Thoughts in a Haystack

Jerry Coyne has an intersting post about a professor at Ball State University who is obviously pushing Intelligent Design Creationism in the guise of a couple of putative science courses.

The reading lists pretty much tell the tale, including works By Discovery [sic] Institute stalwarts such as Michael Behe, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzelez and Stephen Meyer; out-and-out creationists, such as Hugh Ross, Lee Strobel (!) and even C. S. Lewis (!!); and well known theistic evolutionists, such as Guy Consolmagno, Owen Gingerich and Francis Collins. On the other hand, there is no sign of counter views from people like Dawkins, Stenger, or Krauss.

Intellectually, it sounds bad. The students seem to like the professor personally and think the class is easy which will, of course, make up for a lot in student's eyes.

But here's the nit: Coyne says:

... Hedin's course, and the University's defense of it, violate the separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ("freedom of religion") and which has been so interpreted by the courts.

Well, not exactly. The leading case in this regard is Edwards v. Aguillard, which specifically dealt with a law concerning only primary and secondary education. Those classes are, for the most part, mandatory and, as a result, Justice Brennan noted in his decision that the Court is "particularly vigilant in monitoring compliance with the Establishment Clause in elementary and secondary schools." That rational is much weaker when it comes to university courses, particularly electives. Just so, public universities not infrequently have departments and even schools of religious studies and no one expects all their courses to be religiously neutral or even nonsectarian.

In point of fact, this course is much closer to a violation of "truth in advertising" laws than it is a constitutional violation. I suspect that a much more effective technique to end it is for students who were looking for real science education to demand their money back for having been lied to as to its scientific content than to bring an action under the Constitution.