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IN A time of despair over social and political decay in the US, Gordy Slack鈥檚 The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything is a truly uplifting tale. It is the story of how community activists, concerned parents and passionately driven lawyers came together in Dover, Pennsylvania, to defend the constitution and keep religion out of science classrooms. It all happened less than two years ago, so this is history in the making. The American spirit is as alive and feisty as ever.

At stake in the Dover battle was whether intelligent design (ID) could be taught in public schools as an alternative to evolution. If you thought this was tedious, academic or even trivial, think again. Slack helps us realise there was an element of 鈥淲hat if the South had won?鈥� or 鈥淲hat if the Nazis had won?鈥� to the conflict. To contemplate 鈥淲hat if the intelligent designers had won?鈥� is to glimpse the entire nation headed in an unsettling direction. The Dover trial had the potential to be as powerful in cultural dynamics and precedent setting as a reversal of Roe vs Wade.

鈥淭here was a 鈥榳hat if the Nazis had won?鈥� element to the trial鈥�

The book opens with Slack sitting down for a fateful lunch with Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson, 鈥渢he George Washington of intelligent design鈥�, seven years before the trial. They square off on the two fundamental views of the world 鈥� theistic versus materialistic 鈥� which define the core of the ID-vs-evolution conflict. Johnson advocates a world of meaning and purpose, and casts evolution as its antithesis. Slack concedes personally 鈥渁n inclination, a proclivity, a prejuduce鈥� towards a world devoid of intention.

Slack details with a light yet concise touch the defining moments of the trial, pinpointing the two focal points of the case: the broad question of whether ID is science, and the specific question of whether the Dover school board violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment (separating church and state) when it insisted that a four-paragraph statement about ID be read in ninth-grade science classes.

In case you haven鈥檛 heard, the intelligent designers lost in a big, big way. By the end of the trial, the ID-supporting board members had been shown to be boldly dishonest (detailed in a chapter with the wonderful title, 鈥淟iars for Christ鈥�), their best scientist (Michael Behe) was swallowed up by his own fog of detail, and the ID movement at large was shown to be downright deceitful. (The ID textbook Of Pandas and People, purchased by a board member for the school鈥檚 library, was shown to be formerly a creationism textbook for which the term 鈥渃reationism鈥� had simply been searched and replaced with the term 鈥渋ntelligent design鈥�.)

In the end, Slack reports what the world of evolutionary biology already knew: this conflict wasn鈥檛 about science. It was about the politics and communication dynamics that swirl around science, and the people willing to take on the scientific establishment in pursuit of a religious agenda. It was about the philosophical divide between camps who acknowledge different ways of understanding the world. With skilful simplicity, Slack draws the distinction between methodological materialism (MM) and philosophical materialism (PM). The former is an absolute necessity of science 鈥� to exclude the possibility of supernatural forces. The latter is merely an optional add-on, making it possible for scientists to also be religious.

Slack鈥檚 book is a solid piece of work which provides both reporting and contextualisation of the events at Dover. It is also written by a man with a very human heart, as is evident in the finest, albeit brief, passage of the book. Though clearly not the theist his father, a creationist, is, Slack concedes a moment of his own spiritual vulnerability when he admits having prayed as if he believed in God when his son lay in a hospital bed. That one brief nod to the powers that be makes clear that the author is not yet willing to totally commit himself to either end of the MM-PM spectrum. And that鈥檚 what makes his writing human and so worthy of a read.