The suggested separation between church and state in contemporary America is not what the framers of our constitution and our country had in mind as they wrote the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” After deconstructing the words, the most insignificant adjective “an,” tells us that the framers wanted to restrain Congress from installing any one religion as the official religion of the state. Those immortal words say nothing about religion informing congress or society on policy, education, or progress. I maintain that the first amendment’s establishment clause regarding religion was to protect citizens’ free exercise of religion from state interests and not to protect state interests from religion. So while the idea of separation between church and state is aged, it is also radically inaccurate and a misinterpretation of the first amendment. In fact the assumed existence and enactment of such a radical ideal has caused a violation of the ninth amendment as well which states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” I ascertain that restriction in education against material because of its source, intelligent design’s (ID) link to creationism in this case, is a violation of the first amendment’s free speech clause and further misinterpretation of the first amendment to exclude material because of its arguably religious source is a violation of the ninth amendment. For these reasons in this document I am going to assess popular evolutionary theory versus the ID argument to expose both as religious worldviews that should be taught not in science class but in philosophy class at the primary level.
First comparing the two theories, I’ll first identify what the theories are. Darwinian evolution is the theory that life after appearance and over time endured mutation and adaptation through natural selection to eventually yield modern man from the same source, a single cell. ID is the theory that life exists in its present forms as the product of a purposeful design. Both theories use natural science to support their ideological conclusions such as embryology, genetics, and biochemistry. A key to these theories being comparable is that they both suggest that a preexisting being sparked life on Earth. Within evolution this point is highly debated and denied by many, however the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, expressed in the Origin of Species his belief that the first cell received its spark of life “by the Creator.” (Darwin 1900, 316) This will soon be important as a reason why evolution should not be taught in public education at all if you believe that the first amendment means a separation between church and state as evolution at its roots tells us that God created life on earth. ID at its roots also asserts that an entity also lit the initial sparks of life...
