Just in time for Monday’s thought-crime trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, H. Wayne House has an extensive review here of cases in the U.S. dealing with Darwinism and the public schools: “Darwinism and the Law: Can Non-Naturalistic Scientific Theories Survive Constitutional Challenge?” It’s an excellent resource for anyone covering the trial, though I could quibble with a few elements. For instance, if House means to include contemporary design arguments in biology, it would be more precise to say “Non-Materialist Scientific Theories.”

The reason? When one infers design from the little cellular motor called the bacterial flagellum, or from the wealth of information in even the simplest cell, one can’t tell from these things if the designer was natural or supernatural. One can only tell, and perhaps only in some instances, whether the cause was a material or an intelligent cause. Most Americans think the designer was a supernatural agent named God, but none of them came to that determination by studying cellular motors or genetic information; all those things can tell us is that they were designed.

Darwinists can argue with the design inference in biology, but the ACLU and others should spare us the foggy and paranoid argument that we’re covertly trying to establish a theocracy. The evidence in biology uncovered in the last 50 years merely points to design (and not to, say, the Anglican Church), much as design inferences in forensic science, intellectual property protection, and data falsification point merely to design.

If anyone is trying to establish a religion, it’s the ACLU. The religion? The dogma of philosophical materialism.