Few areas of American public life are as fascinating at the continuing struggle between evolutionists and creationists. It's a struggle that involves Science and Religion, Theology and Philosophy, Politics always, and, more often then not, the Law.
Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District was the latest in a long series of trials about the teaching of evolution in American Public school. The first one was the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial", in which a replacement science teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution against state law. The teacher, John Scopes, lost, and anti-evolution laws remained on the books in many US states until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. Ever since, the shoe was on the other foot - Kitzmiller, dubbed scopes II (or III, or IV, or V, etc), went the other way around - it featured a group of parents, upset about a legislative attempt to sneak the newest repackaging of creationism - a glossed up version marketed under the moniker of "Intelligent Design" - into biology class.
Journalist Edward Humes wrote a fascinating account of the Dover Trial, setting it in context of the historical creation/evolution divide, recent development, and the general approached of the religious right and the Bush administration - memorably described as a "War on" - science.
Early in the century, a group of newly elected members of the Dover school board decided that the then current biology curriculum was unsuitable. The reason? It was "laced with Darwinism". Those board members knew little about science, evolution, or "Intelligent Design", and cared less. What they cared about was that "[2000 years ago] a man died on a cross. Can't someone stand up for him"? Standing up for him meant bringing creationist viewpoints to "balance" evolution. It meant bullying Board members who disagreed by branding them atheists. Finally, it meant lying under oath to hide the religious motives behind what they have done.
I have followed the developments of the trial as it took place, but the book exposed the board members as more dishonest, incompetent and ridiculous then I could have imagined. Judge Jones's reference to "breathtaking inanity" is apt. Witness the testimony of Board member Heather Geesey under cross examination (abridged from pp. 318-319):
Q: "You supported the change?"
A: "Yes"
Q: "And the policy talks about gaps and problems with evolution?"
A: "Yes"
Q: "You don't know what those gaps and problems are, do you?
A: "No"
Q: "Is it fair to say you didn't know much about Intelligent Design in October 2004? [When the Creationist policy was adopted]?"
A: "Yes".
Q: "And you didn't know much about the book 'of Panda and People' [The creationist test book supported by the board and the ID movement]?
A: "No"
Q: "You never read the book?"
A: "No"
Q: "So you didn't really think much about Intelligent Design?"
A: "No"
This was entirely typical. The leader of the Board Creationists, Bill Buckingham could not differentiate between the origin of life and the origin of species (p. 15), nor could he explain what either evolution or intelligent design were in any terms approaching coherence (p. 219). Clearly, the Board didn't promote the Intelligent Design policy in order to improve scientific education, as they had claimed. They wouldn't know science if it hit them in the face. Their motivation was entirely religious.
The other setback for Intelligent Design, the one even its more sophisticated advocated (such as biochemist Michael Behe) could not disguise, was that it simply is not science. In order to make Intelligent Design into a science, Behe had to redefine science in such a way as to include Astrology (p. 301). The plaintiff's attorney, Eric Rothschild, effectively challenged all of Behe's assertions, disclosing that his best selling ID book, "Darwin's Black Box", received scantly any peer review, that Intelligent Design could not reveal the mechanism through which design was supposed to work (p. 303), and that the only scientific paper published by Intelligent Design was entirely irrelevant, making a calculation too complex by a factor vastly exceeding 10 billion (p. 305).
The end result is well known, Conservative Republican Judge John E. Jones, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled that the board had a religious purpose in enacting its pro- Intelligent Design policy, and that Intelligent Design was not science. I find it encouraging that the Judge in the case was a Republican and a Bush appointee. In a time when we are seeing extremists taking over the Republican Party, it's good to know that a there is still a moderate, rationalist wing to it. I hope that with the failure of the "Faith Based Approach" to foreign Policy, crisis management, the economy, science, and civil rights, the US Republican party would return to its roots as a moderate, non radical party.
Perhaps most depressing in Hume's account is the revelation of how little evolution is actually taught in America's schools. As Hume described it, even before the change, evolution was briefly mentioned, minor issues about it were explained, and in less then 90 minutes, the heresy was forgotten. Indeed, the Science teacher's most popular biology book (nicknamed "The Dragonfly book" for the picture on its cover), was popular precisely because it virtually ignored the "E" word, and the latest edition, the one purchased by the school, and supposedly still used as I write these lines, marginalized the subject even more then the previous edition. In a sense, the creationists should never have worried about the teaching of evolution - they had won that battle before it ever started.
