[NOTE: Due to a momentary quirk in Blogspot's editing function, a truncated version of this post was up for a few minutes earlier today.]
"Intelligent design", or "ID" as it's come to be commonly called, is a repackaging of creationism to try to skirt the prevailing legal standard that prohibits religious ideas being fraudulently presented in public schools as science. Creationism in all its forms is a statement of fundamentalist-Protestant ideas about the Creation story in Genesis, combined with specious nitpicking of this or that aspect of the theory of natural selection, aka, "Darwinism".
Covering the story well is a professional challenge for journalists, who are accustomed to covering political controversies by allowing "both sides" to present themselves. The ID advocates play to this journalistic approach by generating political and religious controversy over ID and evolution, and then try to pass it off as scientific controversy. And they argue that science classes should "teach the controversy".
It seems to me that this page 1 article from the San Francisco Chronicle does a good job of presenting the political controversy while giving the reader a fair look at the fact that there is no scientific controversy about the ID scam: War of ideas fought in a small-town courtroom: Intelligent design theory vs. the science of evolution at center of Pennsylvania trial by Mike Weiss 11/06/05.
Weiss reports on one aspect of the Dover case that I would not have had the imagination to make up, it's too perfect. The school board's chief advocate of the anti-evolution requirement shares at least a couple of traits with Rush Limbaugh, including a chemical indulgence:
Perhaps the most anticipated witness at the trial was William Buckingham, who as the chairman of the Dover district curriculum committee last fall, had spearheaded the adoption of the intelligent design statement. It was Buckingham, a former prison supervisor and member of an independent fundamentalist church, who cried out at a board meeting: "Two thousand years ago somebody died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"
Under cross-examination, Buckingham acknowledged there were times his testimony contradicted statements he had made earlier in sworn depositions, but said his memory was faulty because he was "addicted to OxyContin," a prescription opiate, and had twice been in rehabilitation.
Both Buckingham and the former school board president, Alan Bonsell, who were the leading advocates for the change, acknowledged in testimony that they believe the book of Genesis is literally true.
This week, Bonsell acknowledged that he had earlier testified untruthfully when he claimed not to know where money was raised to donate 60 copies of "Of Pandas and People" to the school library. The money had been raised in Buckingham's church and funneled through Bonsell's father, so the books could be donated anonymously. Hearing that, the usually affable Judge Jones lost patience.
Red-faced and visibly angry, he took over examining Bonsell himself, peppering him with questions for 10 minutes. "You tell me why you didn't say Mr. Buckingham was involved," he demanded. Then, later in the week, he snapped at one of the board's lawyers: "Don't insult my intelligence."
What is it with OxyContin, aka Hillbilly Heroin? Did some John Birch Society chemist invent the stuff and implant some kind of secret ingredient that makes its addicts blithering rightwingers?
While it might be tempting to dwell on the obvious hypocrisy of men like Buckingham and Bonsell who claim to be hyper-Christians but who will lie in sworn testimony to promote their religious cause. But we're dealing with fanaticism here, and once you've convinced yourself that you're trying to save countless souls from eternal torment in Hell, what's a little perjury if that's what it takes to get the divinely mandated results?
The following witness reminds us that it is possible to be a person of the Christian faith without feeling obligated to advocate for a narrow interpretation of the Creation story in the Book of Genesis:
The chief scientific witness for the plaintiffs, Kenneth Miller, said that he, too, was "a person of faith. ... I'm a Roman Catholic." He is also a Brown University biologist and co-author of one of the most widely used high school textbooks -- "Biology," which is the primary text employed in Dover Senior High School. Miller testified that, "If you invoke a non-natural cause, a spirit force or something like that in your research, I have no way to test it. So even if you are correct ... that really wouldn't be a part of science."
"The statement by the Dover board of education falsely undermines the scientific status of the theory of evolution," he said, "and does a great disservice to science education in Dover."
The current (Nov/Dec 2005) print edition of the Skeptical Inquirer has several articles devoted to the theme, "Evolution and the ID Wars". In their introductory note, the editors write:
The "Intelligent Design" movement is the most pernicious pseudoscience of our time. It seeks to undermine the teaching of evolution, at a minimum, but at its root is a broad attack on the nature of science itself - science's insistence on evidence, its unrelenting testing of hypotheses, its tradition of first airing new propositions before knowledgeable colleagues, its requirement of peer-reviewed scientific publication, its skeptical scrutiny of all new ideas, its error-correcting mechanisms and welcome acceptance of new ideas that better fit better evidence, its wonderful and imaginative creativity. In its place, ID advocates would give equal time to an ancient and long-discredited faith-based idea with zero scientific evidence. They would bypass all of sciences institutional mechanisms that painstakingly sift unsupported ideas from well-supported ones and that are at the core of what science is all about.(my emphasis)
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