Read Present at the Future Online
Authors: Ira Flatow
Jeff Brown objected to the inclusion of intelligent design on scientific grounds, noting that the board’s own statement read, “A theory must be well tested.” He noted, “Intelligent design is not well tested. It hasn’t been tested at all. And the fact of the matter is, it cannot be tested. I’m waiting for someone to submit as an experiment, any kind of experiment, that would prove or disprove this intelligent intervention. It’s a supposition that’s essentially unprovable. They’ve just sort of simply thrown it out there and said, ‘Well, this is a countertheory.’” That notion did not sit well with Brown. “Yeah. And the fact that the universe came from a giant Cracker Jack box is another possible theory, but you can’t prove that one either. It’s not science.”
Jeff Brown’s views were not received very well by the school board. “Basically, I was ostracized, and people that I considered to be friends stopped talking to me.” The community, the people of Dover, treated Brown more sympathetically. Overwhelmingly Christian, Dover residents nevertheless were not all of one mind when it came to teaching creation in the classroom. “I know an awful lot of Christians who don’t have a problem with evolution, but this is a segment of the Christian community that does, and their feeling is that by teaching evolution and not teaching their side—and that’s their word, their ‘side’—we’re not giving the kids a well-rounded education. My understanding of the law is if we’re going to teach their side, we have to teach everybody’s side.”
Carol Brown did offer that solution, repeatedly over the years. She had no problem bringing religion into school classrooms but not into biology class. “Why not offer a comparative religions course in the high school, to give students an opportunity to learn about the religions of the world, the beliefs of each one? And as I pointed out, the underlying factor in every single faith is basically what we call the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way you want to be treated. And that was not well received.”
Shortly after the Brown resignations, the parents of Dover schoolchildren took action. Eleven of them took the school board to court, in the first challenge against a public school district in federal court to the required teaching of intelligent design. The parents were backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Supporting the school district was the publisher of the textbook Of Pandas and People, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics. The trial, which began on September 25, 2005, lasted 21 days with Judge Jones taking a month to issue a ruling. Before Judge Jones’s ruling on December 20 came the first surprise: All eight school board members who voted to include intelligent design were voted out of office in a November 8 school board election.
“That was quite something, wasn’t it?” Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education watched all six weeks of the trial as a consultant for the plaintiffs’ legal team, giving advice on the science. “I was just sitting there observing, and so I did not have an idea of how things were going out on the ground in Dover, in the actual community. And so when the election result came out, I was pretty amazed.” The overwhelming vote against intelligent design, says Matzke, represents what happens once people pay close attention to the issues. “Whether they want to or not, once they get really familiar with intelligent design, people realize what’s really behind it. They realize it’s really just creationism in disguise.”
Obviously Judge Jones wasn’t fooled either. On December 20, 2005, Judge Jones issued a 139-page decision. It was a scathing attack on the idea of teaching intelligent design (ID) in biology classrooms. Speaking for the court, Judge Jones wrote:
…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.
In other words, ID is creationism in another wrapping. Judge Jones went on to attack the notion that evolution and religion are incompatible:
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.
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 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.
Very stern words about fundamentalist religion written by a judge appointed by a fundamentalist President Bush. But he had more to say. Not only were several school board members dishonest about their convictions but also the board violated the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom. 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.
Judge Jones had more:
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.
Wow. Summing up, the Judge entered an order “permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.
Barbara Forrest is an expert witness in the trial whose testimony helped persuade the judge that ID is creationism relabeled. Judge Jones specifically remarked that Dr. Forrest’s testimony and exhibits “provides a wealth of information, a wealth of statements by ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical and culture content.” The defense tried and failed to have her barred from testifying at the trial. Dr. Forrest is a professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University and coauthor of Creationism’s Trojan Horse. Dr. Forrest is “not totally surprised” by the ruling because, she says, that during the trial “whenever he would issue rulings in response to motions, they were very thoughtful, very carefully done. But I think it really sets a benchmark for judicial excellence and integrity, especially with respect to this issue.”
But what will be the impact of this ruling on other schools where teachers and parents are fighting to keep intelligent design out of science classes? Forrest says Judge Jones’s ruling will send a strong message to some school boards, perhaps most, but not to others.
“But one of the things that we know from the history of creationism and the religious right in general is that they tend not to pay attention to court rulings. We thought that in 1987 with the Edwards vs. Aguilar ruling that came right out of my own state of Louisiana that that would put an end to the problem of creationism in this country, and obviously it did not. The good thing about Judge Jones’s ruling, though, is that it didn’t leave the intelligent design/ creationists much room to morph. What creationists usually do, in response to their losses in court, is that they change themselves into
something a little bit different, but I don’t think they have much room to do that after Judge Jones’s ruling.
“You also have to recognize that the creationism issue is not based on evidence. It isn’t based on reason. It’s based on an uncritical acceptance of certain religious doctrines that are not very thoughtfully held. And so when you get a position that is not based on evidence and rational appeals, you get people who are going to ignore court rulings because they are motivated by religious zeal.”
People who have made up their mind tend to pick and choose facts from an argument that back up what they believe. If you believe the Earth is flat, no amount of satellite imagery taken from space will convince you. If you believe that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, then no radioactive dating mechanism is going to change your mind, either.
Dr. Forrest agrees. “One of the amazing things that Judge Jones points out in his ruling—he talked about this in detail—is that when the Dover School Board adopted this policy endorsing intelligent design, they themselves had no understanding of it. That was amazing. Not only do they not know the science—the supporters on the Dover board—not only did they not understand the science of evolution, they didn’t even understand intelligent design. And so here you have people that are supposedly responsible for the education of other people’s children, and they have no inkling of what it is that they are enacting. That’s truly remarkable.”
How important will the Dover case be in coming years? It would be naive to assume that Judge Jones’s opinion has settled this battle. Certainly in a country where many believe that Noah’s flood created the Grand Canyon and that the Earth is no older than a few thousand years. Dr. Forrest is sure there will be other cases, other opportunities for her expertise in the very near future.
“I guess right now I’m looking to the next occasion when I might have to put what I have learned to use.”
PIONEERS PRESENT AT THE FUTURE
Yeti or Bigfoot or Sasquatch. You’ll be amazed when I tell you that I’m sure that they exist.
—JANE GOODALL
As a young journalist in 1971 I found myself, totally by accident, in a room with the greatest living archaeologist of the time: Dr. Louis Leakey. There was no one else but we two. I didn’t immediately recognize Leakey and did a full, Hollywood double-take and decided there was no way that I could just let this historic moment go by without introducing myself.
But then what? Make small talk? Me, a 22-year-old neophyte journalist? I was so stunned to be breathing the same air he was that I wasn’t sure I could put a cogent thought together.
After a few eye-contact moments with the snowy-haired scientist, I found myself walking toward his side of the room, hand extended, and introducing myself as a science reporter. I told him that I had always enjoyed his National Geographic television specials and
wished him luck. To my surprise, he brightened, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “Thank you.” The door to conversation had opened. Now came the hard part: What to say? I have been star-struck very few times in my career, and this would be the first and longest lasting. I just had to find an icebreaker to open the conversation.
“Dr. Leakey,” I croaked, “what would you say is the most important evolutionary advance that sets humans apart from other animals?” That sounded pretty intelligent. I had no idea what he would say: fire making, brain size, transistor radios?
“Oh yes,” he began with a twinkle in his eye. “Surely it is precision grip—the opposing thumb and forefingers—that allows us to make tools.”
“Of course,” I stammered, as I thanked him and retreated back to where the air was easier to breathe.
That brief encounter with Louis Leakey is still one of my most treasured memories, as he died a few years later. And I was eager to share it with a scientist who knew Leaky and had spent many years knowing and working with him: Dr. Jane Goodall.
The story goes that filmmakers working at the Science Museum of Minnesota asked a group of people to name a famous living female scientist. It’s not easy to do. Think about it. They scratched their heads and then went to the top of the list, where they found Jane Goodall. Her amazing life story, working with chimpanzees in the jungles of Gombe, Africa, made a perfect subject for an IMAX movie, and so the filmmakers set to work, and Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees was the result.
Of course, one doesn’t need a pretense to interview Dr. Goodall. She is the preeminent primatologist, the United Nations Messenger of Peace, the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the author of many books, including The Chimpanzees I Love.
Jane Goodall’s early claim to fame was her discovery of just how smart chimpanzees are. She observed chimps making tools—such as fashioning a leaf or a twig—and using it to retrieve hard-to-get food. (They made good use of their precision grip.) The toolmaking abilities of these primates shocked scientists, who had always assumed that only we humans were clever enough to fashion tools.
I had always wanted to interview Jane Goodall and ask her about her discoveries of chimp intelligence. As a college undergraduate, I
marveled at the stories my professor told about his hours spent working in the primate lab with chimpanzees, where he was always amazed by how much intelligence and toolmaking ability they exhibited. And I wanted to ask Goodall about Louis Leakey.
INTO AFRICA
Gilbert Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, once wrote about her, “She was hardly the image one would project to become an old African hand. Her bush experiences were honed in the genteel English countryside.” With that background, how did she wind up in Africă