Intelligent Design

When researching our two court cases for our Law and Society project, I became more interested in the creationism vs. evolution debate. Through our research, I came across the idea of intelligent design, a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of some higher power as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins.” Intrigued by this concept, I decided to do some digging into what schools still teach concepts of creationism in the US. To my surprise, there are still plenty of public, charter, and private schools that receive public funding to teach creationism. (You can check out the map here: https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-map-showing-which-u-s-public-schools-teach-creationi-1515717148). The Epperson v. Arkansas and Edwards v. Aguillard cases both showed me the importance of the way people interpret the 1st Amendment. It all comes down to how you interpret the Establishment clause. If you believe it mandates a separation of church and state, then the science curriculum should not be based on religious considerations. If you don’t think that the accommodation of religious doctrine abides by the establishment clause, then intelligent design is a valid method of teaching science.