Chapter I

At the same time, Cobb County in Georgia blazed into view as their school board jumped on the textbook disclaimer bandwagon, Matsumura (1997c; 1999e), Ken Miller (2000a), Holden (2002), Italiano (2006, 9-14) and DelFattore (2007, 66-69). That vehicle had first rolled onstage in 1974 when Tennessee suggested one (back when Creation Science was the antievolutionary position being defended) but hadn’t progressed very far when Louisiana’s 1994 attempt slammed into the courts (albeit with Scalia’s dissent as noted in section 1.6 earlier) because of its overtly religious framing of evolution as a school topic that should not “influence or dissuade the Biblical version of Creation or any other concept.” Whereupon legislators and state boards of education in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana retooled with more secularized TTC statements, and others went for even more minimalist textbook warning stickers: Oklahoma and Texas, though carried through to the actual book-pasting stage only in Alabama.

Although Uddin (2007) suggested it might be possible to craft a generalized disclaimer that could survive a constitutionality test (though nothing specific was suggested for inspection), it was problematic that any wording that innocuous would satisfy its target audience, Kulturkampf activists who want evolution undermined one way or another.

The partisan core of the disclaimer campaign was most plainly on display in the Alabama case, where the Alabama State Board of Education adopted their warning label “due to prodding from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum,” Benen (2000c). Oklahoma then followed in daisy chain manner by copying Alabama’s specific language that had repeated the obligatory antievolutionary myth about the supposed dearth of transitional forms, Oklahoma Textbook Commission (1999). Having detected in this “the growing integrity of Intelligent Design,” David Hacker (2004) of the Alliance Defending Freedom (an offshoot of the Alliance Defense Fund) extoled these “secular evolution disclaimers” as positive moves “enriching public education.”

Political and religious components went hand in hand in the Oklahoma case: 7 of the 11 textbook review board were members of the conservative non-union Association of Professional Oklahoma Educators, Matsumura (1999e), and legislative supporters wanted state-approved textbooks also to acknowledge “one God as the creator of human life in the universe,” Jerry Pierce (2000). While Answers in Genesis (1999e) cheered the Oklahoma creationists on, twenty authors of biology textbooks (including those like Ken Miller who had already expressed their disapproval of creationist beliefs on many occasions) and 125 University of Oklahoma scientists and historians of science registered their opposition to the disclaimer plan, Alberts et al. (1999) and Fincke et al. (1999). Though failing to get legislative approval in 2001 and again in 2003, backers finally shepherded it through the Oklahoma state House in February 2004, Matzke (2004a).

The Georgia disclaimer had a similarly protracted gestation. Georgia already had a policy since 1995 to warn the kiddies that “some scientific accounts of the origin of human species as taught in public schools are inconsistent with the family teachings of a significant number of Cobb County citizens”—though more than just human origins seemed a sticking point, as three families tried in 1996 to get a science textbook chapter removed that dealt with the age and origin of the universe, Flank (2006b), and “long” was eventually removed from Georgia curriculum references to the “long history of the Earth,” Jacobs (2004). The court case testimony brought out that some Georgia teachers simply didn’t mention evolution in their courses, and the evolution pages in textbooks were removed in some science classes, DelFattore (2007, 66-67).

Urged on by local chapters of the American Family Association and Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, the old disclaimer was replaced with TTC buzzword vagueness to avoid any overt sign of the religious concerns underlying why the language was being proposed in the first place: “discussion of disputed views of academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education, including the study of the origin of the species. This subject remains an area of intense interest, research, and discussion among scholars.”

All this flummery prompted Hartwig (2002g) to detect a change in speed for the ID bandwagon: evolutionists “know the momentum is shifting—even in the scientific community,” citing those “hundred scientists” and “52 Ohio scientists” who had signed the Darwinian skepticism letters, while Discovery Institute (2002e) iterated a version of 28 for Georgia culled from the Schaeffer et al. (2002) list, though McDonald (2002d) noted that many more academics at Georgia State University, Emory University and Kennesaw State University “have already submitted sets of petitions challenging the proposed policy. At Emory alone, 99 professors signed petitions.” In fact, flocks of disapproving scientific associations weighed in, reported by Applegate et al. (2002) and Skip Evans (2003a), only to be ignored as usual by the cadres singing the TTC refrain.

The ACLU and Barry Lynn’s Americans United for Separation of Church joined the fray, commencing a legal back and forth that further fanned the flames of controversy (the theater attracted Penn & Teller, who devoted an episode of their Showtime Bullshit! series to Cobb County). While the district court had upheld the disclaimer, the case fell apart on appeal.

In view of creationist allegations about the fossil record, it is hard to tell whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had its tongue in its judicial cheek when it used the phrase “significant evidentiary gaps” to describe the record that went up on appeal. Be that as it may, the court observed that “Whether we should reverse or affirm the judgment depends on the evidence that was before the district court, and we cannot tell from the record what that evidence was.” The lawyers acknowledged that material had been omitted but could not say what it was, and “at least some key findings of the district court are not supported by the evidence that is contained in the record.” The district court had, for instance, mentioned a 2300-signature petition that appeared nowhere in the record, the only petition in evidence had been presented months later. DelFattore (2007, 68) internal citations omitted.

What remained was still illuminating. The Weaver et al. (2005) Amicus Curiae brief, for example, representing 48 “doctoral scientists who are skeptical of neo-Darwinian theory and chemical evolutionary theory on scientific grounds.” The brief spooled out the familiar litany of secondary authority citations scavenged from scientific literature to affirm that “Neo-Darwinian theory is being re-examined by scientists in light of new scientific discoveries” and quoting Michael Denton on evolution being “a theory in crisis” as though that meant what the signatories wanted it to mean, that peripheral disputes over the mechanics of “Neo-Darwinism” genuinely undermined the idea that all life was related by natural common descent.

Just how disingenuous the Weaver brief asserting how “scientific” their focus was is indicated by a closer look at who was on it and what their backgrounds were. Most were already signed up for the Discovery Institute’s growing “Dissent from Darwinism” list, and included Charles Thaxton, Dean Kenyon and William Harris, as well as biologist Cornelius Hunter (an active combatant in the ID apologetic world, whose analytical skills were encountered back in section 1.4). But below those activists, apart from their participation in the Weaver Amicus Curiae or joining the “Dissent from Darwinism” cavalcade, most expressed no discernable opinion before or since on evolutionary matters to assess just how familiar they were with the subject.

Direct religious apologetics were represented by Ray Bohlin’s Probe Ministries and Leon Combs’ Living Theology, but over 20% of the group were involved with the Christian Faculty Forum (2002) active at the University of Georgia. Many of their degrees were not ones normally associated with the “scientific grounds” for modern evolutionary theory: chemists Henry Schaefer (whose P-E potshot was noted back in section 1.3) and Darwin Smith, engineer John Worley, entomologist Keith Delaplane, forester & meteorologist Gary Achtemeier, linguist Michael Covington, microbiologist Timothy Hoover, pharmacist William Wade, poultry scientist Bruce Webster, and toxicologists Cham Dallas and Robert Wentworth. In his revision of a 1999 church piece, Covington (2011) was at least forthcoming: “I am not a professional biologist and cannot give expert opinions on biological questions.” Apart from signing an amicus brief back in 2005 presupposing just that.

Ironically, while Covington (2005) held “Young-earth sophistry is divisive and an obstacle to evangelism” and Covington (2013b) deemed some of their views “occasionally rises to the level of a heresy,” he was rubbing shoulders with quite a few heretics in the Weaver brief, including a pair of aerospace engineers: Malcolm Cutchins, serving on the “Technical Advisory Board” of the ICR (2014b), and Dewey Hodges closer to home, the founder of the Christian Faculty Forum. The topic of geochronology may not have arisen often at CFF as Hodges appears to have been more exercised over vanquishing Gay Theology in Olliff & Hodges (1996) and marveling over the beauty of concise physics equations, as interviewed by Robert Carter (2012) for AIG’s Creation magazine. Historian Emerson McMullen (1998a-b; 1999a-b; 2000; 2005; 2006) has been more verbose on his YEC convictions, defended via authority quotes mainly filched from Walter Brown, and the limited understanding of evolution by creationist chemist Nancy Bryson will be covered below concerning the renewed Kansas antievolution campaign.

In those rare instances when their technical fields did bump into evolutionary subjects, “Darwinism” wasn’t losing any sleep. Although Keith Delaplane was identified as an Intelligent Design advocate by Jacobs (2004), his work makes it difficult to tell what that meant. Indeed, when enthusing on the origin of altruism in the beehive “Superorganism” for Fluehr-Lobban (2011) he sounded like archetypal evolutionist E. O. Wilson. The same is true for Tim Hoover in Todd Smith et al. (2009) and Jennifer Anderson et al. (2010) on flagellar gene assembly, or the activity of two other microbiologists in the Weaver brief: flagellum researcher Scott Minnich in Monday et al. (2004) and other papers, and Yvonne Boldt et al. (1995) on the extradiol dioxygenases bacteria use to process carbon. None of their work undermined evolution but in fact only served to buttress its explanatory power.

Because the Cobb County disclaimer attracted so much commentary it helped identify more of the range and connective paths frequented by its many Kulturkampf supporters. Young Earth Creationist Ben Rast (2002c) of Contender Ministries out in Federal Way, Washington fumed in “THE SEPARATION OF GOD AND COUNTRY: The ACLU Rears Its Ugly Head in Cobb County, Georgia” how “The evolutionist believes in evolution—not because it is scientific, but because he considers himself too wise to believe in God.” Rast had a full plate of threats to warn about: cults like the Mormons, Scientology, and Catholicism, as well as the UN’s New World Order.

Chuck Missler (2002c) kept his own YEC proclivities temporarily stowed as he substituted media accounts for factual discussion when he deployed the Discovery Institute TTC approach to challenge “Darwinism’s monopoly,” juxtaposing selected local coverage of the Cobb County scientific disputants from McDonald (2002a,c) and Burch (2002) to give the impression that the protagonists were comparable in number or credibility. Three months later, Missler’s KHouse news gave a Christmas Eve link to the DI’s John West (2002d) who wrote at National Review how the Ohio and Georgia developments suggested: “After years of being marginalized, critics of Darwin’s theory seem to be gaining ground.”

Missler’s Koinonia House ministry also linked to The Bakersfield Californian (August 27, 2002) for Cal Thomas (2002) on “Evolution and free speech.” Closely associated with Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” culture, Thomas’ syndicated column was widely read in conservative newspapers and his cheerleading for the TTC approach was duly posted at Townhall Daily (hyped just a tad by renaming it “Making monkeys out of evolutionists”). There was much critical reaction to Thomas by NCSE (2002c), but curiously none of it spotted how he had inadvertently given the creationist context of TTC away (as well as inviting the opening of a horribly contentious can of educational worms) when he couldn’t resist dangling a very dated authority quote:

What do evolutionists fear? If scientific evidence for creation is academically unsound and outrageously untrue, why not present the evidence and allow students to decide which view makes more sense? At the very least, presenting both sides would allow them to better understand the two views. Pro-evolution forces say (and they are saying it again in Cobb County) that no “reputable scientist” believes in the creation model. That is demonstrably untrue. No less a pro-evolution source that Science Digest noted in 1979 that “scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities ... Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science.” (Larry Hatfield, “Educators Against Darwin.” Cal Thomas (2002).

That Thomas had nicked Hatfield from a secondary quote mine rather than reading it himself was clear enough because the text Thomas used had not appeared that way in Hatfield (1979). Trivially, “Evolution” hadn’t been capitalized in the opening summary line that was drawn on, but more seriously, the second clause had actually read: “Some Creationists hold impressive credentials and cite science in support of their belief that the world was created 10,000 years ago.” At some point some untidy quote miner had converted “some” into “many” who held degrees specifically “in science” and uncritical copyists like Thomas have been repeating this chimeric version ever since.

An April 2014 Internet check retrieved over a dozen apologetic sites using it, such as The Independent Thinker (2001), a creationist newsletter “Specifically for those who question what they are taught”—but evidently not yet up to applying that standard to people they agree with (a mishmash of ID and YEC nameplates from Jonathan Wells and Michael Behe to Ken Ham, Carl Baugh and “Dr. Kenneth Hovind”). Another was the faithful summary of Lee Strobel (2004), The Case for a Creator, by Alex Damon (2004) for Angelfire.

All of which raises the recurring methodological concern: if someone like Thomas or The Independent Thinker or Strobel (and his online conveyor Damon by then yet one more step removed from Hatfield) can misquote an article so easily because they have lifted it from an unidentified secondary source, what conceptual barrier prevents them from doing that with just about everything they think, and what implications would this have for how TTC would be applied in Georgia and elsewhere?

But we’re not done with the Hatfield matter yet. The second clause of the Hatfield “quote” had been taken from an inset: “Who are the Creationists?” So who were they? As the date was 1979, Thomas ought to have known that the “scientists” being talked of couldn’t be the Intelligent Design proponents of 2002. And they weren’t. They were all Creation Scientists: specifically biologist Kenneth Cumming, biochemist Duane Gish, entomologist Joseph Henson, and three with engineering (not biology) backgrounds: aerospace Edward Blick, electrical Charles Harrison and civil Harold Henry.

And a pretty thin lot at that: not only were all peripheral scientifically in 2002 (insofar as work relating to biological evolution fields was concerned), but aside from the busy Duane Gish they played only a minor role even in creationist apologetics. Their collective paper trails have grown only more threadbare by 2014: Harrison and Henry have dropped off the scope entirely, while Cumming (1991; 2001) will be discussed later, along with the isolated apologetic postings of Henson (2013a-b) at Bob Jones University. Blick (1972; 2006) offered a light gloss of YEC opinion (from Henry Morris and Duane Gish to the Paluxy River tracks), but is known more today for his politically infused climate change denial, such as Blick (2009) on the “Global Warming Myth and Marxism.” Cumming had beat Blick to this Kulturkampf bar by some years, though, as Hatfield (1979, 96) quoted his belief that the 1970s’ ecological crisis “can be attributed rightly to humanistic mismanagement from an evolutionary perspective of man’s right to exploit his surroundings.”

A further clue as to just how superficial Blick’s understanding of details outside his aerodynamic specialty was surfaced in Blick (1972, 4): “The famous Albert Einstein had a simple argument against evolution—’God Almighty does not throw dice.’” It would have been even simpler for Blick’s assertion had Einstein been talking about “evolution” at the time (creationists typically misuse the quote to falsely intimate he was conventionally religious), but Einstein was expressing doubt about quantum theory, not evolution, which made the physicist an even worse choice for namedropping here, since on that issue Einstein happened to be wrong.

Stephen Hawking (1999) is an apropos lecture on the dice quote—though not without some irony, as Hawking has been prone to using “God” terminology in the same misleading way Einstein did, as shorthand for Nature and humility, curiosity, and even reverence for the deeper processes underlying it. In this area of trying to coopt Einstein for religion, creationist David Noebel (2009) selectively quoted Jammer (1999, 48) that Einstein (in 1929 at least) did not think of himself as an “atheist,” and Amir Aczel (2014, 103-107) was similarly exercised over New Atheists like Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins pegging Einstein as functionally an atheist. But whether Einstein’s occasional comments on “God” as a surrogate for the deep mysteries of why there are natural laws meant what Noebel or Aczel needed it to mean may be compared with Matthew Stanley (2009) and Coel Hellier (2013b) on Einstein’s ambivalent reaction to the activist atheism of his period—or even Christian apologist Rich Deem (2010b) acknowledging Einstein’s utter lack of belief in any personal morality-dictating creator god. It should be noted Einstein was a target for conservative xenophobes in America over his pacifism, but no indication that he had any concerns about evolutionary theory, Branch (2014ai).

So what would an honest science teacher in Georgia do when confronted by students or parents or legislators or pundits trotting out the belief system of Gish, Blick and company (perhaps even “quoted” from works exactly as carefully as Thomas and company did Hatfield)? If they followed Cal Thomas’ exhortation, and assuming they had done their scholarly homework, were they to dive in to explain in vivid detail all the reasons why the material being offered up was really wrong? Never mind that this would be forcing some teachers to offend in class the deep religious convictions of some of them who believed those things to be true in the same way Thomas believed Hatfield had written what he had “quoted” from him—no teacher could avoid this if the object truly was to “teach the controversy.”

There is no reason to think that Thomas ever imagined that could be the outcome of TTC. And that’s because of his implicit presumption that all those “many scientists” he imagined inhabited Hatfield’s secondarily pirated article (or their likeminded counterparts very much active in 2002 and since) could ever be in trouble that way. They must be right in all their views, and anyone who said otherwise must be blinded by that Darwinian dogma that TTC was certain to sweep away.

That TTC rested on the wide backs of Young Earth Creationist belief (plus or minus a few contentious zeroes) and the activism of its proponents was the unacknowledged cultural context for the disclaimer debate as John West (2002b) decried “Old Stereotypes” at FoxNews.com, reminding how the Georgia proposal did not explicitly “restrict the teaching of evolution” or “promote or require the teaching of creationism.” What West’s legalistic parsing did not consider was whether TTC as envisaged by people beyond the Discovery Institute reserve in any way prevented creationist views from being presented.

The irony (or hypocrisy, depending on one’s willingness to take their obtuseness as genuine rather than calculated) was only heightened when John Calvert and William Harris traveled to Cobb County for a Sunday seminar that “began with a prayer” to assure everyone that in pursuing the TTC paradigm “they are not advancing a faith-based approach to science education,” McDonald (2002b).

The phenomenon resumed after the court ruling that struck down the disclaimer, Brayton (2006d) noting the disdain of the American Family Association’s Brian Fahling. Dave Nutting (2005b) protested from the Alpha Omega Institute how the disclaimer had nothing to do with any “alternative theory” (like the creationism he believes in) and concluded: “It is time to say, ‘NO’ to the ACLU and the small minority that are wrecking the educational system of this country in their attempt to promote atheistic, humanistic philosophy!”