Editorial Hogwash at The New York Times

Second Quarter 2002

Editor's Watch

by James W. Skillen

0n the purely secular holiday of St. Patrick's Day (3/17/02), editors of The New York Times made an astonishing statement in an editorial denouncing a movement in Ohio that is pushing for the inclusion of the "intelligent design" hypothesis in public school biology courses. Teachers should certainly encourage students to open their minds to "unresolved questions" about the universe, say the editors. "But no theory that answers those questions by invoking the supernatural deserves a place in a public school science curriculum."

Now, catch your breath, and explore with me the profundity of this judgment. It could be that the editors, who are themselves experts in science, philosophy, and theology, intend to make the point that the biotic laws of the universe should be explored in their own right, and it is therefore inappropriate for biology teachers to put political, economic, or theological judgments in place of biological judgments. This is an important point. Imagine the confusion that student's would suffer if teachers explained that DNA has the structure it does because of the way capitalism developed from the time of Adam Smith.

Or perhaps the editors intended by their statement to urge teachers to avoid arguments that appeal to authority instead of to evidence. Imagine the poverty of a biology class in which a teacher explains that the reason we know heart attacks are caused by cholesterol buildup is because the Surgeon General, or Charles Darwin, or Jesus, says so.

Sadly, however, the editors are not making either of these points. To the contrary, their editorial is built precisely on these two errors: extra-scientific dogma and argument from authority. Look first at their dogmatism.

The editorial insists that science and religion should be distinguished not merely as disciplines of study but as belonging to two different worlds. And the aim of the distinction is to pronounce that this world has nothing to do with a supernatural world. If we have any doubts about this, we should trust the editorialists who, apparently, have already checked out the heavens and every possible extra terrestrial hiding place and discovered that there is no intelligent designer related to biology or, for that matter, to the entire public school curriculum. Public schools belong to this world, and the teachers and students should therefore begin with the Times-approved faith that the supernatural has nothing to do with the origin of biotic life.

This, I hope you can see, is not an argument to distinguish biology from psychology, economics, and other disciplines but is, quite directly, the dogmatic confession of a radical secular theology.

Now to the argument from authority. How do the editors know that the intelligent design hypothesis has no place in a public school biology class? They know it because advocates of intelligent design "do not publish in the standard scientific literature and their work is not recognized by the leading scientific organizations." This, you may remember, is precisely the kind of argument that medieval popes used against Galileo. It has no scientific validity whatever.

For the quality of its science, philosophy, and theology, therefore, the editorial deserves an F. In addition, it represents reprehensible journalism, exhibiting blatantly uncritical, unselfconscious dogmatism. Nevertheless, the editorial does provide sufficient evidence to allow for one strong scientific hypothesis: there is apparently no intelligent designer behind The New York Times' editorial page.