I think I agree with both Ed and Doug. But I have a question about the
content of the category of statements in between Doug's dashes -- "claims
about the supernatural, about the existence and nature of God, about God's
desires for humans." Those are the exclusively religious statements, out of
the domain of science (and therefore out of the government's ability to
promote or disapprobate). Of course, this whole fight was started because
many people thought "claims about the origins of human life on this planet"
belonged on that list, but evolution changed that. (Those people can still
climb the ladder -"claims about the origin of the universe" are still, at
this point, out of science's domain.)
But why are "claims about the supernatural" outside the domain of science?
Science's standard commitment to naturalism entails a rejection of the
supernatural, which is certainly a claim about the supernatural. And
science can directly investigate the supernatural. Take the
perhaps-sound-but-everyone-has-trouble-believing-them experiments allegedly
showing prayer has effects on unknowing subjects that are unexplainable by
naturalistic phenomena. (I won't go into the experiments here, but you can
find them in Kent Greenawalt's piece, Establishing Religious Ideas:
Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design, 17 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics &
Pub. PolÂ’y 321, 322 (2003), and his book, Does God Belong in the Public
Schools?)
Science could come back at those experiments and investigate supernatural
phenomena directly, right? It could investigate the efficacy of prayer, run
some double-bind experiments, and conclude something like: Prayer has no
empirically demonstrable, statistically significant, this-world effects.
Such findings, like the findings of evolution, could then be taught as true
by the government.
The realm of the purely religious -- the stuff between Doug's dashes --
seems always shrinking. Surely it won't disappear. (Even if science runs
experiments showing prayer has no this-world effects, for example, the
question of whether it has other-worldly effects would remain.) But I
understand why this frightens a lot of people.
Chris
From: "Douglas Laycock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
<[email protected]>
To: "Law & Religion issues for Law Academics" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Kansas and Intelligent Design: A Twist
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:32:14 -0600
I agree.
Douglas Laycock
University of Texas Law School
727 E. Dean Keeton St.
Austin, TX 78705
512-232-1341 (phone)
512-471-6988 (fax)
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Brayton
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 3:20 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Kansas and Intelligent Design: A Twist
Douglas Laycock wrote:
>Well, yes and no. Ed's examples are all cases where religions make
>claims about the natural world: claims within the domain of science to
>investigate and within the domain of government to respond to. When
>religion makes claims that are more exclusively religious -- claims
>about the supernatural, about the existence and nature of God, about
>God's desires for humans -- then it is true that government cannot say
>those claims are false. I well recognize that the examples between the
>dashes are a first approximation and not an adequate definition.
>
That's a reasonable distinction. But ID is clearly in the first camp and
not the second and therefore to teach that it is false would not be an
EC problem.
Ed Brayton
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