The Science Wars Go Public

In the 1990s, the Science Wars moved from the academic world into the public arena, further widening the gulf between critics of science, who argued that science was a socially empowered belief system or ideology, and defenders of a more traditional view of scientific knowledge. The critics of science were alienated by scientists’ insistence on promoting scientific knowledge as archaeological-ontological rather than interpretational-epistemological. They became actively hostile to the practice of science as well as to the putative knowledge that scientists produced, denouncing both as ideological, patriarchal, sexist, racist, and pretenders to truth. The religious right responded with its own critique of science by arguing that creation science was just as legitimately science as evolutionary theory, but successive court decisions rejected this interpretation. The implications for how we are to understand the nature of scientific knowledge remain profound for formulating effective science-based public policies.

Understanding creation science and intelligent design

In American Creationism, Creation Science, and Intelligent Design in the Evangelical Market, Benjamin Huskinson presents a close examination of the two main American sociopolitical movements launched in opposition to evolution during the second half of the twentieth century: creation science and intelligent design. Despite a failure of a central argument and a handful of errors, the book is a welcome and valuable interrogation of the stereotypes of American creationism.

Religion, Cultural Politics, and Public Knowledge: An Essay Review of Kathleen C. Oberlin. (2020). Creating the creation Museum: How fundamentalist beliefs come to life. New York: New York University Press. pp. 269. Paper. ISBN 978147905709

Almost all of the discussions surrounding educational policy focus their attention on particular places, especially various kinds of formal schooling. While this focus is of course crucial, it tends to ignore other educational sites where acts of teaching go on and where challenges to accepted understandings are waged. These include libraries and the topic of this essay, museums. Creating the Creation Museum clearly documents why such sites are worthy of our most serious attention. The book is a substantive contribution in a number of ways. It offers important critical insights about the Museum and its overt role in “advancing a long standing movement goal: advancing the cultural authority of creation science.” It also provides us with an expanded set of methodological tools for engaging in such work.

Revisiting the Scopes Trial: Young-Earth Creationism, Creation Science, and the Evangelical Denial of Climate Change

In the century since the Scopes Trial, one of the most influential dogmas to shape American evangelicalism has been that of young-earth creationism. This article explains why, with its arm of “creation science,” young-earth creationism is a significant factor in evangelicals’ widespread denial of anthropogenic climate change. Young-earth creationism has become closely intertwined with doctrines such as the Bible’s divine authority and the Imago Dei, as well as with social issues such as abortion and euthanasia. Addressing this aspect of the environmental crisis among evangelicals will require a re-orientation of biblical authority so as to approach social issues through a hermeneutic that is able to acknowledge the reality and imminent threat of climate change.

Anti-intellectualism and anti-evolutionism: Lessons from Hofstadter

The forces of anti-intellectualism in American life, as described by Richard Hofstadter, have been especially prominent in the battle against the teaching of evolution. Glenn Branch discusses the different aspects of anti-intellectualism that are at the root of objections to evolution and explains how creation science, which had a transparently religious motivation, eventually gave way to intelligent design, which was less explicit in its religious aims. In the face of constitutional challenges, these modes of anti-evolutionism have been largely replaced by discourse that misrepresents evolution as “just a theory” and that misleadingly portrays miseducation about evolution as a matter of intellectual freedom. Branch then suggests how, by understanding the anti-intellectual roots of objections to evolution, science educators might teach evolution more effectively.