The 2005 decision by Judge John E. Jones in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was celebrated by all red-blooded American liberals as a victory over the forces of darkness. The result was probably inevitable, in view of the reckless expression by some members of the Dover School Board of their desire to put religion into the classroom, and the clumsiness of their prescribed statement in trying to dissimulate that aim. But the conflicts aired in this trial—over the status of evolutionary theory, the arguments for intelligent design, and the nature of science—reveal an intellectually unhealthy situation. The political urge to defend science education against the threats of religious orthodoxy, understandable though it is, has resulted in a counterorthodoxy, supported by bad arguments, and a tendency to overstate the legitimate scientific claims of evolutionary theory. Skeptics about the theory are seen as so dangerous, and so disreputably motivated, that they must be denied any shred of legitimate interest. Most importantly, the campaign of the scientific establishment to rule out intelligent design as beyond discussion because it is not science results in the avoidance of significant questions about the relation between evolutionary theory and religious belief, questions that must be faced in order to understand the theory and evaluate the scientific evidence for it.
(Thomas Nagel, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 [spring 2008]: 187-205, at 187-8 [footnote omitted])
Note from KBJ: I don't always agree with Thomas Nagel, but I always enjoy reading him and, more importantly, I always learn from him. He is one of the few intellectually honest progressives in the academy. A great many philosophers, I am sad to say, are intellectually dishonest. They exaggerate; they distort other people's views; they neglect weaknesses in their own arguments; they make ad hominem attacks on their opponents; and they engage in persuasive definition and other forms of manipulative rhetoric. If you wonder why I read philosophy that was written before 1970, now you know why. Philosophy became politicized and partisan in about 1970. The irony is that many philosophers think philosophy became "relevant" in 1970. These philosophers should reflect on Keith's Law: Authoritativeness is inversely proportional to partisanship. As philosophers have become partisan, they have lost whatever authority they once had.
