Kitzmiller v. Dover -- the intelligent design case

It started with a couple of school board members in Dover, PA, who had strong beliefs that a supreme being created human and all other life on earth and who were disturbed at the references to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the biology text books.

The result was the U.S. District Court case of Kitzmiller v. Dover [PDF].  And last week NOVA broadcast an excellent show titled Judgment Day, Intelligent Design on Trial on PBS which was a Cliff's Notes version of the issue of whether "intelligent design" was a scientific theory or simply a religious argument, specifically,  "creationism" in disguise.

Creationism had already been tossed out of public schools by the Supreme Court in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard which held that a Louisiana law prohibiting the teaching of evolution unless accompanied by creationism violated the first amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion").  So the issue in Kitzmiller was merely whether or not the school district was attempting to inject creationism into the school curriculum by the requirement that teachers read a prepared statement to the students.

That statement involved Of Pandas and People which was a book proposed as an alternative to evolution, copies of which were given anonymously to the Dover school.  The school board rejected Pandas as a text book, but they reached a compromise by which science teachers were required to read a statement to the ninth grade biology students.   Read the whole statement in the judge's order in Kitzmiller v. Dover [PDF].  The statement basically instructed students that Darwin's theory was not fact, gaps existed in the Darwin's theory, the Intelligent Design theory was an explanation for the origins of life that differed from Darwin's, and Of Pandas and People would be available in the library for interested students.

Darwin's theory is often diagrammed as a tree of life starting with simple life forms at the base evolving into multiple branches representing different life forms.  Of Pandas and People presented the idea that life was created suddenly and at various times for each species.  So instead of a tree, there are straight, vertical, parallel lines.  Furthermore, living beings are so irreducibly complex that they couldn't possibly have evolved from some lower life form according to the ID theory.  Well, it turns out the book had been around awhile, and evidence presented at the Kitzmiller trial showed that previous versions had used the words "creationism" and "creationists," but after Edwards those words were changed to some variation of "intelligent design."  In fact, there was one incident where the word "creationists" was changed to "cdesign proponentsists."

An example of the irreducible complexity given at trial was the bacterial flagellum which has a very unique motor that spins its little tail giving it propulsion.   It's  such a complex little engine and had so many parts that it couldn't operate if any of the parts were not present.  Therefore, it couldn't have evolved from something else, the ID theory goes.

But wait a minute.  There's another tiny little critter called the yersinia pestis which has a thing similar to that engine but lacks some of the parts.  And in that instance the tail serves as an injection device.  So the effort to disprove Darwin's theory failed.

An expert witness provided an amusing example of how some things aren't as irreducibly complex as they might seem.  The ID proponents sometimes use the mousetrap as an example of a device that couldn't function if any of the parts were missing and analogize this to a living creature that couldn't exist without its parts and thus couldn't have evolved.  So the witness came to court one day with a mousetrap as a tie clasp.  Enough parts were missing that it couldn't possibly serve as a mousetrap.  But as the witness said, it worked perfectly, though inelegantly, as a tie clasp.  Score one more for the Darwinists.

But religious dogma is actually quite flexible, albeit slow to adapt.  Originally religions explained gaps in our knowledge of how things worked.  They explained the unexplainable.  For example, the sun, the tide, the stars, etc., were controlled by the gods.   And as scientific explanations became accepted, religion narrowed its focus to those things that still couldn't be explained.  And at this point in time science cannot explain how life originally began.

How did life begin?  Here's what I would tell the Dover ninth graders: We simply aren't smart enough and don't have enough information to know.  And here's a story to go with it.  Each morning I take dog food out of a big bag and place it in a container for the dog to eat.  The dog can see me do that, and in his own mind he may have some explanation for it.  But he doesn't have the brain power or the information to figure out the manufacturing process, the distribution channel, or the retail transaction.  Humans understand this, but the dog may think I'm some sort of god.  So in this regard we are like dogs.  We simply aren't smart enough, and more to the point, we don't yet know enough to explain how life began.  For the creationists it's obvious, God did it.  For the rest of us it's still an unknown.

Darwin's theory has been tested over and over again and provides a logical explanation for natural phenomena.  And creationism?  Well, to believe that you just have to have faith.  And the judge in Kitzmiller wisely decided to let the kiddies learn science first.

Updated 11/20/07:  Joe Hathaway emailed a link to Experts find jawbone of pre-human great ape in Kenya.  Excerpt:

NAIROBI – Researchers unveiled a 10-million-year-old jaw bone on Tuesday they believe belonged to a new species of great ape that could be the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans. ...

The species – somewhere between the size of a female gorilla and a female orangutan – may prove to be the 'missing link', the key step that split the evolutionary chains of humans and other primates, Kenyan scientists said.

'Based on this particular discovery, we can comfortably say we are approaching the point at which we can pin down the so-called missing link,' Frederick Manthi, senior research scientist at the National Museums of Kenya, told reporters.

Once life is discovered on Mars or another planet then we will really be in for an educational treat.

Updated 11/21/07:  In a comment, below, Les reminds us of Moreno vs. ECISD which is the ACLU sponsored case in which several Ector County taxpayers are suing the Ector County Independent School District and the district trustees over the decision by the school district trustees to place a Bible course in the school curriculum.  See the original complaint here (PDF).  Something to keep in mind is that, according to the NOVA program,  the Kitzmiller v. Dover plaintiffs' lawyers were awarded a million dollars in fees for which the Dover school district would be liable.

Comments

[Jeff]

George, good post ..... a couple of points, though .....

It was more than just a couple of school board members ..... it was a majority of the board ..... I think it is significant that, as the litigators had their say, and the judge had his say, and the special interests from around the country had their say - the PEOPLE of Dover also had their say and, in the very next election, voted every one of the ID board members out of offfice.

The tree WAS once the image most often used to illustrate evolution, but that image gas given way over the past twenty years to the image of a bush with many converging, diverging, conflicting, complimenting branches to illustrate life's pathways.

I have to disagree with you on the questions that religion answers ..... while religion does not provide the answer to "how" questions, as it was once called upon to do, it still provides the answers to the "why" questions ..... science and religion, Stephen Gould once suggested are both valid lines of inquiry, but only into the questions for which they are best suited - what he called non overlapping magisteria.

[Les]

Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted in 2006 as saying that creationism is "a kind of paganism" and "Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god." I found this very interesting, considering the source.

[Jeff]

Les, you bring up a good point ..... when considering the advancement of science AND religion, we must not allow ourselves to be forced to choose between science OR religion (which extremists in this debate would have us do) ..... we CAN advance both ..... I think Gregor Mendel - "an Augustinian priest and scientist often called the 'father of modern genetics' for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants" (Wikipedia) - is a particularly good example.

[Geo]

Les, that certainly is an interesting statement considering the source -- one I wouldn't have imagined.

Jeff, anyone who chooses to seek an answer to "why" through religion should certainly be free to do so outside of school. As for advancing religion, which I assume means proselytizing, they should be equally free to do that provided they use non intrusive means.

[Jeff]

George, no disagreement from me on that point ..... my use of the word "advancement" was not meant to infer the establishment of religion through the state (the schools) but, rather, to our own, very personal development, the my belief that one can choose to be a man of science AND a man of faith.

[Les]

I'm surprised the "missing link" announcement that you refer to in your update has not been more widely publicized, George. (Or, maybe I'm just not reading as much news as I should be.) The announcement as it is presented at the link is hardly convincing (to me, at least) with the evidence being reported, but it does appear researchers are optimistic more evidence may be found in, or near, the same location.

As to Kitzmiller v. Dover, I thank you for bringing the NOVA broadcast to my attention. I haven't watched all the segments yet but reaction to the judge's decision is very revealing of our "modern" society here in the U.S. I fear we can expect a similar ordeal of the Odessa school board case, and the same public reaction.

And thanks to Jeff for additional thoughtful discussion.

[Geo]

Jeff, I'm grateful there are things on which we agreement. And there are probably a lot of religious scientists out there.

Les, perhaps the researchers mentioned in the article are fishing for donors as much as digging for bones. But if they can find more of that skeleton and others like it then it should be very enlightening. As for the NOVA program, maybe they will rerun it sometime soon. It was very well done.

P.S. Les, thanks for the reminder about the Odessa Bible course case.