80 years after the Scopes Trial

I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but 80 years ago yesterday, the Scopes Monkey Trial began. I had even had a placeholder entry prepared for yesterday, as a reminder from a post I wrote a couple of months ago, but somehow I missed it while contemplating what to post today. Thanks to St. Nate for reminding me, even though I missed my own reminder.

In the summer of 1925, a young teacher named John Scopes was tried and, after a famous trial that lasted several days, found guilty of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act on July 21, 1925. You'd think that such antiscientific sentiment would have abated over the years, but you'd be wrong. True, in the eighty years since 1925, we've developed antibiotics, jet travel, molecular biology, cancer chemotherapy, and have gone to space and the moon. We've developed technological marvels undreamt of 80 years ago. Despite all that, however, unfortunately somehow we haven't moved beyond the attempts of religious ideologues to impose their religious beliefs upon science. Indeed, depressingly, the antiscientific attacks on evolution today sound much the same as they did 80 years ago. Oh, creationism has "evolved" into "intelligent design," mainly because even creationists realized that arguing that the earth was only 6,000 years old contrary to mountains of scientific evidence that indicates it is much older and arguing that the fossil evidence was not what science said that it was turned out to be a nonstarter that ran afoul of the First Amendment's prohibition against government endorsement of a specific religious belief if taught in public schools. Consequently, creationism morphed into the concept of "intelligent design," which argues that life is too complex to have evolved without the intervention of a "designer." Worse, ID advocates produce no actual scientific research to support their concept and that they frequently mangle and misrepresent the theory of evolution as it is presently understood and the scientific evidence that supports it, all the while agitating and politicking to convince schoolboards to teach ID as an "alternative" to evolution in science classes. All of this makes ID a unique threat to he teaching of science.

Of course, ID advocates don't see it that way. For example, I was perusing my referral logs a couple of days ago (as I am wont to do from time to time) when I came across a several referrals from a pro-intelligent design blog Telic Thoughts. Curious (as I am whenever I see multiple hits coming from the same site), I investigated and found myself mentioned in the comments of this post. Oddly enough, it was a post about threats to science, specifically animal rights activists and their opposition to any use of animals in research, their threatening and vandalism of research labs, and their intimidation of those whom they perceive as being involved in animal research, something that Brian O'Connor documents on a routine basis at his blog Animal Crackers. As such, I can't help but agree that these extremists are a threat to scientific research. No doubt MikeGene thought that he was defending science and trying to align ID on the side of science when he concluded:

PETA, which is only one of many animal rights groups trying to put an end to research that involves animals, has an annual budget of 16 million dollars. Compare this to the ca. 1 million dollar budget the Discovery Institute devotes for its ID-related activities.

Oops. Sorry. And you were doing so well up until this. (OK, well, maybe not, given that you mentioned that this was the point of your article relatively early on.) I'd argue that ID is more of a threat to science for the simple reason that it is more insidious. Animal rights extremists are pretty obvious and blunt in their tactics. People don't like being intimidated and recognize these groups for the ideologues they are. Also, the less radical and more reasonable among them have a valid point: that we should treat animals with as little cruelty as possible. The more radical among them are so loony (advocating, for instance, that animals should never be used for research, meat, or clothing and that they should have rights equal to that of humans) that they are unlikely to garner wide support; indeed, sometimes even "mainstream groups" like PETA end up resorting to a less violent variety of the sorts of intimidation and harassment that more radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front take to violent extremes. In contrast, when intelligent design advocates push the teaching of their brand of creationism in public schools in science classes, they are guaranteeing that entire generations of American high school students have an erroneous view of what science is and how it is done. They don't see it this way, but it is no coincidence that they want to teach their pseudoscience to youth. What students learn in high school in terms of attitudes towards science and what constitutes good science is likely to stick with them through adulthood and is difficult for even a university education to erase. ID advocates know this, which is why they want to push their pseudoscience on the young. It's all well and good that they argue against animal rights extremists shutting down scientific research. It's hard for a scientist to disagree with that. But it's a red herring then to use that criticism of animal rights activists to argue that ID is not a threat to science. It is.

Finally, before wrapping up. I do have to admit that the comment about me that drew my attention to this article in the first place hurt a little:

I think I have resoundingly proved my point, noting that you can certainly describe PZ Meyers as one of the most ‘active’ ID critics (many posts on his blog are dedicated to it) and there it is, the incident you’ve described being criticised on his blog. I think there is sufficient evidence to state, given myself, Orac and PZ Meyers (representing a scale as well, with Orac being the least prominent ID critic, I’d be in between as I post several places on ID and PZ Meyers being a mainstream prominent one) all talking about different issues.

"Least prominent ID critic"? Ouch. True, I don't dedicate nearly as big a proportion of my blog to taking on ID creationists as PZ does, nor is my blog anywhere near as widely read as his, but can anyone argue that it's not a major theme of my blog? "Least prominent"? Oh, well, I guess that means I'll just have to try harder.

In the meantime, while I'm coming up with ways to try harder, it is useful to contemplate whether the Scopes Trial was temporary victory or whether it was even a victory at all:

But for some historians Scopes was no victory for Darwinism. The prosecutor, populist politician William Jennings Bryan, was seen as speaking for the "common people". Those people, repelled by an alien, arrogant, scientific world that seemed opposed to them and their values, developed a separate society increasingly bound to strict religious laws. Before the trial, evolution had not been an important issue for these people. Now it was. For many Americans, being in favour of evolution is still equated with being against God.

Sadly, today, much the same rhetoric and attitudes abound. ID advocates portray evolution as atheistic or "godless" even though there is no inherent conflict between belief in God and accepting the science behind evolution, equating its critics with godlessness and the arrogance of the "elite" looking down upon the faithful. Even worse, in the court of public opinion, they appear to be winning.