"The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design"
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A scientist doesn’t lob a line like this to win a philosophical parlor game; it’s a warning flare about how culture wars mutate. Kenneth R. Miller’s sentence is built like a simple reveal: the “new strategy” isn’t about new evidence, it’s about new packaging. The punch is in the euphemism. If you can’t sell “intelligent design” on the merits (or withstand legal scrutiny), you sell its insinuations under a neutral-sounding label: “teach the controversy,” “critical analysis,” “strengths and weaknesses.” Miller is naming the maneuver: keep the conclusion, change the branding.
The intent is surgical. By stressing “without calling it,” he frames the effort as essentially political and rhetorical, not scientific. It’s an accusation of bad faith that doesn’t need to shout; the sentence itself implies a paper trail of reworded curricula, softened talking points, and strategic ambiguity aimed at school boards rather than peer review.
The subtext lands because Miller writes from inside the institution that the strategy targets: science education. Coming from a working biologist (and a prominent defender of evolution in public debates), it reads less like ideology than like occupational hazard. It also echoes the post-Kitzmiller landscape, when U.S. courts had already treated intelligent design as re-labeled creationism. So the line functions as cultural diagnosis: when an idea can’t pass the gatekeepers of method and evidence, it tries to pass the gatekeepers of language.
The intent is surgical. By stressing “without calling it,” he frames the effort as essentially political and rhetorical, not scientific. It’s an accusation of bad faith that doesn’t need to shout; the sentence itself implies a paper trail of reworded curricula, softened talking points, and strategic ambiguity aimed at school boards rather than peer review.
The subtext lands because Miller writes from inside the institution that the strategy targets: science education. Coming from a working biologist (and a prominent defender of evolution in public debates), it reads less like ideology than like occupational hazard. It also echoes the post-Kitzmiller landscape, when U.S. courts had already treated intelligent design as re-labeled creationism. So the line functions as cultural diagnosis: when an idea can’t pass the gatekeepers of method and evidence, it tries to pass the gatekeepers of language.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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