Chapter I

Just as the Kansas II locomotive was leaving the station en route to its derailment, over in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004 the Dover Area School Board (DASB) had too few textbooks in class for their thousand high school students and so considered buying new biology books, covered at length by Matzke (2004b).

By now the world was going Internet, and it was increasingly easy to find coverage by interested parties in the science camp, bubbling with curiosity to see how good the Intelligent Design movement would be in facing down their first legal challenge. The full testimony has been archived at Talk.Origins Archive (2006b). Humburg & Brayton (2005b) followed the case at the Skeptic Society, Matzke (2006a) for NCSE, with broader summaries of the Kitzmiller case by Crouch et al. (2006, 29-33), Trowel (2006) and DelFattore (2007, 1-28). Media coverage by the conservative Fox News (2005c,e) and liberal MSNBC (2005a) tended to reflect their respective sympathies.

Local comedian Mike Argento (2005a-d) mined the trial for all it was worth for the York Daily Record, and two useful books emerged from parallel observers: one by another York Daily Record reporter, Lauri Lebo (2008), the other by filmmaker Matthew Chapman (2007). A distant great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, Chapman’s 40 Days and 40 Nights supplied some especially trenchant character sketches of the participants and the background context—Dover defense attorney Patrick Gillen had drawn the Noachian parallel, though he insisted the trial’s duration was only “an interesting coincidence, and it was not by design, Lebo (2008, 176).

To start, Chapman (2007, 9, 19-20) described the Dover Area School District as “constantly broke” due to a shrinking industrial base. Trowel (2006, 876-880) noted rural population decline in York County amid demographic shifts in an otherwise rapidly urbanizing environment followed a pattern seen in several other antievolution-friendly counties (including Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, and Cobb County, Georgia), exacerbating local tensions as local traditions had to grapple with the differing beliefs of newcomers.

In Dover, School Board Chair Alan Bonsell (an auto repairman by trade), Sheila Harkins and others got on the board initially to oppose what they thought an overly ambitious school building and repair program undertaken by Aralene “Barrie” Callahan (a Unitarian who would become one of the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller case)—an ironically opposite situation from the free spending conservative Christians on the Vista, California school board of a decade earlier noted in TIP 1.6. Clearly the last thing the cash-strapped Dover school district needed was a costly lawsuit, but as things developed, mere fiscal prudence was not going to get in the way of this Kulturkampf steamroller.

Without much fuss, Dover’s science teachers recommended the district get Ken Miller & Joseph Levine’s Biology: The Living Science, but curriculum chair William Buckingham would have none of that. In his view, America “wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution,” but “was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such.” Thus Buckingham objected that Biology had a timeline noting the Origin of Species but not God or creationism, and even had a problem with the book just mentioning Darwin’s finches, Chapman (2007, 88). As Miller & Levine was “laced with Darwinism” it should not be adopted until it could be balanced with an appropriate creationist work, and after looking through a list of the options available in the YEC/OEC/ID field, including apparently a “Home Science Catalog” that listed Of Pandas and People under the “Creation Science” category,” Chapman (2007, 136), Buckingham settled on Pandas as his balancing text.

Buckingham found a ready ally in Alan Bonsell, something of an overconfident sanctimonious bully with a family tradition to uphold. Bonsell’s father Donald had served on the school board and tried at that time to get creationism included in the curriculum, but was thwarted by an attentive biology teacher. The Bonsells and Buckingham reflected a populist local subculture of superficial conspiracy-minded antievolutionary thinking, where knowledge of the “hoax” of evolution was supposedly being suppressed by a Darwinian orthodoxy far removed from their own experience, Chapman (2007, 35, 61).

Alan Bonsell recommended Kent Hovind’s Evolution Is Stupid video to prove “Intelligent Design” was sound science (an indication of how the term had morphed into a synonym for YEC despite the persistent demurs of the Discovery Institute) and followed Ken Ham’s AIG. Local pastor Jim Grove stepped up to show the Hovind video to educate the citizens of Dover, Chapman (2007, 67, 198-200) and Lebo (2008, 143-146, 217-219). Chapman (2007, 204) particularly gaped at the bald historical illiteracy of Grove, who believed America “was not that immoral when it stayed to its Christian roots,” a tall order to defend given the country’s bitter legacy of slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, as well as the merry witch killing hysteria back at Salem.

But it wasn’t just Grove stirring the antievolution pot in Dover. The assistant superintendent for the district, Mike Baksa, had attended (on the taxpayer’s tab) a 2003 Christian college seminar sponsored by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (!) affirming the legal and educational appropriateness of discussing creationism in school (though mentioned in the subsequent court testimony, just who participated in this event has remained frustratingly vague). Baksa advised Buckingham on how evolution was covered in Christian schools, Lebo (2008, 33-34), while Alan Bonsell pressured the science teachers to balance their instruction with creationism, Chapman (2007, 63-64). It also came out at the trial that the research of Pandas and ID Baksa undertook included having his secretary consult the ICR website, John Jones (2005).

Teachers toned down their activities as a result. Lebo (2008, 17) noted how biology teachers Jen Miller and Rob Eshbach, both children of pastors, now “avoided the topic of humans and common descent. They brushed over the fossil record.” Deep Time was a casualty too: “Fearing retribution, Miller stopped using the timeline in the hallway and began teaching solely from the textbook,” Lebo (2008, 21).

There was also the incident of Zach Strausbaugh’s large evolution mural, noted by Chapman (2007, 61-62) and Lebo (2008, 11-13, 19) but categorized as “astonishing” in the court verdict summary, John Jones (2005). Painted in the 1990s, it had never been displayed in the hall and ended up presented to one of the teachers, who posted it on her chalkboard. But in 2002 Larry Reeser, head of buildings and grounds for the Dover Area School District, didn’t like its subject so took it upon himself to take it down and burn it. Buckingham was not only on hand to “gleefully” watch this ethically questionable act of theft and vandalism, but adding some veiled extortion to the mix by demanding “that the teachers agree that there would never again be a mural depicting evolution in any of the classrooms and in exchange, Buckingham would agree to support the purchase of the biology textbook in need by the students.” The italic emphasis was by Judge Jones in his final court verdict.

Adding to this already murky stew, several personal issues appear to have affected the ex-Marine Buckingham’s behavior during this period, Chapman (2007, 27-28, 222) and Lebo (2008, 77-78, 102-103). A persistent OxyContin addiction stemming from an injury while working as a prison guard put him in rehab for a time, and emotional stress from a string of family deaths (including his parents) didn’t help. But beyond those mitigating factors, Buckingham’s views emanated from deep in the Kulturkampf hinterlands, waxing Hovindish in describing the ACLU as the “American Communist Lawyers Union”—Lauri Lebo’s father was of a similar opinion—and oh-so-casually favoring nuking Iraq to kill all the Muslims, Chapman (2007, 222, 224-225) and Lebo (2008, 200).

Against this background, though, half of the Dover Board still wanted to adopt the textbook without any caveats, but Buckingham and his allies kept vote after vote deadlocked 4-4 until one of the pro-Pandas camp, Angie Yingling, changed her vote in frustration simply so they could move forward, and in August Miller & Levine’s Biology was selected without Pandas attached.

Although the developing debate over Pandas elicited warning grumbles from Americans United for Separation of Church and State that the board was treading close to a legal cliff, the Buckingham camp did not pause at the intersection to look both ways before arranging for copies of Pandas (numbers mentioned run from 50 to 60) to be anonymously donated to the school library and having the book listed as a reference text when the DASB voted 6-3 in October to amend their curriculum thus:

Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s Theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Origins of life will not be taught.

At this point a reminder note about terminology is warranted: that for many creationists “origins of life” meant far more than just the original appearance of life (billions or thousands of years ago depending on one’s perspective), but represented all the origin of species topics objected to by antievolutionists (and which for the YEC branch can readily spill over into geochronology and cosmology issues).

The overt inclusion of ID made the papers and soon the NCSE and ACLU were following the case—the ACLU having apparently been alerted to the Dover board’s activities by Steve Stough, a conservative Republican Christian science teacher and track coach in the nearby Southern York County School District, who also opposed Intelligent Design, Lebo (2008, 48-50).

The Dover board in turn consulted with the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Organized in 1999 by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, a devout Catholic, and former Michigan prosecutor Richard Thompson, the TMLC was conceived as a Kulturkampf religious defense “ministry” that would use the courts to fight secularism in society (Rick Santorum was on their board), Lebo (2008, 26-27). Chapman (2007, 44-45) described the TMLC as staunchly defending free speech when it came to antiabortion activists and those favoring Christian images on public property, but less supportive for those disapproving of the conservative status quo. Lebo (2008, 135-136) noted that Thompson’s court manner varied from disinterested to accusatory. He tended to grandstand more for the public and media (and would find many opportunities for that).

More broadly, Lebo (2008, 36) suggested that the climate of the 2004 election year, rippling with President Bush’s “family values” rhetoric, signaled to conservative evangelicals that an attack on evolution might succeed this time. The President himself would even remark on the desirability of teaching both sides of the evolution issue in a press conference as the Dover Intelligent Design trial was reaching its conclusion, prompting some hole-plugging PR repair work by Bush’s pro-evolution science advisor, John Marburger, Branch (2005) and DeVore (2005).

The Dover case was right up their alley in another way: the TMLC’s Robert Muise was already very keen on Pandas, having urged several school districts to buy Pandas (such as Charlotte, Virginia in May 2000) and the retired Marine had become convinced of ID from reading it himself. The TMLC had been searching for a good test case on intelligent design, Matzke (2006a) and Lebo (2008, 27-28). Muise’s efforts were just one link in a chain of failed attempts to get Of Pandas and People adopted as a supplemental text, from Bennett (2000) on an effort in Idaho, to Sullinger (1999), Matsumura (2000a) and Stephens (2002c) regarding Pratt County, Kansas, where the state biologist of Kansas, Chris Mammoliti, insisted that Pandas represented “pure science” and no religion.

Lebo (2008, 40) noted a shift in rhetoric between June and July 2004 after the TMLC got involved. The explicitly creationist Bonsell and Buckingham began using “intelligent design” as the label, and spoke of children’s education rather than supporting Jesus. Bonsell talked of ID a scientific theory, an alternative to Darwinism—though not necessarily knowing anything about either.

After four board members left (several in protest over the curriculum change) the DASB appointed four ID-friendly replacements. One of those resigning over the Pandas ID issue was Casey Brown. A Christian herself, she objected to having been asked twice over the previous if she’d been “born again.” As far as she was concerned, “No one has, nor should have, the right to ask that of a fellow board member,” Lebo (2008, 46-47). Brown’s replacement was staunchly pro-ID Pentacostalist Pastor Ed Rowand, who demanded reporters reveal their religious views before he would answer their questions. Lebo (2008, 93) refused: “I said it was none of his business, especially since intelligent design wasn’t supposed to be about religion.”

Amid the mounting scrutiny, the unified and emboldened DASB issued a press release that included a statement all biology teachers were to read to their classes in January when they got to the evolution unit:

The state standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and to eventually take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves. As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind.

The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life up to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses on the standards and preparing students to be successful on standards-based assessments.

Evidently mindful of at least some of the hornets flitting around the nest they were about to injudiciously whack with a big stick, the press release also contained a disclaimer to the disclaimer: “The Superintendent, Dr. Richard Nilsen, is on record stating that no teacher will teach ‘Intelligent design’, Creationism, or present his/her or the board’s religious beliefs.”

But that cat was long out of the bag. Telling examples were recounted by Chapman (2007, 136, 151-152, 161-163). Two of the resigned board members, pro-ID Jane Cleaver and creationist Noel Wenrich, felt their own religious convictions were being questioned in the heat of a controversy that usurped religion as a personal family/church matter and forced it into an all too public God-or-atheism school arena. Wenrich had voted against the disclaimer because it involved public funds and invited a potentially costly lawsuit, but when “Buckingham called Wenrich an atheist for not supporting him, Wenrich threatened to punch Buckingham,” Lebo (2008, 47).

On the other side, Dover resident Julie Smith’s daughter Katherine had been in a Bible Club and challenged her one day, “Well, mom, evolution is a lie, what kind of Christian are you anyway?” Lebo (2008, 6, 146, 216) could add the experience of two of the Kitzmiller plaintiffs, “Bryan and Christy Rehm, who teach Bible school and sing in their church choir, but who were called atheists by their neighbors.” When Christy (who would still be asked if she was an atheist even after the verdict came down) confronted Ed Rowand about why he thought he could speak for God, and reminded him that she and her husband were churchgoing Christians, Rowand called her a liar. And Lebo’s own father, a fundamentalist Christian, believed

that those who oppose the school board are leading an attack on Christian values. In his mind, this was just another ACLU-backed attempt to destroy God.

But what Dean Lebo, my father, refuses to believe, and what I have been unable to make him understand, is that what played out here in our community was faith based on deception. This isn’t a story about God versus science, but one of truth versus lies. Lebo (2008, 2-3).

At the trial, Richard Thompson would ask the plaintiffs whether any of them had been harmed by the “simple curriculum change” the DASB had made (evidently expecting them to answer no)—which backfired as personal examples of intimidation and rancor were recounted, impaling the Dover policy on the Establishment Clause Lemon Test prongs, Lebo (2008, 126-129, 197-198). Trowel (2006, 870-876) noted the divisive “us versus them” character of current antievolutionism, and Chapman (2007, 153) traced a grim apologetic phylogeny for this caustic situation: “the cause of this pain began with men like Behe, was passed down through men like Buckingham, and didn’t stop until families were acrimoniously shouting in the kitchens of their homes.”

Dover had moved way beyond an argument over which textbook a school district should buy or the rarified forensics of Irreducible Complexity. And there were further warning clouds on the ID horizon.

According to the court testimony in Talk.Origins Archive (2006b) Buckingham approached the Discovery Institute for help and examined material they provided, such as the Icons of Evolution video—which “Buckingham apparently bullied teachers to watch—twice,” Padian & Matzke (2006). On this point, DeWolf et al. (2007, 10) hair-split that the Icons video and companion study guide “focused only on scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory. They did not discuss ID.” Which begged the question whether Buckingham would be able to notice the difference between a project that didn’t discuss ID and one that supposedly did.

But the DASB policy’s plan to sow doubts about evolution while dangling Pandas as the only recommended resource began to trip over the evolving position of the Discovery Institute, now seeing the legal dangers of actively trying to teach ID in schools, Lebo (2008, 62-63). As the water carrying of the creationist Sorcerer’s Apprentices in Dover began to slosh over the rim of the carefully filled TTC apologetic bucket the DI was trying to popularize and drown the first attempt for ID to pass a court test, Discovery Institute (2005f-h), DeWolf et al. (2006) and Michael Francisco (2006a-b) turned on the pumps and disapproved of the Dover approach.

This might be seen as especially ironic given the prominent part so many of their camp (Behe and Stephen Meyer most notably) had played in the revamped Of Pandas and People that the DASB was relying on as their assigned authority. But it only reflected the grim reality of the non-progress of Intelligent Design as an ongoing scientific concept—signaling how step by step the verbal gymnastics of the antievolution campaign since Edwards v. Aguillard has had to backpedal on the public display of their own resources and roots lest in the flush of “teach the controversy” that get subjected to some “critical analysis” too.

The ACLU and AU went ahead with their legal challenge in December, involving 11 Dover parents. At the press conference on the filing, a creationist couple waved a sign “ACLU Censors Truth” and afterward passed out Kent Hovind literature, Lebo (2008, 64-65). The lead plaintiff, Tammy Kitzmiller, began receiving abusive letters, Chapman (2007, 154-155) and Lebo (2008, 90). Likely from a single deep-dipped poison pen, they belied the “this isn’t about religion” mantra. Kitzmiller was variously accused of hating God, being headed for hell and liable to get shot along the way just like “Madelyn Murray” (sic), favoring homosexuality (riffing off Jerry Falwell’s “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” quip), and escalating to the warning that “because of heathens like you” God might be about to destroy America with tornadoes (more below on applied creationist meteorology with Pat Robertson).

Meanwhile, the DASB voted 7-0 to engage the legal representation of the Thomas More Law Center. The 0 in question was Angie Yingling, disengaging from a board now conspicuously dominated by what she described as “religious zealots preaching from the shadows” and formally resigning in February 2005.

By now there were more lawyers on the case than there were parties, a far-ranging lot of personalities and positions, but all knowing their way around a court room. Incompetence of legal representation would not be a factor here. And all the players recognized that this was not going to be a minor episode of litigation—Kitzmiller promised (or threatened) to be important, historic. News media flocked to the trial, surrounding the courthouse with TV trucks and crowding the courtroom with gear and spectators. Dover was going to be noticed. Everything was going to be noticed (at least by some).

Depositions were taken from Buckingham, former chair Alan Bonsell, and new president Sheila Harkins, during which it was discovered that none of them seemed to clearly understand what this “Intelligent Design” was that they were so resolved to promote, Lebo (2008, 69-84, 166). When eventually called to testify, the elderly Jane Cleaver kept calling it “intelligence design,” Chapman (2007, 238). Cleaver and Heather Geesey had relied on Buckingham and Bonsell’s assurances that ID was a scientific theory, though Geesey didn’t have all that clear a distinction between ID and creationism even when quizzed by Judge Jones, Lebo (2008, 165-167). And what did Buckingham think ID was? Asked to define the idea in his deposition, Buckingham decided “back through time something, molecules, amoeba, whatever, evolved into the complexities of life we have now,” which Chapman (2007, 220) drily noted wasn’t all that bad a general layman’s take on the evolutionary view Buckingham thought he didn’t believe in.

“Board members spoke of taking their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they lacked the commitment to understand what they were fighting for. They wanted it taught to children, but were too lazy to learn about it for themselves,” Lebo (2008, 79). Their stunning lack of curiosity was no surprise to me—it is yet another of those diagnostic tortucan traits.

And then there was the Pandas book, which the contenders on all sides had problems with due to its dated 1993 content and arcane approach to issues students might well have trouble making sense of outside the narrow focus of the creation/evolution spotlight, Chapman (2007, 96, 118, 124-125, 188, 234-236) and Lebo (2008, 219). While Sheila Harkins and Buckingham at least had appeared to have actually read the book (and remained firmly ebullient about it even while not comprehending it), Bonsell hadn’t read Pandas at all. Heather Geesey had a copy, but didn’t open it—which may not have mattered all that much given that she didn’t know or seem to care what ID involved anyway. Chapman (2007, 236) did not pull his punches in summarizing how Pandas ended up in Dover’s school library:

Here it was in its most naked form: an auto repairman appointed an ex-cop and corrections officer, a biblical literalist without a shred of knowledge, to decide which books the kids should learn from—and a woman who had no curiosity about anything, even her own most deeply held beliefs, weighed in in support.

When the time came to read the mandated disclaimer, Dover’s biology teachers refused (invoking their own academic freedom not to be required to profess as scientific something that wasn’t), prompting the school administrators to jump in to present the disclaimer for them, accomplished as fifteen students and all of the teachers walked out, Matzke (2004b) and Mervis (2005). The TMLC’s Richard Thompson, “who touts the importance of academic freedom, immediately blasted the teachers’ decision,” Lebo (2008, 82).

The customary duel of expertise ensued as Cornell University and their “Paleontological Research Institution” dispatched a letter opposing the Dover ID position, Allmon et al. (2005). When 30 faculty members of the University of Pennsylvania biology and philosophy departments directed an open letter of protest to the DASB over their ID policy, though, Richard Thompson launched into quite a rant:

If the level of inquiry supporting your letter is an example of the type of inquiry you make before arriving at scientific conclusions, I suggest at the very least, your students should get their tuition money back, and more appropriately, the University should fire you as a scientist. Matzke (2004b).

Thompson strolled onto some even thinner ice when he went on to question the relevance of philosophy to this science issue—which would be news to Phillip Johnson or Alvin Plantinga or John Calvert fervently blowing the thoroughly philosophical anti-naturalism ram’s horn for ID (as well as running the risk of driving over their philosophy professor Stephen Meyer). In “déjà vu all over again” mode, Thompson’s Kitzmiller v. Dover game plan devolved into a display of some of the “credible scientists” supporting the purely secular purpose of Dover incorporating the religion-free science of ID, this time courtesy of the Discovery Institute. But as with Creation Science in McLean v. Arkansas twenty years before, that was easier said than done.

The defense planned to call eight witnesses. The 5 technical science ones were all orbiting the Discovery Institute: Michael Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, University of Memphis rhetoric professor John Angus Campbell and University of Idaho microbiologist Scott Minnich, whose expertise did at least actually involve that ID icon, the bacterial flagellum. The sociology of science would be addressed by Steve Fuller flown over from the University of Warwick in the UK. Fuller (2005) flagged his perspective by tersely dissenting from the SciPolicy (2005) amicus brief and accompanying Barton et al. (2005) editorial opposing Intelligent Design.

The appropriateness of ID as an invigorating rising science that promoted “critical thinking” as a fundamental skill distinct from religious presumptions would be further defended from the Kulturkampf by Warren Nord (recall his testimony in Kansas covered earlier) and Dick M. Carpenter II, a University of Colorado education professor and Focus on the Family analyst whose “Love Won Out” campaign confidently sought to “cure” gays, Chapman (2007, 207). Carpenter’s libertarian family focus included Dick Carpenter (2001) warning the reparative therapy ideologues at NARTH about the threat of gay activism in schools. That was when Carpenter was still at Colorado Christian University, an institution committed to biblical inerrancy that incorporates “analysis of the biblical texts relating to creation” in its course on “Evolutionary Theory” and requires regular chapel attendance for students seeking advanced degrees, Colorado Christian University (2012a-c).

Six witnesses were scheduled for the plaintiffs to defend the scientific status of evolution and consequently its appropriateness for students to learn in Dover: Jeffrey Shallit (brought in from the University of Waterloo in Canada) was set to directly rebut Dembski’s theoretical complexity arguments. Robert Pennock and Barbara Forrest would cover the philosophy of science and the history of the ID movement, while Brian Alters of the NCSE would address the educational implication. Ken Miller (of obvious relevance as the co-author of Dover’s approved science text) and paleontologist Kevin Padian would cover the biological science and fossil issues.

Or at least that was the plan. But as the trial date neared, fractures in the ID edifice began to show. The planned deposition of Campbell never took place. Presumably Campbell would have reflected the standard ID model already fielded in Darwinism, Design, & Public Education (with Behe, Dembski, Fuller and Nord also contributors), Campbell & Meyer (2003). There would have been the mysterious origin of life issue, subsequent biological complexity supposedly beyond the reach of naturalistic evolutionary processes, and the “usual suspect” of the Cambrian Explosion to stand in for all the hundreds of millions of years of paleontology ID has so far managed not to explore (such as the menagerie of Mesozoic dinosaurs), and elements of this did trickle into the Dover defense.

While the TMLC had been taking seriously the DI’s earlier plans for recommending ID material to be included in public education, such as the DeWolf et al. (1999) ID curriculum guide, the “not ready for prime time” quality of ID efforts was set to get poked by the same Lemon Test prongs that had deflated Creation Science in the 1980s, and the law firm suddenly found the DI tacking in a new direction: educators shouldn’t mandate including ID after all, and please don’t suggest we had ever thought otherwise. Only Richard Thompson was not shy about reminding them that they had thought otherwise, occasioning some icy moments at the “Science Wars” forum on the Dover affair sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute in October 2005.

When the moderator turned from this food fight to invite Ken Miller to comment, he first replied, “Do we have to? I’m really enjoying this. That is the most fascinating discussion I’ve heard all day,” NCSE (2005b). He did go on, though, to remind listeners of what was at stake regarding teachers faced with the Dover disclaimer, where their own state’s teacher code of ethics enjoined them never to “knowingly present false information to a student.” If “academic freedom” really was on the block at Dover, “how about the academic freedom of the teacher not to present false information.”

As more of the ID stage scenery caught flames and cascaded onto the collapsing design temple, Dembski and Meyer were now insisting on having their own independent legal representation. Dembski had apparently become concerned over the legal issues posed by his connection with the Foundation for Thought and Ethics who were behind the Panda text that was the centerpiece of the case. Meyer’s position in the upper echelon of the backpedaling Discovery Institute may have been shadowing his rearview mirror. As the TMLC dithered over this legal representation issue, Dembski and Meyer bailed out (causing Shallit’s planned response to Dembski to be cut as well), though available as Shallit (2005a). Nord and Carpenter soon followed suit (exact reasons unspecified).

That left just Behe, Minnich and Fuller to carry the ID ball in Dover. Together they represented an especially narrow trifecta of fields (biochemistry, microbiology, and the sociology of science) that covered the technical ground (genetics, developmental biology, ecology, systematics, paleontology, etc.) in the same way as a slice of Swiss cheese on a very large scientific sandwich: it’s hard to conceal much of the meat underneath.

Much as William Jennings Bryan’s Genesis joust with Darrow was the lasting image from the Scopes Trial, the main Dover trope was Michael Behe going into a crash and burn stall as his limited familiarity with the relevant technical literature in biology became evident under cross examination. That material is best covered in other chapters (though we’ll return to some of Behe’s testimony shortly), but the underlying impact of Behe’s poor showing on the stand at Dover was that no matter how quickly supporters tried to move the goalposts, it still wasn’t going to be fast enough to hide the fact that they didn’t actually have a ball on the field.

On this vital point of ID’s need to earn its place at the science education table, not be granted it by administrative fiat, Minnich and Fuller did not give Behe any help.

In court, Robert Muise guided Minnich gently through the minefield, casually pirouetting around ID’s unearned scientific credibility by having Minnich agree that intelligent design shouldn’t “be fully integrated into a science curriculum” but that Pandas would nevertheless be an “advantageous” supplement to make the students of Dover “aware” of that ID theory whose very substance was a point at issue and which they apparently weren’t going to get much of a look at.

Steve Fuller’s testimony continued along this path, Kauffman (2005), MSNBC (2005b) and Raffaele (2005a). Fuller, who struck Chapman (2007, 210) as rather a hyper sort, deployed that energy on the stand to expeditiously dig the ID conceptual hole even deeper:

“Well, I mean, it’s too young basically at the point. And it hasn’t really done all of the theoretical elaboration on the recovery of the appropriate history to set itself in a proper tradition that then would kind of field the imagination to come up with the right kinds of experiments.”

This was essentially to say that intelligent design was not just half baked; it wasn’t even aware of what ingredients it needed to mix together on the counter top. And yet, to continue the food metaphor, its advocates were already trying to force what few uncooked and often old ingredients it did have down the throats of innocents. To argue that “thinking like God” might be a wonderful spur to the imagination was terrific. To cause indigestion in children was not. Worse than irresponsible, it was lazy. Chapman (2007, 213).

While Fuller would cut no slack for a “Darwin-mongering” museum display about Darwin, covered by Ganguli (2005), Fuller’s slack-cutting for Intelligent Design knew no bounds. In order for future ID theory to be developed, students would need to learn about it in school first, putting the scientific process backwards, turning the educational system into an incubator for ideas before they had matured, rather than the fuddy-duddy old way of using schools to pass on seasoned knowledge and experience. The embryonic ID theory might need a little special care to nourish it along, something to insulate it from the harsh glare shining on the regular scientific establishment—making the classrooms of Dover something like the first installment of an “affirmative action” plan for ID, catching the eye of local humorist Argento (2005b).

All of which put Fuller rather far from what was, after all, the point of the court case: the choice of a science textbook and the appropriateness of attaching Pandas to it as a specified supplement. Which issue the plaintiff’s attorney Vic Walczak summarily hammered home in his examination of Fuller. “Walczak then established that Fuller was not familiar with Miller and Levin’s Biology book or with Pandas and had no expertise in biology, paleontology, education (science or otherwise), Behe’s irreducible complexity, or Dembski’s specified information theory,” Chapman (2007, 215).

Norman Levitt (2006) explored the far crannies of someone whose “intellectual radar” had gone “on the fritz” by noting how Fuller had been “unable to detect deliberate nonsense, coarse and silly blather easily pegged as a sophomoric joke” concerning the notorious Sokal hoax, where a trendy postmodernist social science journal readily published a scientifically preposterous screed intentionally crafted by physicist Alan Sokal to excite Pavlovian disbelief from anyone with a scintilla of scientific knowledge, the affair described in all its surreal glory by Sokal & Bricmont (1998).

On his turn on the stand, Behe clearly wanted to keep ID and Pandas isolated from any discussion of common descent (which Behe has says he has no problem with). Pressed by Rothschild’s questioning, though, Behe first insisted a student wouldn’t come away from reading Pandas doubting that very thing—this in spite of the fact that Pandas never accepted any instance where animals were descended by common descent (from birds and mammals to our own human lineage) and I know of no one in the antievolution community has ever been invoked Pandas to that end. Then again, Behe casually declined to evaluate any of the paleontological assertions in the book (demurring on account of his being a biochemist).

Only after a lengthy back and forth did Behe acknowledge that Pandas did object to common descent on a factual level in a way ID didn’t at its theoretical one. Which meant the disclaimer was trying to recommend a book to explain ID that actively conflicted with it (at least if Behe’s narrow definitional catwalk was taken as the one and true design model). In this respect Behe was unknowingly reprising Dean Kenyon back in Louisiana in the 1980s, trying to remove the Creation from Creation Science—this time, it was the Intelligence in Intelligent Design.

While the wishy-washy performance of the three Expert Witnesses for Intelligent Design was but a reflection of the wishy-washy character of Intelligent Design theory up at the top, in the end it was the genesis of Of Pandas and People as a set of pages with text assertions on them, and the behavior of the human actors on the Dover School Board who sought to make those assertions available to their students, that peeled back the cover on the creationist grassroots.

Prompted by the tenacious Barbara Forrest (2005; 2006), the plaintiff’s legal team had explored how the Pandas book had come to be. It took some subpoenas, but eventually the Foundation for Thought and Ethics coughed up the early drafts of Pandas, and the findings were rolled out at Dover. Padian & Matzke (2009, 35) summarized how “the draft book’s title changed from Creation Biology (1983) to Biology and Creation (1986) to Biology and Origins (1987), and finally to Of Pandas and People,” with two 1987 drafts preceding the 1989 first edition. Looking through the drafts year by year the chronology was obvious: as the court rulings of the 1980s marked the failure of all overtly creationist Balanced Treatment legislation, the plans to market their new textbook to that purpose required retooling the product.

Not that they changing any of its content—they just rephrased selected bits, terminology that had grown suspect due to the new legal roadblocks. Things like “creationists”—which now became “design proponents.” Meaning Of Pandas and People was an “Intelligent Design” textbook (and not the “Creationist” one it plainly was before the adjustment) only in the sense that the Find/Replace button had been added to the word processor toolbar.

Except in one telltale instance the paste process had been done a mite too hastily, without proofreading the result: “cdesign proponentsists,” Matzke (2005d). Though, as it happened, the cut-and-paste had been so pervasive in the new Pandas that the “cdesign proponentsists” example (a “transitional form” if ever there was one) hadn’t been used at the Kitzmiller trial, Forrest (2008c, 191). Lebo (2008, 2010) noted that the draft version of Pandas’ planned replacement, The Design of Life, had begun to replace “intelligent design” with “sudden emergence.” By the time it saw print, Dembski & Wells (2008, 77) had moved on to “abrupt appearance” instead.

Lebo (2008, 141-142) took note of Thompson’s effort to drag Forrest onto his Kulturkampf turf by asking her if she believed in the “immortality of the human spirit” (the question was disallowed). Keep reminding yourself: ID doesn’t have anything to do with religion.

In the meantime the gears of politics had ground on. In the November 2005 election, all the pro-ID school board members were voted out of office, prompting Pat Robertson to don the mantel of a Jeremiah or Samuel and declare that the voters of Dover had just banned God, Elsner (2005). And they’d better not pray to God if anything bad happened to them either (not that the track record of prayer diverting hurricanes or repairing earthquake damage has been particularly impressive to date, in or outside of the 700 Club’s magic circle). Many religious citizens in Dover were not amused by Robertson’s arrogant presumption of speaking for the Almighty, Lebo (2008, 180-181).

With the absence of a viable Intelligent Design theory and the transparent creationist roots of Pandas exposed, only one more debacle was in store for the Dover defense, related to the mysterious donation of Pandas to the Dover library and the degree to which the board had been advancing its use in terms of creationism rather than Intelligent Design. “In a memo, Dover’s principal, Trudy Peterman, asked about the creationist conversation and challenged the administration. Nilsen, the superintendent, dismissed the woman, saying she had a habit of exaggerating. And later he gave her a bad performance review,” Lebo (2008, 20).

But that wasn’t the end of it. All the DASB players were called as witnesses in court, and one of the longest stretches of Lebo (2008, 66-84) was devoted to this matter, following as board members piled over one another lying about their actions on the stand. Apparently Richard Thompson and the TMLC legal team knew how it would sink their case on the spot were they to admit their own opinions and actions, and soon someone(s) were busily destroying audio records of the June meeting where the troubling subject had come before the board—Sheila Harkins even publicly accused local reporter Joe Maldonado (whose background included attending Liberty University!) of lying in his newspaper accounts, Lebo (2008, 88, 122).

Evidently failing to learn the lesson of Watergate stonewalling (especially when you aren’t sufficiently thorough about gathering up all the available incriminating breadcrumbs), the local Fox News affiliate had Buckingham on camera explicitly connecting the textbook search to creationism. Et tu, Fox News (2005d)?

Maybe it was the OxyContin speaking when Buckingham “blamed newspapers he claimed he didn’t read for making him say something he insisted he never said,” Lebo (2008, 163).

And it wasn’t over, Lebo (2008, 168-172, 199). In his court deposition, William Buckingham had explicitly denied knowing anything about who had financed the Pandas donation, but cross examination established that it was Buckingham who had raised money for their purchase at his church. When Alan Bonsell marched down the same path, the plaintiffs’ attorney didn’t need to explore this, for by that time a distinctly not pleased Judge Jones jumped in to question Bonsell directly. Even the TMLC must have taken note of that. And yet even after that, Bonsell and Buckingham denied having lied in the case.

Borderline dissembling there may have been at Scopes in 1925 or McLean in 1982, but no one there could have been accused of lying under oath. The irony of this was not lost on Argento (2005c-d), who lamented in the latter post how “it’s really a sad day for America when public officials can no longer lie convincingly enough to get it past a federal judge.”

This spectacle of hypocrisy had involved more than just the destruction of damning audio records. Lebo noted the board had also changed the rules on public comments to squelch debate, evidently in the vain expectation that sweeping the debris under the rug could be done without having a much bigger rug.

Publicly, Dover’s school board members spoke of their commitment to sound science education, but privately, behind closed doors, they spoke of leading this nation to a Christian revolution.

And along the way, they bore false witness, and they slandered others. Lebo (2008, 2).

Lebo (2008, 103) was much affected by her evangelical father’s failure to condemn the board’s lying, touching upon the third rail of the absolute morality the Bible supposedly offers. As can be seen in other cases, especially the matter of human slavery discussed in Chapter 6 of Downard (2004), of what good is an absolute moral framework if you aren’t always going to absolutely use it?

By this time it didn’t require the Delphic Oracle to see where things would be going in the verdict by John Jones (2005), covered by the media in general sources like Raffaele (2005b), as well as the inevitable supportive commentary from the secular camp, such as Padian (2006) or Rosenhouse (2006b).

The Dover case had fallen apart based on the religious roots of Pandas and ignorance of ID on the part of the Dover board, and only compounded by Buckingham and Bonsell’s perjury. With no sliver of hope for any “secular purpose” for the disclaimer, the Dover disclaimer was doomed. Jones remarked on “the activism of an ill-informed faction” on the DASB who had “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.” Overall, Jones’ exasperation came through when he lamented the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover boards’ antievolution policy.

But both sides had affirmatively requested that the court go farther and rule on whether ID was science. Coming into the litigation, the TMLC team would have liked nothing better than for a federal judge to put a stamp of legal approval on their enterprise at last—Richard Thompson had optimistically issued a press release proclaiming “A Revolution in Evolution is Underway,” Lebo (2008, 85)—while the NCSE set would rest much easier if the law dropped a big anvil on this operation in its very first stay in the dock. Jones’ unqualified answer that ID wasn’t science signified that the plaintiffs’ findings of fact and the closing argument of Rothschild (2005) carried more weight with him than the slim pickings supplied by Behe, Minnich and Fuller.

Dover moved on after the ruling, Lebo (2008, 215-216, 221-222). The science teachers heaved a collective sigh after Jones’ verdict, now able to teach their subjects properly, openly, not on the sly anymore, though Bonsell remained convinced that their side would have carried the day had they only appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Buckingham thought Jones’ ruling was “unjustifiable homicide,” but received little comfort from a religious community that scapegoated him, and his fellow board members ignored him, while his worsening health put him in the hospital. Of the ID supporters in Dover, Lebo’s final judgment: “They have found no humility.”

Humility was in equally short supply over at the Discovery Institute, as they immediately castigated Jones (an appointee of George W. Bush with the support of Rick Santorum) as an “activist” judge of the worst sort, prompting Padian & Matzke (2006) to remind that “the DI uses the same public relations firm as the ‘Swift Boat Veterans’ did.” Judge Jones commented on his ruling and the reaction to it in lectures and interview, Cambias (2006), John Jones (2006a-b) and Kimmel (2006)—that latter for Dickinson Magazine at Jones’ alma mater, Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Parenthetically, I was struck by some of Dickinson’s notable alumni: Dred Scott jurist Roger Taney (1777-1864) class of 1795, President James Buchanan (1791-1868) class of 1809, all the way to Barry Lynn class of 1970. Rosie O’Donnell attended but did not graduate. And for lagniappe, Judge Jones would come up again years later as among the many federal jurists striking down gay marriage bans around the country, Eric C. Miller (2014a).

Now at this point in the tale (the bigger picture of the “evolution” of the Intelligent Design movement, not just the end game at Dover) the proponents of ID were confronted with a genuine spectacle of a community torn apart in so many ways by the equation of evolution with atheism, so that opposition to “Darwinism” became a scapegoat for larger Kulturkampf obsessions, and some people were demanding of other people that they take sides. How then would the ID movement react to that? In the same way that they “reacted” to Punctuated Equilibrium back in section 1.3. They didn’t.

That the DI would not like Jones’ ruling was hardly a surprise. But what is most interesting from a scholarly methods point of view (especially when turned to detecting the diagnostic signs of some deep tortucan ruts) is not that they trotted out the fast-congealing Intelligent Design brand (the compartmentalized thinking of Behe and Dembski and Meyer about biology, information and the Cambrian phyla) but what didn’t crop up in their arguments: any mention of what those creationists were doing in the real world of Dover (channeling Kent Hovind as easily as Icons of Evolution, and not above burning murals or banning time charts or bearing false witness in court to keep what they saw as offending science out of sight). The names Buckingham, Bonsell, etc. never appeared in any of their assessments. Out of sight, out of mind.

Postings at Evolution News & Views and the Discovery Institute during the trial period called attention to Luskin (2005a) on “The Positive Case for Design” and other iterations of their position, but no recognition whatsoever of what the participants in Dover thought or did. Robert Crowther (2005) even saw fit to link to conservative blogger Scott Ott (2005), whose satirical ScrappleFace proclaimed “Dover Evolution Lawyer Eats Counsel for Defense” in an “impromptu display of the survival of the fittest.” But no snarky humor was aimed at any of the otherwise invisible Dover board members and the many episodes so ripe for sharpened humor.

Because Jonathan Witt (2005b-e) and John West (2005b-d) repeatedly posted on the case, these omissions stood out all the more. Witt managed to “summarize” at length the issues at Dover and assail Jones’ “bogus” and “pernicious” conclusions, while West felt Jones had “delusions of grandeur,” without departing from the Discovery Institute designer script. Witt made use of the expected Behe v. Miller biological talking points and West focused on the (slim) list of “peer-reviewed” works by the DI set that furthered the DI views (more on that regarding Michael Behe shortly)—but not a whiff of the busy creationists Buckingham and company who were the reason why there was a court case to begin with.

As for the creationist provenance of Pandas, which Witt termed “atheist-activist Barbara Forrest’s mythological history of intelligent design,” Witt (2005c,e) and John West (2005d) so thoroughly laundered that record that you’d never guess Dean Kenyon had ever waxed enthusiastic over the YEC works of Henry Morris. DeWolf et al. (2007, 21-24) and Casey Luskin (2014am) continued this tradition.

Witt’s gymnastic skill here may be compared to his parsing of Intelligent Design’s medical supporters mentioned back in section 1.6. Pim van Meurs (2005b-d) and Sandefur (2005b) dissected Witt and West’s legal logic parade for Talk Reason. Beazley (2006) performed the same task at the NCSE for the book length iteration of the DI Dover position by David DeWolf, John West & Casey Luskin, DeWolf et al. (2005).

John Buell eventually weighed in to set the record straight himself with the “Untold Story” of Pandas in Foundation for Thought and Ethics (2013), duly recommended by Uncommon Descent (2013i). An intriguing window into his historical sequencing skills, Buell averred that Pandas couldn’t have been a retooled creationist textbook (1) because their general editor (non-YEC) Charles Thaxton had been thinking about the theory of intelligent design before then (true enough, at least insofar as origin of life questions were concerned), and (2) even though its main author (Davis, who was YEC himself—Buell didn’t dwell on Kenyon, or his endorsement of Henry Morris) was given leave to use creation science and creationism freely in his draft, “creation” was only used as a placeholder until the design rhetoric could be worked in, which (3) didn’t happen anyway in conjunction with the Edwards ruling because Thaxton (not an author of the Pandas text) had been thinking his more generalized design before then and elements of this were worked into Pandas.

Buell’s chronology of events didn’t collate the various texts on a precise timeline (ironically another Map of Time issue) and didn’t allude to the “cdesign proponentsists” example. Most breathtakingly, though, Buell insisted (4) that those miscellaneous terminology substitutions couldn’t have turned a creationist book into an ID one because the main arguments hadn’t been changed—which was, precisely the point the plaintiffs argued at the Dover trial. The only thing that needed to be adjusted in an otherwise creationist-friendly text (that assiduously avoided specifying the creator or taking a stand on the divisive age of the Earth question while otherwise presenting familiar creationist positions on fossils and biology) would have been the tweaking of those isolated terms.

The world-as-we-intend-on-seeing-it-come-what-may ID narcissism at Evolution News & Views continued with the “detailed analysis” of the Jones ruling by Michael Francisco (2006a) where the activities of Buckingham, Bonsell etc. again made no appearance. Francisco (2006b) later alerted their readers to Manzari & Cooper (2006) at the American Enterprise Institute (evidently letting bygones be bygones for that DI/TMLC food fight before the trial). Claiming “Dover was never the primary target of the lawsuit, but rather served as a springboard for striking a blow nationwide against the theory of intelligent design,” Joe Manzari and Discovery Institute attorney Seth Cooper left Buckingham and the DASB out of the discussion altogether as they accused the ACLU and Americans United of sinister collusion to extract the sizable lawyers’ fees (a cool million dollars) that had accrued during the case. Fuller (2008a, 35, 238n) likewise alluded to the fee issue.

The fee claim was a red herring on several levels. It had been a legal practice of long standing that the losing side of a case of this type had not only to pay up, but were liable to a sizable punitive assessment as part of a way to discourage repeat lawsuits, Forsythe (1999) noting how this stemmed from post-Civil War action against the KKK. Incidentally, Lebo (2008, 87-88) mentioned a local church in Dover that had a stained glass window donated by the KKK, who had been burning crosses there as recently as 1972. Whether the American Enterprise Institute planned in future to consistently object to large lawyer fees in general or suggest that questionable litigation should not be discouraged remained to be seen, but Francisco clearly didn’t spot the irony in their position when he turned his guns once more on the favored target to aver that “the Darwinists are missing the forest for the trees, just so they can attempt to dismiss this embarrassing scandal!”

Parenthetically, a few months later Manzari & Luskin (2006) teamed to defend the DI’s founder George Gilder (2006)—the article from section 1.5 above declaring Darwinian theory to be “an all-purpose obstacle to thought”—from criticism by John Derbyshire (2006) fought out at the National Review (an indication that even before William F. Buckley’s passing the magazine was moving off its rubberstamping of ID).

DeWolf et al. (2007) lavished over fifty pages in the Montana Law Review not mentioning the grizzly details of the DASB. They did feel it was “necessary to review the factual setting in which the case arose,” which consisted not of a survey of the DASB activities, but only the origin and involvement of the Discovery Institute in trying to dissuade Buckingham from his plan to use their material. “Judge Jones had no trouble finding extensive and unambiguous evidence for the religious motives of the Dover Area School Board,” DeWolf et al. (2007, 16) acknowledged in passing—instances of which they did not identify.

University of Chicago law professor Albert Alschuler (2005a-b) stepped closest to the Dover protagonists when he acknowledged in the first posting that “The court offers convincing evidence that some members [of] the Dover school board would have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom. These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law.” He did not explore the depth of their dissembling or the relevant provenance of the Pandas text. Brian Leiter (2005) offered a riposte to Alschuler on the legal issues.

Casey Luskin (2009n) followed in the well-traveled Evolution News & Views footsteps when he failed to allude to any of the historical forensics while assailing the obituary survey of Dover by Padian & Matzke (2009) at the Biochemical Journal, even though Padian & Matzke had explicitly highlighted many of Buckingham’s embarrassing statements. Luskin preferred to characterize the state of things by then as evolutionists “Trying to Put Intelligent Design Under a Taboo,” prompting a quip from Mike Dunford (2009a): “Apparently, the entire scientific community takes its marching orders from review articles published in Biochemical Journal. I had no idea biochemists were so powerful. Heck, I had no idea that review articles were that powerful.”

As for the ID witnesses at the trial, Behe and Fuller eventually weighed in. Behe (2006a) commented only on the issue of whether ID qualified as science and how his views pertained to that. The world of Buckingham and Bonsell operating in the same physical state of Pennsylvania as Behe was of no more interest to him than the paleontological record sprawling across Deep Time, while Lebo (1008, 198) noted that Behe had told her he would talk with her after the decision, he never got back to her after the Jones hammer fell. Dennis Jones (2013c) followed in Behe’s footsteps in every respect, including not discussing the DASB’s iniquities.

Fuller (2008a) eventually sprinkled fragments of his Dover experience into a Dissent Over Darwin account that was even more scattershot than his court testimony. Fuller (2008a, 2) briefly alluded to the “warmed over biblical creationism” of the “proposed ID textbook” without naming it or discussing Pandas any further, and never mentioned any of the Dover protagonists apart from the ACLU helping “to preserve the illusion of a scientific consensus,” Fuller (2008a, 35). Fuller (2008a, 144-150) floated away from Behe’s testimony on a cloud of general philosophy, conceding only that the biochemist’s effort at Dover had “rhetorically backfired.” Once he had attained sufficient altitude, Fuller (2008a, 158-168) refocused his telescope until Behe’s gaff about astrology qualifying as a scientific theory had blurred into a juxtaposition of 17th century scientific interest in astrology (not the modern form deteriorating over the centuries since) with a contemporary evolutionary theory Fuller insisted was “subject to vagaries of interpretation just as fundamental as those that ultimately floored astrology.” As though this were true of the content of a typical PNAS evolutionary article compared to the zodiacal insights of astrology (whether done by the mystic-minded Kepler or today’s newspaper parade of signs).

His fastidiousness in sweeping a mountain of technical scientific work and history under his metaphysical rug included Fuller (2008a, 21-22) dashing off a mention of the Sokal episode without letting slip his own acquiescent reaction to it at the time. Fuller (2008b, 13) subsequently flipped Sokal’s exposure of scientific illiteracy into an accusation that Sokal sought to achieve “a purging of the ranks!”

By then Dissent Over Darwin was being noticed. In Science, Michael Ruse (2008) offered “a deservedly cruel review” in the predictably partisan opinion of P. Z. Myers (2008h) that Fuller (2008b) replied to with yet another layer of opaque philosophical coating. Another interesting exchange occurred concerning Christine James (2008) on “Evolution and Conservative Christianity,” on which Fuller acted as a blind referee. Although James (2008, 198-199) had alluded to Fuller only briefly regarding his views on theology, the journal “gladly accepted” Fuller’s offer to respond.

“A blatantly obvious feature of today’s evolution-creation debate (including intelligent design) is the general tolerance—if not outright promotion—of anti-Christian bigotry,” opined Fuller (2008c, 15). But the actual behavior of the creationists at Dover did not engage his attention at the trial or in Dissent Over Darwin), and the “Metascientist” Fuller continued to avoid the subject here, leaving one to wonder whether Fuller could ever manage to be as disdainful of Kent Hovind (or Ken Ham, mentioned in the article Fuller was purportedly responding to) as he assuredly was of Richard Dawkins or Michael Ruse.

Fuller’s persistent tortucan rut when it came to the reality of Kulturkampf creationism was a last straw for Cornell University Science & Technology Studies professor, Michael Lynch:

Did he now know with whom he would be allied? In his opinion piece he refers to “Christians’ as the hapless victims of a concerted campaign by powerful pro-evolution forces. Aside from ignoring that such “Christians” exclude many major Christian denominations, Fuller fails to mention that these “Christians” are part of a large, highly organized and active political constituency in the US that vigorously promotes a broad socially conservative agenda. In an adversary trial in a highly polarized situation, did Fuller actually believe that he could simply use the witness stand to engage in an abstract discussion of “what counts as science,” while remaining immune to the possibility that he would be aiding a political agenda that, by all indications, he does not support? Michael Lynch (2009, 216).

Regarding the Jones ruling, having edited Buckingham and the DASB out of the Dover picture, Fuller’s Dissent Over Darwin inserted a replacement panorama that vaulted all the way back to that 17th century Fuller seemed more comfortable thinking about than his own 21st, leading to a flabbergasting equation:

Judge Jones’ suppositions that there are multiple truths—or at least a double truth, one for religion and one for science—was precisely what impeded the advancement of science until the modern era. The issue came to a head in the 1633 Vatican trial of Galileo, the iconic moment when science asserted its superiority to religion as a form of knowledge. Galileo’s crime was not that his account of the heavens varied from that of the Bible. No, it was that he thought that the variance constituted a contradiction. He presumed that science and religion addresses the same divinely authorities were saying things that could not both be right. Now, nearly four centuries later, a politically appointed Republican judge in Pennsylvania has handed the advantage back to Galileo’s persecutors by reasserting the doctrine of double truth—except that the judge would have the doctrine administered by the scientific, as opposed to the religious, side of the divide. Fuller (2008a, 43-44).

There was a footnote at this point, offering nothing in the way of scholarship on the Galileo trial but loads on Fuller’s own concerns about resolving the import of Kitzmiller v. Dover not as a dispute over the propriety of pseudoscientific ideologues to redirect the science education of the district, but as fallout of a man’s inner spiritual convictions measured by one quote extracted from Goodstein (2005):

Jones revealed himself to be less than religiously devout in an interview published one week before his verdict. Laurie Goodstein, ‘Evolution Trial in Hands of Willing Judge’, New York Times, 18 December 2005. Goodstein writes, ‘Asked if he was religious, he said he attended a Lutheran church favoured by his wife, but not every Sunday’. After reading that, I realised that the Dover school board was doomed. Fuller (2008a, 239-240n).

Moving farther out on the ID apologetic grapevine, Ray Bolin (2006; 2007) faithfully reproduced the DeWolf et al. Discovery Institute talking points about why ID is just dandy science and castigated Jones’ contrary ruling without any allusion to the cadre of creationists at the table in Dover. Bolin (2007) stretched one glib accusation too far though when he complained, “Why does a federal judge with no training in science use the courtroom as a means of determining what is and is not science?” Might it have been partly because the ID-bedazzled legal team demanded he do exactly that? Not science’s fault if that didn’t turn out quite the way the TMLC planned.

Roddy Bullock (2007), of the Ohio branch of Calvert & Harris’ Intelligent Design Network, was more colorful when he described Judge Jones as someone who “clearly salivated at the chance to bash a few misguided school board members for their ‘breathtaking inanity’,” without, of course, specifying who those “few” might have been or whether Jones was all too justified in so characterizing their activities. Bullock being a lawyer, it was particularly odd for him to describe Jones’ findings of fact (courts decide one or the other side have established those things all the time) as “largely plagiarized wisdom“—this from someone who then credulously linked to Jonathan Wells as his sole source for more “icons of evolution.”

John Calvert (2009) entered the Ignore the DASB competition himself by climbing onto a precarious metaphysical pedestal to complain that “the fatal error of the decision is that the court used the incorrect definition of religion in ruling on the legality of the ID policy.” For Calvert, it was a mistake for Judge Jones to define religion as just a belief in the supernatural. In his view religion should be taken as ”beliefs about matters of ultimate concern.” And since “non-theistic beliefs that natural or material causes explain life” are about those matters, they qualify as religions, too. By this colossally broad “functional” definition, Calvert netted “Atheism, Secular humanism, Deism, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation and Wicca.”

Yet Calvert was being exclusively narrow in his own definition at the same time by specifying “life” alone as the issue of contention. But if appealing to material causes to explain something that a religion attributes to divine intervention counts as a “religious belief” for that reason, wouldn’t being really sure that the Grand Canyon came about by slow naturalistic “material causes” rather than a unique global Flood qualify just as much? Worse, Calvert posited that “the core value of science is to be non-religious.” But if supernatural causes for life are “religious,” and non-theistic materialist causes for life are also “religious,” then wasn’t all of “life” ruled out as a topic for science?

Calvert wasn’t about to slide down those holes (even though of his own making), not when he had a much deeper one all prepared to dive into. Calvert wanted to frame the debate this way so he could push his own Kulturkampf issues onto the opposing “Secular View” (whether they liked it or not)—such as “Abortion and Euthanasia OK” for them, which is a long way from the origins of life issue he seemed to start with. And all this without ever bringing up any of the DASB participants, putting their religious views (and bullying violation of at least one commandment) on display to assess whether their actions were worthy of defense, and whether any jurist could avoid applying the law here. Instead, Calvert had room only for the suitably redefined and baggage-laden Atheist Religion for his moralistic ID Punch and Judy show.

Moving on to the secondary redactor front, Chuck Missler (2005h) duly linked to Jonathan Witt (2005d) in his coverage of the case, but like the DI never mentioned the likes of Buckingham. Missler (2005k) continued the trend after the verdict, channeling without any critical analysis of his own “John West of the Discovery Institute, a proponent of intelligent design, called the decision ‘an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate’.” Missler (2006) linked to Discovery Institute (2005g) offering a long string of popular press coverage as “Dover Intelligent Design Trial Information,” which included their own Discovery Institute (2005f) distancing themselves from the TMLC and Discovery Institute (2005h) that complained about Jones getting “on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution” but nothing about the messy details of the Dover case..

A younger (but still as parasitically derivative) ID activist was Samuel Chen (2006). Finding ID via Michael Behe, Chen raised $2000 to bring that “world class scientist” to lecture his high school in 2004, experiencing angry moments with some teachers over it that reinforced his conviction that “evolution is totalitarianism, it’s dictatorship, it’s tyranny,” as well as being at its core an atheist dogma. His 2006 paper analyzed the Dover ruling following all the same lines as Witt or West, likewise bypassing the background details (which he presumably had to have been aware of, given his repeated citation of the court pleadings that mentioned them). The closest he got to the real world of Buckingham and the charged environment in which the disclaimer was written was a lone generic allusion to “a few comments made by members of the Dover School Board” that in his view didn’t matter anyway because the disclaimer itself hadn’t explicitly endorsed any religion (a thin legalist evasion since it was that background context, and not the surface text of the disclaimer, that had tripped on the Lemon Test secular purpose prong).

Sandefur (2005a) thought “Some kind of trophy for the most absurd reaction to the Kitzmiller decision” ought to go to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s “Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,” who fumed that Jones’ decision was “a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror,” Powell (2005). But Lebo (2008, 214) found ample rivals in the world of political punditry, from the Bill O’Reilly calling Jones “a fascist” to Anne Coulter, who was certain evolution “didn’t win in science, persuasion, or the evidence” and thought Judge Jones “foments a kind of civic stupidity” in our judicial system.

And then there was Phyllis Schlafly. Her Eagle Forum article appeared under various titles as it was copied on the web (Human Events tagged it as “Judge Makes Mockery of Intelligent Design” and Townhall Daily hyped it to “False judge makes mockery of case for ‘intelligent design’“) but the original Phyllis Schlafly (2006) was titled “Judge’s Unintelligent Rant Against Design.” Judge Jones regarded her article as “a brutal column,” Kimmel (2006), and Jason Rosenhouse (2006a) and Ed Brayton (2006a) were among those springing to Jones’ defense (Brayton dismantling her argument paragraph by paragraph).

The big issues of Dover and whether Jones’ ruling was sound were legal and factual.

On the legal side, in a speech to the Anti-Defamation League, John Jones (2006a) rejected the “activist judge” appellation and reminded his critics that there was thirty years of establish case law that Jones was not free to ignore: “I do not have the power—and Ms. Schlafly and others fail to mention this—I did not have the power to omit utilizing those tests, nor do I have the ability to invent tests other than those recognized by existing jurisprudence against which to measure the facts of the case.” Jones went on to warn about a “creeping disrespect” for the judiciary that had resulted in marshals needing to be assigned to protect judges who had received threats (Jones included), Lebo (2006). Fresh in Jones’ mind in the Anti-Defamation League speech was “the murders of my colleague Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother last February, shot by a disgruntled litigant whose case had been dismissed by the judge.”

The factual part is where methodological concerns kick in. Making the preposterous claim that “The Dover school board did not propose to say ID is scientific or valid,” Schlafly faulted Jones because “He accused parents and school board members of ‘breathtaking inanity’ for wanting their children to learn that ‘intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view’.” Except the “breathtaking inanity” Jones had alluded to rested on the DASB’s not understanding what they aimed to further and lying about how they sought to do it—but then, Schlafly never mentioned any of that part. Relying heavily on popular press coverage of the affair, had lawyer Schlafly even read Jones’ ruling? If she had, Schlafly was guilty of egregious suppression of evidence—if she hadn’t, what justification could she have for offering so tendentious an opinion? Or John West (2006c) promptly and enthusiastically recommending Schlafly’s diatribe at Evolution News & Views?

Compared to Schlafly, Pat Buchanan (2005) sounded downright temperate, though still disingenuously vaulting over any mention of what had gone on at Dover to instead refute “the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge” by asserting the non-religious nature of the current design argument via Aristotle (”a man of science and reason“) who obviously came up with a Prime Mover without appealing to the Bible. That Aristotle also managed to think the Sun revolved around the Earth and heavy objects fall faster than light ones (because that “man of science and reason” was not prone to do physical experiments instead of thought ones) and so may not be so solid a precedent for science to rely on in the 21st century was missed by Buchanan in the same way he skipped past Bonsell’s witness stand dissembling on who slipped Pandas into the Dover library.

Recalling Marianne Jennings (2000) sidling past enforcement of the Establishment Clause at Accuracy in Media (discussed back in section 1.6), Chenoa McKnight (2006) furthered their disconnect by insisting that the Dover and Cobb County disclaimers couldn’t have been about religion because that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in them. Not surprisingly, McKnight did not take note of any of the details of the people involved, necessary to get any sense of the background context.

In the “politics doesn’t always rule out strange bedfellows” department, the details of the Dover case were also out of view as the political odd couple of conservative Cal Thomas and liberal debating foil Bob Beckel (equally far down on the science familiarity food chain) both accepted the scientific viability of ID for USA TODAY, Thomas & Beckel (2005), to the puzzlement of not a few USA TODAY (2005) letters as well as onlooker Richard Hoppe (2005d).

Appearing on Ted Koppel’s Nightline in August 2005, Thomas seemed incapable of seeing evolution as a “stand-alone issue” of science, connecting it post haste to a litany of Kulturkampf concerns: “school prayer, same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, the Terri Schiavo case,” a long way indeed from scientific methodology or the details of the fossil record and biology. (The Schiavo case, a cause célèbre which involved how comatose or vegetative states could be detected and what role medical care or family considerations played in the disposition of patients’ rights, will be covered further in Chapter 24).

The tendency to divorce the Kitzmiller case from the human and social facts on the ground could be reinforced by another factor: the targeted concerns or specialized methodology of an academic discipline. For example, law professor Robert Vischer (2006, 86-87), unclear whether Jones’ rejection of the disclaimer was a suitable ruling or not, or philosopher Bradley Monton (2006), dissecting the Dover decision solely in terms of whether methodological naturalism should be granted free reign. Even the scrupulously balanced treatment of Italiano (2006) kept the Buckingham brigade behind the curtain (and, ironically, took no note of the anti-Jones legal opinions of John West et al. either). Like young Samuel Chen above, though, however peripheral the actions of Buckingham et al. might seem from high legal or philosophical altitude, it should have counted for something that Jones’ ruling had so extensively called attention to them as part of the required juridical task of establishing the religious intent of the Dover policy.

The philosophy forum on Dover at the Templeton Foundation’s Science & Theology News (a short-lived venture that went out of business Fall 2006) didn’t fare much better. The concise survey by pro-Jones Robert Pennock (2006) at least noted “ID advocates on the school board had lied to disguise the religious purpose of the ID policy,” but none of the others got that far: not the pro-ID Alvin Plantinga (2006) and quasi-pro Steve Fuller (2006), or Evan Fales (2006) worrying that Jones’ ejection of ID (which he did not deem good science) was grounded too much on a naturalism defense. Robin Collins (2006) attempted to re-categorize ID as “a metascientific hypothesis” along with “those advocating biocentric laws and higher-level patterns of teleology in evolution, such as explored by Teilhard Chardin, Rupert Sheldrake and Simon Conway Morris,” earning a tart riposte by Paul Gross (2006). All of which was a long way from Bill Buckingham strong-arming the Dover science faculty to watch Icons of Evolution just one more time, with conviction.

We can leave the bracing clime of Dover along with Paul Nelson, someone who has had to keep his Young Earth Creationism compartmentalized from his role as a major Discovery Institute tech pundit, unlike John Morris (2006) who could freely wave his YEC complaints about “naturalistic origins” in his criticism of Dover under the ICR’s Acts & Facts banner. As a guest on Hank Hanegraaff (2006a) early in the year, Nelson assured the Bible Answer Man listeners that Jones’ Dover ruling would ultimately land on “the dustbin of history” and promised great new research and public awareness in 2006 (hindsight alert). As for the Dover disclaimer, Nelson followed the DI line by calling it an “unwise" policy. He did not explain in what way it was unwise, or what a wise one might look like (and whether John Morris’ ICR would get to bring their ball to the field)—nor did Hank think to ask about it. A measure of how pre-filtering can temper what answers you can miss on the Bible Answer Man when the questions don’t get asked in the first place.