Gordy Slack’s unwieldily named The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA is an account of the people, ideas, and events surrounding the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. Occasionally beleaguering with details and descriptions, often jocular, and informative throughout, it provides a thorough look at what went on before, during, and after this groundbreaking trial.
Beyond a simple narrative of the facts of the trial, Slack often focuses on the perceived motivations of the participants as well as the history and backstory of the ideas that clashed during the momentous trial. Also present and quite engaging, to me at least, was the theme throughout of Slack attempting to better understand the views of his father, who wholeheartedly accepted Christianity and creationism years before the trial. While Slack himself accepted the evolutionary account, he attempted to come to terms with the views of his father, which at times expanded into a comparison between materialistic and non-materialistic worldviews. My own father being a creationist, I can appreciate this line of consideration, and the heartfelt effort he put into its resolution. In the end, this was in no way a major focus of the book, but he ended with the observation: “My father is a theist. I am a materialist. It is painful to acknowledge that we live in different worlds.” This is the same battle that America and, to a lesser, or at least quite different, extent the rest of the world is still faced with. Is the meaning and origins of life within the purview of science? Or does religion have the right to comment on such topics not merely in the pulpit, but also in the classroom?
I myself, as well as, thankfully, Judge Jones, feel that intelligent design (and its forebear creationism) is not a scientific topic, and is not one that should be presented to young minds within the context of a biology classroom. Perhaps it is worth some consideration in classes regarding culture or religion, but it is in no way a scientific discipline. Beyond that, it is a topic that foments a lack of curiosity and scientific progress. As such, its advance into the teachings of science among less informed and less developed minds needs to be halted, and guarded against with a keen eye.
As I did not follow the proceedings of the Dover trial closely when they were occurring, I found this book an eminently readable review of them, with all the necessary subtexts and details an informed reader should need to appreciate what occurred and its import. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the evolution/creationism debate and the related culture war currently underway of which it is a symptom.
