John Rapley
LAST MONTH, United States President George W. Bush stoked a brewing controversy when he lent his support to calls for the teaching of intelligent design in American schools.
The debate over intelligent design, which is growing ever more intense, has deep roots in the United States. At its heart is an unresolved struggle over modernity and its meaning that goes back to the 19th century. Then, when scientific developments - and especially Darwin's theory of evolution - challenged religious conceptions of the world and man's place in it, Christianity divided into two principal currents.
Meanwhile, dovetailing with what was going on in science were developments in linguistics, and especially the advent of what was called the Higher Criticism. The Higher Criticism used modern linguistic techniques to analyse Biblical scriptures in order to determine their authorship, with the intent of separating 'authentic' from apocryphal passages.
After a period of initial scepticism, the mainstream churches gradually came around to innovations like Darwinian evolution and the Higher Criticism. But within American Christianity, a revolt started brewing. By the late nineteenth century, it gave rise to a revival, which came to be known as fundamentalism.
As its name implied, fundamentalism called for a return to the purported fundamentals of Christian faith. Avowedly Protestant, it called for a restoration of the primacy of the Bible. It rejected the Higher Criticism, and declared the Bible to be the literal word of God.
Fundamentalism had therefore to part company with Darwinism. This gave fundamentalism an anti-scientific, anti-modern hue.
SCIENTIFIC AURA
Nevertheless, some in the fold tried to lend their beliefs a scientific aura. Creationism - the theory that fossil evidence would vindicate the biblical creation story - was one such instance. But the movement, which peaked in the 1980s failed to gain intellectual respectability and had little impact on policy.
Now, a new and more sophisticated avatar has come along. This is intelligent design. The proponents of intelligent design accept the basic premise of Darwinism, which is that the world and its occupants were not created in the space of a week as recorded in the Bible. Instead, creation evolved over billions of years.
However, they argue that Darwinism's thesis that random mutations lay at the heart of evolution is belied by the fossil record. They suggest that the complexity of life points to the hand of an intelligent creator at each stage of the process.
In the United States, fundamentalism has been having a good run of late.
From its apparent nadir in the 1960s, it has been politically ascendant and can now claim as one of its own the President himself, not to mention sympathisers in all levels of government. So it is perhaps not surprising that intelligent design is enjoying far more success in getting on to the policy agenda than its creationist predecessor ever did.
Support from an unlikely source came recently when a prominent Vatican cardinal - known to be close to the new pope - issued a statement that appeared to put distance between the Roman Catholic Church and Darwinism. This came as something of a surprise, since the Catholic Church had long ago appeared to make its peace with evolution.
Nevertheless, the Vatican's apparent intervention in the debate may be less significant than it appears. It would appear that while the Church still accepts evolution, it is troubled by the meanings which have been given to the word "random." After all, there are some Darwinians - prominent among them is Oxford's Richard Dawkins - who insist that evolution makes atheism necessary with as much evangelical fervour as the fundamentalists he so decries. The Catholic position seems to be to want to preserve a middle ground.
WEAK THEORY
Will intelligent design now play that role? That is what its proponents suggest. The problem is that by scientific standards, intelligent design is a weak theory. Moreover, virtually all its proponents happen to be conservative Christians. This raises worries in the scientific community that science is being tailored to fit faith, something scientists see as anathema to progress.
So, despite apparent support from the 'outside', this fight is likely to remain a purely American battle. But the political environment is more propitious for the supporters of intelligent design than it has been in a very long time.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
