING RELIGION AND SCIENCE 64 Introduction 64 Modernity and Intelligent Design: Re-discovering the “ought” and the “is” 65 Intelligent Design and religion 80 The historical continuum 87 V. HEGEMONIC DISCOURSE AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN: WAGING THE CULTURAL WAR FOR THE EDUCATION OF POSTERITY? 93 Intelligent Design and considerations of good pedagogical practice 95 Intelligent Design, and the official and hidden curriculums 99 Intelligent Design and education for posterity 104 VI. CONCLUSION 111 Summary 111 Considerations for future research 119 ENDNOTES 122 REFERENCES 142 iii Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 ABSTRACT This study will address some of the questions surrounding the contemporary debate as to whether or not – or, the extent to which – Intelligent Design (ID) justifiably can be included in public high school science curriculum. More specifically, its first guiding question will unpack three primary arguments that ID proponents often assert to validate its legitimacy, and to advance support for its inclusion in curriculum: namely, that ID is a valid insertion in the public school curriculum that allows for the re- placement of teleological concerns in modernity; that it is not neither a “God in the gaps” theory, nor essentially religious; and, finally, contrary to the contentions of some its critics, ID is not creation-science with a new name. The second guiding question of this study will address ID’s figurative placement in the culture war by examining: the extent to which recent attempts at its inclusion in the public school curriculum represent good pedagogical practices; the hegemonic discourse that its advocates both debunk and adopt; and the relevance that the combination of the afore-mentioned factors ultimately have upon considerations of education for posterity. The study will provide, primarily, philosophical and theoretical analyses of some of the critical issues and questions surrounding ID. More specifically, it will weave together theoretical and philosophical, as well as some historical, concerns, as it addresses some of the prominent arguments that shape support for ID, and the question of its authoritative status in public school curriculum. As such, this study will be an analysis of relevant contemporary research, and offer insight both into how and why ID has developed into an intellectual inquiry, and emerged as a potent idea supported by numerous academics and at least some of the general the public. For its discussions iv Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 regarding ID specifically, this document primarily will focus upon the writings of two thinkers who have gained prominence in the continued development of the theory; namely, William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher, and Michael Behe, a biochemist. v Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 LIST OF NOMENCLATURE Faith: Baker Theological Dictionary of the Bible defines faith thus: [b]elief, trust, and loyalty to a person or thing. Christians find their security and hope in God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and say ‘amen’ to that unique relationship to God in the Holy Spirit though love and obedience as expressed in lives of discipleship and stewardship. (Elwell, 1996, p. 236) Intelligent Design: An idea developed in the late 20th century that puts forth the argument that life was created by an intelligent agent or force. Modernity: An historical intellectual and cultural shift, occurring over centuries, characterized by developments such as an emphasis upon rationality and reason, empiricism, industrialization, and technologies. While historians such as Urban and Wagoner (2000) trace its roots in Enlightenment thought (Kant, etc.), others (Strauss, 1953) argue that its origins precede it. Science: The NAS (1998) defines science thus: … a particular way of knowing about the world … [in which] explanations are restricted to those that can be inferred from confirmable data [and] the results obtained through observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists. Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not a part of science. (p. 27; italics added) State: this term generally is used in the text in reference to the increased centralization and bureaucratization of the federal government that occurred in the U.S. most evidently during the first half of the twentieth century, with the rise of industrialization. Theology: at its most basic, this term can be broken down etymologically to mean “′discourse about God’” (where theos means God and logos means word; McGrath, 1998, p. 1). In Western thought, the term historically came to be associated closely with Christianity (McGrath, 1998). Furthermore, in American history, the term developed to be understood … [as] a discipline that combined biblical interpretation with one or another form vi Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 of background theory. What distinguished theology from devotional or inspirational writing or narratives of religious experience was its interdependence with various creation. (Holifield, 2003, pp. 3-4) vii Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 Chapter 1: Introduction Intelligent Design, science, and questions of legitimate authority Background to the problem The inclusion of Intelligent Design (hereafter referred to as ID) in U.S. public schools can be conceptualized as a renewed attempt to challenge authoritative truth claims in the science curriculum. At issue for ID proponents, at least in part, is whether or not – and the extent to which – Darwinism and modern science have monopolized understandings of origins of the species and life and concurrently divorced teleological considerations from scientific inquiry. While its advocates argue thusly that public school educators must “teach the controversy” of Darwinian theory, ID critics question what this “controversy” is; i.e., for the latter, no such controversy exists. Indeed, for this latter group, the mere fact that Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) references a supernatural being or force renders it a problematic scientific theory, at best. In other words, while some of its advocates assert that the theory qualifies as science at least because it does not name a supernatural being or force but only refers to one, its opponents argue that legitimate science cannot invoke justifiably such supernatural explanations, at least because “science has absolutely no way of dealing with it” (Moore, 1983, p. 4). The authoritative truth claims of ID advocates thus rests upon some (at a minimum) tacit reference to religious values; those of its opponents, conversely, rests upon comparatively more secular, and hence more universal, values. The contemporary debate about the place for ID in the U.S. public school curriculum thus exposes the fundamental contradictions, and subsequent attempts at 1 Texas Tech University, Sandra Riegle, August 2007 synchronization and synthesis, between centuries old religious conflict in the United States particularly, and the two traditions of thought in the West - classical Greek philosophy as best articulated by Plato and Aristotle, and Judeo-Christian theology – generally (Strauss, 1997e).1 Moreover, it exposes the centuries old conflict regarding the relationship between religion and science, and the private and public roles that education and schooling, respectively, have played in the conflict.2 The arguments for and against ID today – and those for and against the inclusion of creation and creation-science, historically - in public school curriculum, it would seem, illustrate that, while both parties seemingly agree as to the importance and relevance of
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