Judge Jones said the plaintiffs were just applying the label, “intelligent design� to the same old Christian fundamentalist view of creation.

Dover, Pennsylvania is not a bunch of fundamentalist baby boomers. They dumped the dogma of Creationism for reasons not addressed by Judge Jones. Scientism is just like any other ism. The operating principle is that public education in America is a brainwashing process and the people of Dover simply wanted the brains of their kids washed with a Christian myth as well as a scientific myth.

The question of whether children should be indoctrinated rather than educated is of greater concern and it never came up. In a democracy, education is supposed to prepare people to think for themselves. To do this requires that they recognize the interim quality of hypotheses. Nothing can be known. All knowledge is hypothetical.

The Dover school board wanted to teach the children of Dover the biblical myth of creation as a plausible history for human existence. The progressives’ response was as reactionary as the fundamentalists. They said the Doverians had no commitment to ensure that children would get this distinction of plausibility. The liberals are as limited by their beliefs about science as the Doverians are in their beliefs about Genesis. Both groups care how their children are being indoctrinated, and both failed to ask the prior question: indoctrination vs. education.

Belief in scientific proof is as superstitious as belief in Genesis. There’s a difference between believing in scientific proofs and practical application of scientific principles. Scientific proofs lead us to knowledge of the universe but not to knowledge of ourselves, why we are, and what we are. The Doverians missed the point, too. Rather than questioning the value of indoctrinating children in any belief system, they just wanted the kids indoctrinated in a fundamentalist Christian belief system.

Embarrassed by unflattering characterizations making them out to be medieval reactionaries, the Doverians elected eight new school board members, four Republicans and four Democrats, each of whom stated that they oppose the teaching of anything but scientific beliefs in public schools. They hid.

The issue that moved the discredited Doverians to challenge scientism was sound, but it was lost in the flurry of national media as anchormen and women outdid each other in their attempts to appear politically correct. What is at stake about this is not whether we should be teaching evolution and/or biblical myths, but rather how we should be revealing all of the inventions of mankind, and the effect they've had on civilization.

What is at stake here is whether children and this nation can best succeed by indoctrinating young people with beliefs rather than educating them about the variety of ideas and cultures so they can look before they leap into the adventure of life.

In leaving Dover behind, we have left unexamined the importance of questioning conclusions no matter whose they are. Science is a powerful tool of rationality, but neither science nor rationality is a spiritual solution nor provides a philosophical raison d’etre.

Michael Winn
http://thedelmarnews.blogspot.com