Why Darwin Matters (17 page)

The primary task of the prosecution was to show not only that Intelligent Design is not science but that it is just another name for creationism, which the U.S. Supreme Court had already decided in
Edwards v. Aguillard
—the Louisiana case—could not be taught in public schools. Expert scientific witnesses testified on behalf of the prosecution, including Brown University molecular biologist Kenneth Miller and University of California, Berkeley, paleontologist Kevin Padian, both of whom rebutted specific Intelligent Design claims. More important were the expert testimonies of the philosophers Robert Pennock, from Michigan State University, and Barbara Forrest, from Southeastern Louisiana University, both of whom had authored definitive histories of the Intelligent Design movement. Pennock and Forrest presented overwhelming evidence that Intelligent Design is, in the memorable phrase of one observer, nothing more than “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”

It was revealed, for example, that the lead author of the book
Of Pandas and People
, Dean Kenyon, had also written the foreword to the classic creationism textbook
What Is Creation Science?
by Henry Morris and Gary Parker. The second author of
Pandas
, Percival Davis, was the co-author of a Young Earth creationism book called
A Case for Creation
. But the most damning evidence was in the book itself. Documents provided to the prosecution by the National Center for Science Education revealed that
Of Pandas and People
was originally titled
Creation Biology
when it was conceived
in 1983, then
Biology and Creation
in a 1986 version, which was retitled yet again a year later to
Biology and Origins
. Since this was before the rise of the Intelligent Design movement in the early 1990s, the manuscripts referred to “creation,” and fund-raising letters associated with the publishing project noted that it supported “creationism.” The final version, by now titled
Of Pandas and People
, was released in 1989, with a revised edition published in 1993. Interestingly, in the 1986 draft,
Biology and Creation
, the authors presented this definition of the central theme of the book, creation, as follows:

Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.

Yet, in
Of Pandas and People
, published after
Edwards v. Aguillard
, the definition of creation mutated to this:

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc.

So there it was, the smoking gun. The textbook recommended to students as the definitive statement of Intelligent Design began its evolving life as a creationist tract. Like the old Monty Python routine where the guy changes a dog license to a cat license by simply crossing out “dog” and writing in “cat,” the creationists simply deleted “creation” and pasted in “intelligent design.”

If all this were not enough to indict the true motives of the creationists, the prosecution punctuated the point by highlighting a
statement made by the purchaser of the school’s copies of
Pandas
, William Buckingham, who told a local newspaper that the teaching of evolution should be balanced with the teaching of creationism because “[t]wo thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?”

This was all too much even for the ultra-conservative Judge Jones. On the morning of December 20, 2005, he released his decision—a ringing indictment of both Intelligent Design and religious insularity:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Judge Jones went even further, excoriating the board members for their insistence that evolutionary theory contradicts religious faith:

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

Demonstrating his understanding of the provisional nature of science, Judge Jones added that uncertainties in science do not translate into evidence for a nonscientific belief:

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The judge pulled no punches in his opinion about the board’s actions and especially their motives, going so far as to call them liars:

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.

Finally, knowing how his decision would be received by the press, Judge Jones forestalled any accusations of him being an activist judge, and in the process took one more shot at the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover school board:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. 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.

Q.E.D.

Johnson calls his movement “The Wedge.” The objective, he said, is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to “the truth” of the Bible and then “the question of sin” and finally “introduced to Jesus.”

—Rob Johnson, on ID proponent Phillip Johnson,
Church & State
magazine, 1999

One evening several years ago, while on a book tour for
How We Believe
, I gave a lecture at MIT on why people believe in God. Coincidentally, at the same time, down the hall, the mathematician William Dembski was lecturing on Intelligent Design theory. After our respective talks we did what any two people of opposing camps in a controversy should do—we went out for a beer. Accompanied by Bill’s colleague Paul Nelson, we sat around a sports bar and reflected on science and religion, evolution and creationism, and—this being Boston—the Red Sox and the Yankees. Since that evening, I have debated Bill, Paul, and the Intelligent Design philosopher Stephen Meyer, on several occasions, and have shared car rides and meals in the process. Paul Nelson visited the Skeptics Society office and library, after which we dined with God and mammon. Having gotten to know these gentlemen over the years, I
must aver that a more gracious, considerate, and thoughtful group you will not find.

Because of our friendship, these guys have been forthright with me about their religious beliefs, which, of course, I could not help but inquire about. Although to a man they remain steadfast in their claim that they are pursuing a scientific agenda and not a religious one, they privately acknowledge their belief that the Intelligent Designer is the God of Abraham. To my knowledge, in fact, all but one of the leading Intelligent Design proponents is an evangelical Christian.

On the one hand, this should not matter in the assessment of someone’s claim, and I have devoted the longest chapter of this book to their arguments. On the other hand, when nearly every single member of a scientific community belongs to one particular religious faith, your baloney detection alarms should signal you that there is something else afoot here, as indeed there is.

As a scientist, I look to the data. And although I disdain to accuse friends of being insincere about their motives, the extant evidence—in their own published words—leads me to conclude that there is a distinct and definite religious and political agenda behind and above whatever science they think they are pursuing. Human behavior is complex and multivariate in its causes—motives are not so easily pigeonholed into black-and-white categories. In my opinion, the Intelligent Design creationists I have met believe their own rhetoric about only doing science and having no religious or political agendas, and they also believe in the religious and political tenets to which they adhere.

In an attempt to distance themselves from “scientific creationists,” who were handily defeated in the 1987 Supreme Court case, Intelligent Design creationists emphasize that they are interested only in doing science. According to Dembski, for example, “scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not.”
¹

Baloney. On February 6, 2000, Dembski told the National Religious Broadcasters at their annual conference in Anaheim, California, that “intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. . . . The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. . . . And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.”
²
In a feature article in the Christian magazine
Touchstone
, Dembski was even more direct: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”
³

Make no mistake about it. Creationists and their Intelligent Design brethren do not just want equal time, they want all the time they can get. Listen to the words of Phillip Johnson, the University of California, Berkeley, law professor who is the fountainhead of the modern Intelligent Design movement, at the same National Religious Broadcasters meeting at which Dembski spoke: “Christians in the twentieth century have been playing defense. They’ve been fighting a defensive war to defend what they have, to defend as much of it as they can. It never turns the tide. What we’re trying
to do is something entirely different. We’re trying to go into enemy territory, their very center, and blow up the ammunition dump. What is their ammunition dump in this metaphor? It is their version of creation.”
⁴
In 1996, Johnson did not pull his punches: “This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science. . . . It’s about religion and philosophy.”
⁵

Enter the Wedge. It was Johnson who introduced the metaphor in his book
The Wedge of Truth
. “The Wedge of my title is an informal movement of like-minded thinkers in which I have taken a leading role,” he writes. “Our strategy is to drive the thin end of our Wedge into the cracks in the log of naturalism by bringing long-neglected questions to the surface and introducing them to public debate.” After naturalism falls, materialism is the next target in their gun sights. “Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. . . . The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready.”
⁶
This is not just an attack on naturalism, it is a religious war against all of science. “It is time to set out more fully how the Wedge program fits into the specific Christian gospel (as distinguished from generic theism), and how and where questions of biblical authority enter the picture. As Christians develop a more thorough understanding of these questions, they will begin to see more clearly how ordinary people—specifically people who are not scientists or professional scholars—can more effectively engage the secular world on behalf of the gospel.”
⁷