08.06.08
Toward A Postdarwinian Liberalism
Toward A Postdarwinian Liberalism
The Darwin Debate: Changing The Subject
The Alternet site recently had a review/discussion of Lauri Lebo’s The Devil In Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America: Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality
The account of this trial in some ways speaks for itself: the attempt to bring Intelligent Design into the classroom violated constitutional grounds and was struck down. The strategy of the those attempting insert design into the classroom was flawed and ill-conceived, witness the way the background lobby, the Discovery Institute, and many of its members, dropped out of the case.
But behind this trial lies a larger issue, and the trial itself was a misleading victory handed to defenders of Darwinism they didn’t deserve. Part of the reason lies in the flawed formulation of Darwin critique produced the design group. An initiative that in many ways began with Philip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial. which may have triggered the design movement, but never mentioned it directly, finally had its day in court, but lost it, and should have been better prepared to put ‘Darwin on Trial’, but instead ended up putting ‘Design on Trial’. The clever way the legal team at the trial performed this reversal of villainies might seem brilliant to the defenders of Darwinism, but to anyone familiar with the problems with Darwinism the episode smacked of a stage-managed deception, with inappropriate pronouncements by the judge on what constituted science. The trial ended up being a public publicity stunt for the promoters of Darwin boilerplate, the daily fare of such organizations as the NCSE and other Big Science lobby groups, matching the Discovery Institute.