Nathan Lents and Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass: Science bridges divides for a better world
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Fifteen years ago Sunday, U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones delivered his landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling: Intelligent design is not scientific, is religious in nature and therefore should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolutionary theory in public schools. This was a big victory for science education in the United States. But that momentous trial in Dover, Pa., is worth celebrating for another reason.
In these divided times, it is easy to despair as the culture wars cloud nearly every public policy debate. The Dover trial, however, reminds us that science can cut through these differences. While the origins debate is often framed as a zero-sum game with religious creationism on one side and evolutionary science on the other, the space for common ground is large and growing.
In Dover, two of the star witnesses for the plaintiffs were Kenneth Miller and Barbara Forrest. A scientist and a philosopher, a Catholic and a non-believer, these two accomplished academics with vastly different views on life’s biggest questions saw past those differences to repel attacks on the proper teaching of science. Although their unique partnership was overshadowed by the intense conflict surrounding the trial, the seeds for common ground were planted.
The next year, Francis Collins published “The Language of God,” in which he explained how his Christian faith does not force him into conflict with science, including evolutionary science. Collins later became the director of the National Institutes of Health and remains a strong advocate for science. Fittingly, he won this year’s Templeton Prize for his work in modeling how faith and science can be reconciled.
Like Forrest and Miller, we, too, are an unlikely pair. You won’t often see an evangelical Christian and a gay secular humanist teaming up, but we have crisscrossed the country together, speaking with audiences from the “liberal elites” at Columbia University to the “biblically conservative” at Concordia University. We have found solidarity in modeling what we believe is a better way forward for a culture at war with itself. We’ve also found friendship.
The controversies about origins will remain. Last year we took up the baton from Forrest and Miller and refuted the latest claims of intelligent design in the pages of Science, a move that put Joshua at risk of alienation from his spiritual community. Soon after, Nathan endorsed Joshua’s book, explaining the possibility of a genealogical Adam and Eve, putting him at risk among his atheist colleagues.
We reached outside our echo chambers and followed the example of the non-religious philosopher, the Catholic scientist, and the Republican federal judge who, 15 years ago, worked together to protect science from political encroachment.
The work of science is secular, but that doesn’t make it atheist. Science can be spiritual, but that doesn’t make it religious. Science serves no sect, race or political party. It brings light to our world, literally, and can comfort the suffering, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give greater purpose to our lives. Many recognize these as either religious or secular values, but these are our common values.
In these fraught times, political meddling in science continues to threaten the common good and needlessly put lives at risk. The anniversary of Kitzmiller reminds us that, while science is too often a front in the culture wars, when we look past our differences, we see our common goal: the betterment of a world that we have no choice but to share.
Nathan Lents is a biology professor at John Jay College, City University of New York. Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass is an associate professor of pathology and immunology in the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.