Intelligent
Design and the Dover Case
by Jon Buell
The Dallas
Blog
January 29, 2006
It has been nearly a half century since Hermann Muller’s article in The Humanist called for educational and cultural leaders to walk to the drumbeat of Darwinism. He concluded with these words: "The result [of exacting criticism and testing of Darwinism] has been that this revolutionary view of life now stands as one of the most firmly established generalizations of science and that far more is now understood about the manner by which evolution operates than was even imagined a century ago."
Recently, biochemist
Franklin Harold updated us: "We should reject,
as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for
the dialogue of [Darwinism] but we must concede that there are presently
no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system,
only a variety of wishful speculations."
[Emphasis ours]
The controversy over intelligent design in the schools is about whether we should reject intelligent design as a matter of principle, or introduce it alongside the Darwinian drumbeat as a second option (not "substitute") while Darwinists continue to work at converting "wishful speculations" into "well-established results of science" (which, of course, they should keep attempting). The latest skirmish in this important question–the ACLU suit against the Dover, PA School Board–was a ‘gimmie’ for the official orthodoxy.
Having lived in the cross-hairs of the ACLU during the process of this trial, I was glad to accept the invitation to write about their lawsuit against the Dover, PA School Board, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District. The lawsuit was over the school board’s intelligent design (ID) policy. Upon release of his opinion, the Hon. John E. Jones III undoubtedly received some big "Attaboys" from the ACLU, their expert witness Barbara Forrest, and Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center of Science Education (NCSE).
The six-week trial overturned the Dover School Board’s policy, which provided for the reading of a 45-second statement about the theoretical status of evolution and offered students access to the supplemental biology textbook Of Pandas and People through the school library. (Pandas was the text that originally introduced the term "intelligent design" into contemporary popular consciousness.) But the opinion rendered by Judge Jones’s U.S. District Court recycled unsupportable falsehoods in matters of demonstrable fact-- false allegations by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the NCSE, all of which represented the Plaintiffs.
Falsehoods? I chose this term deliberately. The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) is the publisher of the book in question, Of Pandas and People. We know firsthand how this book was developed and produced. Thus we know for a fact that many of the allegations by these opponents of ID misrepresented the history of its development. Our work on the book gave Dr. Charles Thaxton, FTE’s Director of Curriculum Research, and me as President, that firsthand knowledge. The imaginative historical narrative developed by the Plaintiff’s expert witness Barbara Forrest alleged that the book originally presented "Creation Science," but that following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, we scurried to replace all terms like "creationism"and "Creation Science" with the term "intelligent design."
No rights to due process granted
When I learned that even the firm defending the Dover School Board, the Thomas More Law Center, would not call Dr. Thaxton or me as witnesses (and not even return our calls), FTE’s attorney filed a motion to intervene with the Court late last May, 2005. One might expect that Judge Jones would have wanted to hear from the key eyewitnesses to the development of Pandas, the text on which the entire trial focused, in order to come to the truth about this pivotal issue in the case. One might hope that Judge Jones would have allowed FTE to have its say in the case since he confiscated the yet-to-be-published sequel to Pandas, titled The Design of Life, and handed it over to the ACLU and the NCSE even though doing so threatened to bankrupt FTE. One would be wrong, however, to make such assumptions.
In July, 2005, the Judge denied our motion to intervene and, in doing so, set the stage for an embarrassing miscarriage of justice. If FTE had had due process rights to defend ourselves, we could have spared the Judge recycling the Plaintiffs’ demonstrably false allegations. As it was, Judge Jones acknowledged the centrality of Pandas to the trial, much as the Plaintiffs and outside observers like the Wall Street Journal had earlier. Pandas’ centrality, however, failed to move the Judge to grant our motion to intervene.
In his report "Dover In Review," Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and Chairman of the Dept. of Government at Seattle Pacific University, Dr. John G. West, marvels at the Judge’s obstinance: "Frankly, it is astounding that Judge Jones treats Pandas as central to his decision given that he refused to grant the book’s publisher, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, permission to intervene in the case in order to defend itself."
The Judge was also undaunted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s six tenets of Creation Science in Edwards (which description Justice Scallia called a "term of art," meaning a term used by legal professionals that has a precise meaning in a particular subject area). To this codified description Judge Jones made nary a reference.
These omissions at trial left the Plaintiffs’ skillful lawyers free to use the blatantly religious remarks of Dover School Board members, about which most Americans have read or heard, to cast the book itself in a religious light, and thus set the tone for acceptance of the lawyers’ otherwise indefensible allegations with little serious opposition.
In order to declare ID to be "nothing more than Creation Science," the Judge had what he needed, which was a fictitious narrative constructed by Barbara Forrest, a narrative positing that following the ruling in Edwards, disgruntled creation scientists re-labeled the same old Creation Science brew with the peppy new moniker "ID." Precisely how the U.S. Supreme Court described Creation Science was as irrelevant in Judge Jones’ Court as was the testimony and cross examination of eye witnesses.
A sampling of the serious lines of argument that Pandas teaches a religious viewpoint
Was there a systematic replacement in Pandas manuscripts of the words "creationism," "creationist," and "creation" with the term "intelligent design," as alleged?
Let’s look at the three terms one at a time. Neither "Creationism" nor its synonym, "Creation Science" was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged. Although they differ by only one letter, "creationist," is not a variant of "creationism;" it is a variant of "creation," a modifier that means "of the viewpoint of creation."
When we began work on the book, we agreed that if we couldn’t make a convincing empirical case, we would not go forward. But during the roughly five years the manuscript was being written, we used the word "creation" and sometimes "creationist" as placeholder terminology. The complete absence of manuscripts or portions of manuscripts teaching the tenets of the six-part description of Creation Science is eloquent evidence that this and only this is why those two words are sprinkled throughout old drafts.
The real reasons for updating terminology
Did we go through the manuscript and change the word "creation" to "intelligent design," "intelligent agent," etc. after Edwards? We certainly did! Why? For clarity sake. First, because by codifying "Creationism" and "Creation Science" with highly specialized meanings, the High Court had cast some suspicion on the word "creation." Who would expect the public to understand the differences? It was a practical and important matter of good communication.
More importantly, this change in terminology reflected a more precise understanding of causation as worked out and formalized by the empirical philosopher David Hume. According to Hume, analogical reasoning allows us to comprehend the causes of past effects, even though we cannot observe them, by comparing them with repeated, presently observable examples of cause-effect (like effects have like causes, past and present). This understanding of causation has become critically important in the historical sciences. Hume applied this primarily to natural causes, but he regarded it to be true, as well, for intelligent causes. Hence the crying need for a new term.
The Judge cited testimony by John Haught, the Plaintiff’s theologian, to cast the concept as a throwback to William Paley and dismiss it with a wave of the hand. But Haught’s reasoning was incomplete. Even the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy now gives credence to the concept of intelligent design stemming from the work of David Hume. And Hume’s cautious caveat is the source of ID’s claim that, from science alone, we cannot know the identity of the intelligent designer.
At FTE, the change of terminology from "creation" to "intelligent design" was an informed choice, reinforced by principles of unambiguous communication. But with eyes fixed straight ahead, the Judge never touched the argument. And, incredibly, the opinion of the Court said, "One significant difference [between "arguments as were posited in support of creationism"and ID in Pandas] is that in Pandas the words "God," "creationism," and "Genesis" have been systematically purged from ID explanations and replaced by an unnamed "designer." These terms were never purged because they were never there in the first place!
Creation is a broad and generic term
But doesn’t having once used the term "creation," even temporarily in early drafts, and even though repeatedly cautioning the reader that on its own science cannot tell us if the designer is within the material universe or beyond it nevertheless betray an intent to give an impermissible advantage to the supernatural and therefore justify a presumption of guilt? The answer is that "creation" is not a "term of art" or specialized term, but a generic one, with broad popular use throughout our culture. A joint Google search on the two terms "creation" and "engineering" yields 46 million hits. Creation, creativity, and create are terms of art in the engineering literature. As such, there is no necessary connection with the supernatural. Unless qualified, it simply is not one of the cluster of six defining tenets of Creation Science according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Moreover, the term is quite at home in the natural sciences (setting aside engineering). In the decade of the 1980s, when Pandas was under production, the premier observational astronomer Allan Sandage was completing an extensive inventory of the mass in the visible universe, with a resulting inference to a universe with a true beginning prior to which it did not exist. Today, if you do a Google search on the term "moment of creation," you get an eyeful. When we did it on January 1, 2006, there were 101,000 hits. Of the first 100, 25 were unequivocally secular sources referring to cosmology, physics, the Hubble Constant, etc. Of particular note were many hits on the Nobel prizewinning work of Bell Laboratory scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for discovering the universal background microwave radiation. To be sure, some scientists use the terms (creation, moment of creation) metaphorically, with no causal connection to the cosmos intended. Others use it provisionally, expecting it to be needed only temporarily. But many use it in the most straightforward sense.
Plaintiffs star witness sees place for creation
In interviewing one scientist, Dallas Morning News staff writer Jeffrey Weiss was informed that "science is the best way we have to understand and appreciate the greater glory of the Creator’s work–a labor he clearly carried out by the process we call evolution." In response, Weiss asked, "But doesn’t defining science that way in itself reflect a particular religious point of view?" This biologist responded, "Science can’t be the whole story. Why do we exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? That has proven to be an almost intractable question for science to answer. That is a question that clearly leaves room for God." The scientist is Dr. Kenneth Miller, biology professor and key expert witness for the Plaintiff. How ironic that Pandas is excoriated for failing to close the door on the possibility of a divine Creator while the Plaintiff’s star expert witness expressly brings Him in as a quite plausible explanation as the cause behind the cosmos.
Jon Buell
President
Foundation for Thought and Ethics
Dallas, Texas
www.fteonline.com
Endnotes
Muller, Hermann J. 1959. "One Hundred Years Without Darwinism Are Enough," The Humanist 19:139.
Harold, Franklin The Way of the Cell, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 205.
Quinn, Phillip The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 2nd Ed., General Editor, Robert Audi, p. 698
Jeffrey Weiss Dallas Morning News, Sept. 10, 2005, pp. G-1, 3 "But is it Science? What’s the Role of a Creator in Nature? A Visit with Two Scientists."