Public Education, Religious Establishment, and the Challenge of Intelligent Design

In 1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Louisiana statute (the Balanced-Treatment Act) that required the state’s public schools to teach Creationism if evolution was taught and to teach evolution if Creationism was taught.’ That decision was the culmination of a series of court battles and cultural conflicts that can be traced back to the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.² Although many thought, and continue to think, that Edwards ended the debate over the teaching of origins in public schools, a new movement, made up of largely well-educated and well-credentialed scholars, has given it new life.

The main thrust of this new movement, known as Intelligent Design (ID),’ is that’ intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory-making, has more explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes irreducible, complexity of some physical systems, including biological entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind forces of unguided and everlasting matter.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an answer to the following question: Given the Supreme Court’s holding inEdwards, current Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and the nature of ID, would ID pass constitutional muster if it were permitted or required by a government entity to be part of a public school’s curriculum? In order to answer that question, we must first present the case for ID.