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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Of Spills and Beans

By John Pieret

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My, my! This is interesting.

Solving Light Books announced today that Don McLeroy, controversial Chair of the Texas State Board of Education, has recommended "Sowing Atheism" (ISBN: 978-0-9705438-5-1) by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., to other board members and to the general public. McLeroy's timely recommendation could influence the board's final decision on the science curriculum scheduled for March 27. The Texas decision will determine what is printed in science textbooks nationwide.

You can download Sowing Atheism here. As the blurb at the download site says:

Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., who holds a general science degree from West Point, wrote SOWING ATHEISM in response to the book published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January of this year, Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The NAS sent its book to educators, school boards, and science teachers throughout the United States, falsely affirming that molecules-to-man evolution is a "fact" when in reality it does not even meet the minimum conditions for a valid theory.

Science, Evolution, and Creationism was the NAS's attempt to address the relationship between science and religion that has been criticized by some atheists for being too conciliatory to the latter. Be that as it may, if this "report" (more of a marketing ploy, I suspect) is true, it says much about the nature of McLeroy's position on the Texas science standards and his claim that he isn't seeking to have religion taught in the state's public schools. If he has recommended the book, it may well bear on any court challenge later on. Some quotes from Johnson's book:

[T]he NAS hierarchy, in order to bolster and "prove" its atheism, has constructed a closed, sacrosanct, counterfeit philosophy of science which completely eliminates the valid God hypothesis, along with any possibility of bringing it up again. (p. 12)
Science, Evolution, and Creationism is anything but an appeal to open-minded readers to use their powers of discernment to carefully consider the evidence. It is a cleverly disguised all-out, direct attack on the authority of the Word of God, and on all other challenges to their philosophical and religious dogma of evo-atheism (evolutionist atheism). (p. 13)

It continues, as far as a very quick skim reveals, in the same vein for another hundred pages or more. Included are the usual creationist talking points: the elitism of scientists, argumentums ad populum, and presuppositionalism. There is also a misunderstanding of what "separation of church and state" means, which may go a long way towards explaining McLeroy's claim not to be trying to have religion taught while still asserting that his amendment to the standards opens the door to the possibility that the universe was created by God:

Creationists do not want to bring religion into the classroom. With all the different sects of Christianity, some of them very strange, and all the other Creator-acknowledging religions, that would lead to chaos. Creationists simply want the God hypothesis brought back into the science classroom, and recognized for what it is?a scientifically valid hypothesis.

But, as Johnson himself admits through his presuppositionism, it is only "a scientifically valid hypothesis" if you assume a creator God in the first place, in particular because of "the Word of God":

Evidence is not the problem: it is the interpretation that causes the controversy. Creationism and evolution both interpret the structure and events of nature, representing opposite hypotheses with different assumptions. The creation hypothesis, or the God hypothesis, looks at the apparent design in nature, and says that this points to a Creator. The evolutionary hypothesis also sees the apparent design in nature, but says that this is illusory, and that all life can be explained chemically and materialistically (methodological materialism) without reference to a Creator.

As Justice Black pointed out over 60 years ago, the government cannot pass laws "which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another." Johnson implicitly acknowledges that there are religions that do not hold a belief in a creator God while, by definition, a belief in a creator God must be a religious belief. For government to endorse a belief in a creator God is necessarily to aid one group of religions over others and over disbelief. Science, by proceeding by methodological naturalism, does not do that. By eschewing supernatural explanations within its discipline, science leaves open the possibility that it will not detect supernatural causes.

Thus, the Establishment Clause is not violated by science, since Johnson and his ilk can still cling to their presuppositionalism and teach it where it belongs, along with all other religious beliefs, in their churches and homes.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).