Evolution, Science, and Ideology: Why the Establishment Clause Requires Neutrality in Science Classes
Public education is often considered to be one of the most benign aspects of state power. Many people question how such a benevolent institution could be labeled as coercive when it rarely even engages in corporal punishment. It is the dominance of this assumption in society that allows compulsory public education to conceal its considerable coercive power. The source of this power is the inherent capacity of public education to shape how students view the world. Both the public education system and the elites who influence it use this power to serve their own ideological ends. One of the best examples of this ideological coercion is the choice of public schools to teach evolutionary theory as the exclusive explanation for the origin of life. Both public schools and federal courts justify the failure to teach alternatives with the claim that evolutionism is the only scientific explanation for the origin of life. In reality, alternatives to evolutionary theory are only unscientific to the extent that one relies on a secular definition of the scientific method. Relying on a slanted definition of science will inevitably produce a rigged game when one determines whether a theory is scientific.