Dover's
Dominos:
Why Intelligent Design Creationism Will Lose
by Mano Singham
The
Scottish poet Robert Burns in his poem To a Mouse cautioned
those who place too much faith in detailed plans for the future.
He
said:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an'
Men,
Gang aft agley.
When historians of the future write
about the demise of Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC), they
will likely
point to the Dover,
PA court decision as when the carefully thought-out plans
and strategy of the IDC movement ganged agley in a big way.
If you
recall, US District Judge John E. Jones III ruled on
December 20, 2005 (Kitzmiller v. Dover) that the then
Dover
school board
had acted unconstitutionally in its attempts to undermine
the credibility of evolutionary theory in its biology class
and
in its attempt to promote IDC as a viable alternative.
(See here
for a previous posting giving the background to this topic.)
That
case raised many fascinating issues and the final ruling clarified
and put in perspective many of the issues
clouding
the role of intelligent design, science, religion, schools,
and the US constitution. This series of posts that begins
today will
analyze that decision and the ripples it has caused throughout
the country. I had been meaning to analyze the decision
and its broader implications in depth for some time but
kept
getting deferred by other issues.
I should emphasize that
what I think will disappear is the pretense that IDC is a scientific
theory, to be treated
on
a par with
natural selection. The underlying idea behind IDC (that
god intervenes somehow in the world) will remain because
that
is an important
component of any god-based religious system and has
been around for a long time.
From time immemorial, people have invoked god to explain
the things that seemed inexplicable. The advancement
of science has merely resulted in the items in the
list of
inexplicable
things
changing with time, while the fundamental idea behind
it has
not changed. One can understand the seemingly unshakeable
appeal of this idea for most religious believers. What
would be the
point of believing in a god who either could not or
did not intervene in the workings of the world? The
fact
that such
interventions
cannot be demonstrated conclusively will not dissuade
devout religious believers from their beliefs.
The formulation of what is now called intelligent design
goes at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas in the
13th century. Theologian John Haught's testimony (Kitzmiller,
p. 24) described
Aquinas'
views thusly:
Wherever complex design exists,
there must be a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature
must
have had an
intelligent designer.
Aquinas was explicit that this intelligent designer "everyone
understands to be God."
Christian theologian
and apologist William Paley elaborated on this
in 1802 in his book Natural Theology when he
illustrated
the inference of design by god by the
example of finding
a watch
in a field:
[W]hen we come to inspect the watch,
we perceive…that its several parts are framed and put together
for
a purpose…the
inference we think is inevitable, that the watch
must have had a maker.
Paley continues that since
nature is far more complex than watches, "The
marks of design are too strong to be got over.
Design must have had a designer. That designer
must have been
a person. That person
is GOD."
IDC theorist William Dembski's 2003 formulation
of intelligent design follows this trend, with
the example
of the watch
being updated to Mount Rushmore.
[W]hat about
[Mount Rushmore] would provide convincing circumstantial
evidence that it
was due to a
designing intelligence and
not merely to wind and erosion? Designed
objects like Mount Rushmore
exhibit characteristic features or patterns
that point to an intelligence. Such features
or patterns
constitute
signs
of
intelligence (emphasis in original).
This
whole line of reasoning was based on the premise that the existence
of seemingly
designed
objects
or smart animals
and
people necessarily required an even smarter
designer. That kind of regressive argument
inevitably led
you to believe
in something
like a god.
Darwin's theory was a direct challenge
to this idea because it showed us how it
could
be possible
that
life can bootstrap
itself
from primitive forms to increasingly complex
and sophisticated ones. It reveals how
you can have
the appearance of
design without any need for an actual designer.
Thus the most
intuitive argument
for the existence of a higher being has
been removed.
People like Daniel Dennett,
author of Darwin's
Dangerous Idea, and Richard
Dawkins have
relentlessly driven
home the point
that evolutionary theory has made belief
in a god fundamentally unnecessary.
As Dawkins says in his book The
Blind Watchmaker (p.
6):
An atheist before Darwin could
have said, following Hume: "I
have no explanation for complex biological
design. All I know is that God isn't
a good explanation, so we must wait and
hope
that somebody comes up with a better
one." I
can't help feeling that such a position,
though logically
sound, would have
left one feeling pretty unsatisfied,
and that although atheism might have
been logically
tenable before Darwin,
Darwin made
it possible to be an intellectually
fulfilled atheist.
I have written
before of the
story of the scientist-mathematician
Laplace and
his
book called the System of the
World. Napoleon is said to have noted
that god did not
appear in it, to
which Laplace is supposed to have replied
that "I have no need
for that hypothesis." Given the
state of science at that time, Laplace
might have felt fully justified
in saying so about
the inanimate physical world but he would
have been hard pressed to justify his
claim for living things.
Darwin
was the one who
later closed that gap.
Much of the religious opposition to
Darwin's theory has been based on the
claim that
it promotes atheism.
This
is not
quite correct. There are, after all,
many religious biologists. What
Darwin's theory does is remove whatever
remaining necessity people might have
felt for a god
hypothesis, leaving
it up to the individual
to decide whether to believe in a god
or not. Clearly, this removal of a
major argument
for
the existence
of god is likely
to result
in greater atheism, but the goal of
those who teach evolutionary theory
is not
to promote atheism. It is to teach
the best science.
Another reason that I think IDC ideas
will fade away is that the five examples
of
'irreducible complexity'
that
IDC advocates
promote as giving proof of god's existence
(because
it is asserted that they cannot be
explained by evolutionary processes)
will
eventually get chipped away and be
explained
by evolutionary theory. These five
items are identified
by IDC biochemist
Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black
Box as the bacterial
flagella
and cilia, blood clotting mechanism,
protein transport within a cell, evolution
of the
immune system,
and metabolic pathways.
The process of explaining their creation
using natural selection is already
well underway with two of the
five examples, blood
clotting and the bacterial flagella.
The reason that I am confident that
all these items will eventually be
explained
by science
is based
on the history
of science.
A similar process has happened with
past seemingly inexplicable examples
in nature
(the stability
of the solar system,
the human
eye, etc.) that have subsequently been
explained away. To be sure, one can
always come up
with new unexplained
phenomena
since no scientific theory ever explains
everything, but once
you start
shifting your target, your case for
god becomes progressively less persuasive.
This is why most sophisticated theologians
warn against believing in such a 'god
of the gaps.' They argue
that doing so results
in the maneuvering space for god's
actions becoming steadily smaller.
It also seems
a bit strange
that god would choose
to act only in such esoteric situations.
The Dover School Board Undermines
the Wedge Strategy
The reason that Judge Jones' verdict
in the Dover trial is likely to be
so influential
is because
of the exhaustive
nature of the
testimony that he heard and the depth
and comprehensiveness and scope of
his ruling.
In essence, the trial
provided a
place for
IDC ideas to get a close examination
under controlled conditions.
Prior to the trial, the case for and
against IDC had been waged in the media,
in legislative
hearings,
and
in debates.
As someone
who has participated in many such things,
I know that such forums can be a place
where key ideas
get examined
and
focused. But
this happens only if the participants
want them to. Otherwise skilled practitioners
in
those
forums can
evade tricky
questions by diverting attention elsewhere
and turn them into public
relations exercises and question-begging.
But in a trial, with its fairly strict
rules of evidence, it becomes much
harder to make
unchallenged statements.
If you
assert something, you have to be able
to back it
up and you cannot evade
the issues easily since you will be
cross-examined.
To be frank, the Dover trial was from
the beginning a bad situation for the
IDC people,
especially
the strategists
at the Discovery
Institute. Their whole approach up
to that point had been
to run a stealth campaign, based on
a clever public relations strategy.
They
carefully
avoided talk
of god as much
as possible (at least
in public). They did not even insist
on teaching intelligent design in schools.
Instead they
adopted the strategy
of asserting that evolution was 'just
a
theory,' that it had
problems,
that
there was a controversy over some of
its basic tenets, and that good science
and
teaching practices required
that students
be
exposed to the nature of the controversy.
Their slogan "teach the controversy" had a certain
appeal, since people have an intuitive sense of fairness, and
the assertion that students should hear all sides of an issue
is sure to strike a responsive chord. Thus opinion polls tend
to consistently show majorities in favor of "teaching all
sides" or "teaching the controversy."
Presumably, the long-term strategy
of the Discovery Institute was to first
have the
ideas of evolution
undermined in
this way, then later introduce IDC
as
an alternative to the undermined
theory of evolution and lead to its
discrediting, then bring god back into
science education,
and finally put god (and
prayer) back into public schools everywhere.
They saw
this as a slow,
incremental advance, taking many years
to reach its goal.
The nature of this long-term plan is
not entirely speculation on my part.
The basic
elements
are outlined in the
Discovery Institute's "Wedge Strategy" document
which placed the blame for society's decline on the
advancement
of materialistic
thought, of which they claim Darwinism was a major
component. The document says:
The proposition that
human beings are created in the image of God is one of the
bedrock principles
on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected
in most, if not all,
of the West's greatest achievements,
including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and
progress in the arts and sciences.
Yet a little over a century ago,
this cardinal idea came
under wholesale attack by intellectuals
drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking
the traditional conceptions
of
both God and man, thinkers such
as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and
Sigmund Freud portrayed humans
not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines
who inhabited
a universe ruled by
purely impersonal forces and whose
behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending
forces of
biology, chemistry,
and environment. This materialistic
conception of reality eventually infected virtually every
area of our culture,
from politics
and economics to literature and
art.
The Wedge Strategy document says,
among other things, that they
seek "To
replace materialistic explanations
with the theistic understanding
that nature and human beings are
created by God."
But the former members of the
Dover school board had no patience
for
this kind of
subtlety and
the slow,
long-range plan envisaged
by the Discovery Institute. They
wanted god back in their schools
and they
wanted it
now. So they
created
their
own
policy, which
required students in biology
classes to have a statement read
to them
that said,
in part:
Because Darwin's Theory
is a theory, it continues to be tested as new
evidence is discovered.
The Theory is not
a fact.
Gaps in the Theory exist for
which there is no evidence.
A theory
is defined as a well-tested
explanation that unifies a broad range of
observations.
Intelligent Design is an explanation
of the origin of life that
differs from Darwin's
view. The
reference book,
Of
Pandas and
People, is available for students
who might be interested in
gaining an understanding
of what
Intelligent Design
actually involves.
In one stroke,
the religious members of the Dover school board, thinking
they were
advancing
god's
work, destroyed
the entire
stealth strategy of the Discovery
Institute. By explicitly
naming and introducing
IDC into the
science class,
they were inviting
a court challenge and thus
exposing it to direct judicial
review,
something the Discovery
Institute
had been
carefully avoiding.
What is worse, they even
advocated a book Of Pandas
and People
which had a
blatantly
creationist
pedigree.
The
book has
been around a long time and
in its earlier incarnations
it freely
used the word 'creationism.'
The reason that this book
was a problem
was that
creationism (which
roughly stood
for the
idea
that god directly intervened
in the
creation of the world and
its living things) had
already
been
ruled
by the
US Supreme Court in 1987
to be a religious belief
that
had
no place
in
public
schools. After this setback,
a 'new' edition of the book
came out which
seemed to differ
from the
earlier
versions
mainly
in the fact that someone
had used
the 'search and replace'
function of their word processor
to
remove all
references to the word 'creationism'
and replace it
with 'intelligent design.'
It was because of that same
court decision that the Discovery
Institute
had carefully
avoided
any mention
of creationism
in its work. In fact, the
entire wedge strategy was
based on
tailoring a policy that avoided
all the
features of religion mentioned
in the landmark
1987 decision,
and
thus would hopefully
pass future constitutional
scrutiny.
But the Dover board's action
made a hash of that strategy,
because
it mixed
creationism,
IDC,
and opposition to
Darwin into one
entangled mess. To make it
worse, the advocates of this
Dover policy
made
no secret of
the motives for
their
actions, and
in school board meetings
and other public forums
spoke about how
they were doing this so as
to bring god back into the
schools.
(See
Matthew Chapman's
article God
or Gorilla
in the February
2006 issue of Harper's Magazine
for interesting insights
into what was
going on in that
small
town before
and during the
trial.)
These actions were going
to come back and haunt them
during
the
trial.
The Dover School
Board Battles the Discovery
Institute
The Dover school board members
were encouraged to adopt
their policy
by the offer, when
they encountered the
inevitable legal challenge,
of legal representation by
the Thomas
More
Law Center,
based in Michigan, and which
was "created in 1999
by Thomas Monaghan, founder
of Dominos Pizza and a philanthropist
for conservative
Catholic causes." The
center supports all kinds
of religion-based social
policies, and was eager to
take on the teaching of evolution
theory in schools. To give
you some idea of how extreme
this group's views are, the
president and chief counsel
of the center
Richard Thompson believes
that:
Christianity is under
siege from all quarters,
but especially
from the federal
courts,
the American Civil
Liberties Union, and what Thompson
calls the "homosexual
lobby."
The ACLU and the courts
are "basically cleansing
America of religion and
particularly Christianity," Thompson
said. "It’s
almost like a genocide.
It’s a sophisticated
genocide."
So it is
clear that Thompson is
a charter member (along
with Bill
O'Reilly)
of
the crazy cult
that believes
that it is
Christians who are persecuted
in the US. Anyone who
uses the word "genocide" to
describe the situation
of Christians in the US
clearly needs to lie down
and take a nap until the
fever passes.
The Thomas More center
and the Dover school
board were
itching
for a fight
with those
they saw
as secular Darwinists. "Bring
it on!" seemed to be their cry. Needless to say,
the somewhat more sophisticated strategists at the
Seattle-based Discovery
Institute were not happy with their erstwhile allies
in Dover shouting loudly about their blatantly religious
motives. They
could see their cautious, delicately-balanced, and
expensive long-range plan, which depended upon carefully
avoiding
any mention of religion, falling apart because of the
clumsy blundering of
the Dover board, aided and even egged on by the Thomas
More lawyers.
But once that die was
cast and the Dover policy
adopted,
the
Discovery Institute
was placed
in a quandary.
The Thomas More
center did not have the
legal resources to mount
the kind
of sophisticated
arguments necessary in
such a case. Should
the
Discovery Institute completely
disassociate
themselves
from the Dover school
board actions and distance
themselves from
the case
as it went down to likely
defeat? Or should they
throw themselves
also into
the fray,
provide their own expert
witnesses, pour
all their considerable
financial and legal resources
into the case, and hope
to
secure victory from the
jaws of an
otherwise
almost certain defeat?
In the end they waffled,
initially agreeing to
be part of the
case, and then backing
out when
the Thomas
More
Law Center
did not want the Discovery
Institute's own lawyers
representing their
clients. This caused
bad feelings on both
sides
which spilled
out into the
open,
as The Toledo
Blade reported on
March 30,
2006:
In fact, when Mr.
Thompson decided to
defend the
Dover intelligent
design policy,
he
angered the
group most
associated with
intelligent design:
the Discovery Institute,
a conservative
think-tank based in
Seattle.
“We were incredibly frustrated by arrogance and bad legal judgment
of goading the [Dover]
school district to keep a policy that the main organization supporting intelligent
design was opposed
to,” says John
West, the associate
director of the Discovery
Institute’s
Center for Science
and Culture.
The Thomas More
Center acted “in the face of opposition
from the group that actually represents most of the scientists
who work on intelligent design.’’
. . .
In fact, these two
prominent supporters
of intelligent
design couldn’t
be much more at
odds.
Mr. Thompson says the
Discovery Institute
bailed out on
the Dover Board of
Education when three
of its experts
refused
to testify
at the last minute,
after the deadline
for recruiting
witnesses
had passed.
But Mr. West says
the whole thing
was the
More Center’s
fault. Mr. Thompson wouldn’t
let Discovery Institute
fellows have separate
legal representation.
The Discovery Institute
has never advocated
the teaching
of intelligent
design,
and told the
Dover board to
drop its policy,
Mr. West
says. It participated
in the trial only reluctantly.
“
We were in a bind,” Mr. West says. “Our ideals were
on trial even though
it was a policy we didn’t
support.”
Richard
Thompson countercharges
that the Discovery
Institute people
are essentially wimps,
people
who just talk a
tough game but don't
put their beliefs
on the line
when it
counts:
Mr. Thompson
says the Discovery Institute’s strategy
is to dodge
a fight as soon as one appears imminent.
“The moment there’s a conflict they will back away…they
come up with some
sort of compromise. ”But in Dover “ they
got some school
board members that didn’t want
compromise.”
This
intramural battle
between
two groups
supposedly on
the same pro-IDC
side did
not augur well
for the trial
that was scheduled
when some Dover
parents led by
Tammy Kitzmiller
challenged
the
constitutionality
of the
school board's
decision.
The stage was
now set for the
courtroom
confrontation.
How IDC Lost
in the Dover
Case
The stage was
thus set in Dover,
PA
for what
turned out to
be an unequal
contest
in the
courtroom of
US District
Judge
John
E. Jones III.
Matthew Chapman,
a great-great-grandson
of Charles Darwin,
attended the
trial
and provides
an
amusing description
of its proceedings,
the personalities
involved, and
of the events
in
the town of Dover
leading up to
the trial.
In his
account
God or Gorilla:
A Darwin Descendant
at the Dover
Monkey Trial in
the February
2006 issue of
Harper's
Magazine,
he describes
how the plaintiffs
team
of lawyers, headed
by the ACLU seemed
to have
the resources
and materials
at their
fingertips while
the Thomas More
lawyers looked
inadequately
prepared
and
with few resources,
even having to
borrow the
expert audio-visual
services available
to the plaintiffs.
Describing the
plaintiffs' (i.e.,
the people
challenging the
school board's
IDC policy)
legal team, Chapman
writes: "Here
then was a team of highly skilled professionals operating in
an atmosphere of frictionless amiability. Here was a collegiate
machine," while looking at the defense team "one was
reminded more of a dysfunctional family with a frequently absent
father." (The 'father' in this case was Thomas
More head Richard Thompson, who would be there for
a few days
and then
disappear for a week.)
But more serious
than the imbalance
in legal
resources
was the
fact that by
introducing IDC
ideas explicitly
into their
policy,
the Dover school
board exposed
them to close
scrutiny and,
under
cross-examination,
those ideas did
not fare well.
As I have written
earlier one of
the expert
witnesses who
did appear on
behalf
of
the defense was
biochemist
Michael
Behe, probably
the
main scientist
of the IDC
movement, author
of Darwin's Black
Box
and creator of
the five cases
of 'irreducible complexity' on which
the credibility of IDC
hinges.
Behe was cross-examined
in a way that
he
never
encounters when he
speaks with IDC-friendly
audiences and journalists
and TV talk
show hosts. As a result,
he was
forced into several damaging
admissions, to the extent
of even
admitting
that changing the definition
of science to include
IDC would also
result
in astrology being considered
science.
The judge
repeatedly quoted his
testimony as reasons
evidence why
he ruled against
the defendants,
which is
somewhat ominous
for
IDC ideas
if they should venture
into the courtroom again
As almost everyone
knows by now,
the judge ruled
overwhelmingly
in favor of the
plaintiffs,
arguing
that the Dover
action was unconstitutional.
He was unsparing
in
his criticism
of the
school board,
saying "The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s
decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop
which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students,
parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved
better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its
resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources." (p.
138)
He was also clearly
angered by the
outright lying
by some of
the Board
members in
their testimony,
saying "The citizens
of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board
who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these
individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious
convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their
tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." (p.
137)
But what was
most damaging
to the
IDC case was
the fact that
the
judge had
taken the
time to
analyze closely
the important
question of whether
IDC
was science or
religion,
a question
that he could
have avoided
if
he wished, since
the unconstitutionality
of the Board's
actions did
not depend
on it.
And his ruling
that IDC was
not science
may end up being
the
most
significant part
of the
verdict for
the Discovery
Institute's
long-term goal
of slowly bringing
it into the schools.
He said (p.
64):
After a searching
review
of the record and
applicable caselaw,
we find
that while ID
arguments
may be true, a
proposition on which the
Court
takes no
position, ID is not science.
We find
that ID fails on
three
different
levels, any one of
which is sufficient
to preclude
a determination
that
ID is
science.
They are:
(1) ID
violates the centuries-old
ground
rules of
science
by invoking
and permitting supernatural
causation;
(2) the
argument of irreducible
complexity,
central to ID, employs
the same flawed
and illogical
contrived dualism
that doomed creation
science
in the 1980's;
and (3)
ID’s
negative
attacks
on evolution
have been
refuted
by the
scientific
community.
As we will
discuss
in more
detail
below,
it is
additionally
important
to note
that ID
has failed
to
gain acceptance
in the
scientific
community,
it has
not generated
peer-reviewed
publications,
nor has
it been
the subject
of testing
and research.
Equally
damaging
(in a practical
sense) was
the judge's decision
that the Dover
school
board
should pay
for the court costs
of the plaintiffs,
a pretty large
bill for
a small
school board
and one that
will have
a chilling
effect on the
aspirations
of other school
boards to try
similar
actions.
Although a
single verdict
by a
US District
Court judge
(unlike
rulings
by appeals
courts or the
US Supreme
Court) carries
with it no
formal legal
weight
outside
his
district, a
comprehensive
and
broad verdict
like this tends
to be very
influential
if a
similar case
should occur
elsewhere.
To see how
this
happens,
one
can
go back to
the
1982 ruling
in McLean
v. Arkansas
Board of Education,
where the judge
in that case
ruled that legislating
equal time for creationism
in biology class was
unconstitutional. This
was again a
US District Court ruling
but one which was very
detailed and
comprehensive.
That ruling
by Judge William
Overton was
influential
in
creating a
similar result
in neighboring
Louisiana,
and
it was the
latter case
(Edwards v.
Aguilard) that
resulted
in the US Supreme
Court ruling
against creationism
in
1987, adopting
much
of the reasoning
used by Judge
Overton
in McLean.
In
fact,
the McLean
ruling
was influential
even in
the Dover
case.
There is no
doubt that
the Dover
verdict was
slam-dunk victory
for the plaintiffs
and a
devastating
defeat for
the IDC side,
much worse
than
they had feared.
On September
30,
2005, before
the trial,
key IDC theorist
William
Dembski
had made the
following prediction
on his
blog:
As I see
it, there are three
possible
outcomes:
1. The Dover
policy, in
which students
are informed
that
the ID textbook
Of Pandas
and People
is
in their
library,
is upheld.
2. The Dover
policy is
overturned
but
the scientific
status of
ID is left
unchallenged.
3. The Dover
policy is
not only
overturned
but ID is
ruled as
nonscientific.
For what
it’s
worth,
my subjective
probabilities
are that
outcome
1.
has about
a 20%
probability,
outcome
2. has
about
an 70%
probability,
and outcome
3. has less than a 10% probability.
While
Dembski
was pessimistic
about the outcome of the
trial being
favorable for their side
(outcome 1), he
still expected
to salvage
the notion that
IDC could be science. The
result being overwhelmingly
outcome
3 may have unnerved
Dembski so much that just
six days after
the Dover verdict, he announced
that he was
suspending
his
blog indefinitely.
Since
then, "his" blog
has since reopened under
new management, seemingly
run by his more frequent
commenters
Judge Jones' verdict, which
reads like a 139-page monograph
on
the history
of attempts
to overthrow
evolutionary
ideas in science
classes
and replace
them
with religious ones, will
and should be read by everyone
interested in church-state
separation
issues. I can
imagine other judges
are likely to read it for
guidance
if they should have to
rule on similar cases.
The verdict immediately
set off a series of actions
in
other
parts of the country,
as its
implications
were
evaluated.
A Dover Domino Falls in
California
The first domino to fall
as a result of the Dover
verdict
was
in California
where
a teacher
had
decided to create
a new optional
philosophy class
that would promote
IDC ideas. This decision
was interesting because
the people
behind it had
seemed to draw the
lesson from
the Dover
ruling that while
it was
problematic
to teach
IDC ideas in science classes,
that it was acceptable
to teach it
in philosophy courses.
As the LA Times reports:
At a special meeting
of the El Tejon Unified
School
District
on Jan. 1
[2006], at which
the board approved
the new
course, "Philosophy
of Design," school
Supt. John W. Wight said
that he had consulted
the school district's
attorneys
and that they "had
told him that as long
as the course was called
'philosophy,' " it
could pass legal
muster, according
to the lawsuit.
The
course description
is revealing:
Philosophy of Intelligent
Design: "This
class will take
a close look
at evolution
as
a theory and
will discuss
the scientific,
biological,
and Biblical
aspects that
suggest
why Darwin's
philosophy is
not rock solid.
This class will
discuss
Intelligent Design
as an alternative
response to
evolution. Topics
that will be
covered are
the age of the
earth, a world
wide flood,
dinosaurs, pre-human
fossils, dating
methods, DNA,
radioisotopes,
and geological
evidence. Physical
and chemical
evidence
will be presented
suggesting the
earth is thousands
of years old,
not
billions. The
class will include
lecture discussions,
guest speakers,
and videos. The
class
grade will be
based on a position
paper
in which students
will support
or refute the
theory of evolution."
The
biography of the
teacher who proposed
and would
teach the course
says that
she has a
B. A. Degree
in Physical
Education, Social
Science, with
emphasis in Sociology
and Special Education.
There
is no mention
of science or philosophy
expertise. The
reading list and guest speakers
seemed
to be weighted
heavily
towards young-Earth
creationist
ideas.
Some parents objected
to this course
and immediately
filed
suit to stop
it. Once
again, the Discovery
Institute had
a mixed response,
reflecting
the
confusion in the
IDC camp
after the Dover
verdict. On the
one
hand they
cried foul,
saying
that those opposed
to IDC were hypocritically
moving
the goals
posts
after their
Dover victory:
Clearly,
American’s United for Separation of Students from Science
is singing
a different tune now than they did last year during the Dover
trial.
Then they wanted
to outlaw mentioning
intelligent
design in science
classes. Now
they want to ban it
from all
classes.
Then, they said
intelligent design
was an okay
topic for philosophy
classes. Now,
they claim
intelligent design
is
not suited for
any classes.
Then, the
Rev. Barry
Lynn, executive
director
of Americans
United
for Separation
of Church
and
State, was
saying specifically
about
intelligent
design that: "when
it comes
to matters
of religion
and philosophy,
they
can be discussed
objectively
in public
schools,
but not in
biology class."
On
the other hand,
about the
same
time, the Discovery
Institute
itself
made
a presentation
to
the El Tejon
school board
urging
that the course
be dropped.
They were obviously
concerned that
this school
policy, like
that of the
Dover board,
would be another
clumsy
attempt that
would set back
their
careful
strategy even
further
because this
course mixed
young
earth creationism
with IDC.
As their
attorney Casey
Luskin said
(echoing Johnny
Cash's
Folsom Prison
Blues):
There
is a legal
train
coming
at you and
we can see
it
coming down
the tracks.
Unfortunately
this course
was
not formulated
properly
in the
beginning,
and students
were
told
it would
promote young earth
creationism
as fact.
Thus, the only remedy
at this point
to avoid
creating a dangerous
legal
precedent
is to
simply
|
