Chapter I

The framing of Intelligent Design at Dover has congealed into the standard apologetic model, as Kulturkampf antievolutionists declare their dedication to advancing genuine scientific discovery in a manner devoid of religious underpinnings even as they ignore most of what is actually going on in the scientific field and the glaring creationist demographics of the people pushing for TTC and “critical analysis” in education. As we’ve seen, the Discovery Institute set have consistently failed to spot any of the footprints of YEC antievolutionism that has been the core of the “Intelligent Design” campaign in the United State.

Following Dover, creationists like Chuck Missler (2005a) have shown no qualms about following the ID playbook in presenting “Intelligent Design” as all secular science facts and no religion, with web linking to the Discovery Institute where they could hear that choir in full harmony. But Missler constantly reminded us of what beliefs were actually tagging along behind that label in his milieu by including a string of exclusively absolutist YEC connections: ICR, AiG and Kent Hovind. Yes, the carefully trimmed ID road show didn’t quote scripture in public presentations, but Missler’s followers had only to click on the links and soon they’d be reading more grist for the TTC mill, such as Ken Ham (2004) on “Dinosaurs and the Bible” explaining how easily the evolutionary falsehood “that no man ever lived alongside dinosaurs” could be rejected “once you have key information that is not generally known and is withheld from the public.” As for geochronology, the area Joe Baker had excoriated Kostura for his supposed factual ignorance, Ham (1998) reminded readers of what the sole ultimate nonnegotiable authority was here: the “self-authenticating and self-attesting” Bible where the Earth being only a few thousand years old “is a consequence of accepting the authority of the Word of God as an infallible revelation from our omniscient Creator.” Not much wiggle room there, it would seem, whether you’re Phillip Johnson or Hugh Ross.

Kulturkampf politics played a role in a 2005 effort to retool South Carolina’s science education examine “alternatives to evolution,” Dillon (2005). The sponsor of the legislation, state Senator Mike Fair, served the district where Bob Jones University was located, and the Senate Education K-12 subcommittee was chaired by Robert Hayes, member of the splinter “Presbyterian Church in America” that split from the main church over the ordination of women. Concerted efforts by the NCSE and senators opposing the revision nipped that effort, though Fair plowed ahead regarding his new “Science Committee” (intended to marshal evidence for students to critically analyze) oblivious to the fact that the subcommittee vote had deleted its implementation.

Sen. Kevin Bryant (2006), a literal creationist supporter of Fair’s campaign, complained at his blog about “liberal bias in our educational establishment” and suggested anyone who would answer yes to the question “Should Darwinism be given special protection from inquiry?” was “in fear of the facts.” But that of course begged the question of whose “facts” they had in mind. Fair has continued to press his antievolutionary convictions from his committee position, though with limited success, Bowers (2014), and without the DI ever noticing the YEC underpinnings of the South Carolina “Intelligent Design” efforts.

Dillon reported that Fair “denied that any of his legislation had any religious content or motivation” while listing “all the books on his shelves supporting his position, authored by such respected scientists as Gish, Behe, Denton, and Dembski.” But remember that Gish’s books did not contain any religious arguments any more than Behe, Denton or Dembski, belying the constant accusation of DI text parsers like Casey Luskin that YEC and ID parted company on this point.

The presence of Gish in Fair’s collection signified an increasing truism in the TTC debate: that grassroots believers do not perceive a difference between YEC and ID arguments, and so can easily mush them together. And part of the reason they can do that with impunity within the antievolution movement is because the Intelligent Design leadership had slid into their own version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Fair kept any details of what he believed out of boilerplate public statements, such as the need for “critical analysis” of evolution expressed by Fair & Seckinger (2006) posted by the Discovery Institute, and Robert Crowther (2006d-h) made no mention of what Fair’s understanding might be in his panegyrics there, which represented the latest transitional stage in ID apologetics by stressing in a Q@A piece that “Challenges to Darwinian evolution are not the same as proposed solutions, such as the scientific theory of intelligent design”—which just propped the door open even wider for other “proposed solutions” such as the Creation Science of the respected Dr. Gish residing on Fair’s South Carolina bookshelf.

In the years after Dover this pattern was repeated all over the country. There was a controversy over an El Tejon Unified School District “Philosophy of Design” course 2005-2006, NBC News (2006) and Scott (2006). The YEC commentary by Pam Sheppard (2006) at AiG and David Coppedge (2006a) may be compared to the arm’s length coverage by Robert Crowther (2006a-c) for the DI.

Michael Behe appeared on The Colbert Report in August 2007, a fairly benign appearance as he stuck to the familiar talking points and even the prodding of Colbert’s arch-conservative YEC persona failed to goad him into remarking on geochronology, Behe (2007l). The DI got a funding boost during the period when software developer Brendan Dixon contributed $700,000 to the DI’s Center for Science & Culture, associated with molecular biologist Douglas Axe and zoologist Anne Gauger at Axe’s ID research facility, the Biologic Institute, Forrest (2008c, 192-193).

While the Kansas State Board of Education continued to support skeptical treatment of evolution in their standards, reported on by Fox News (2005f) and duly linked by Chuck Missler, general evolution teaching was restored in the 2007 Kansas Science Education Standards, Case et al. (2007).

The YEC underbelly of TTC continued to refuse to go away, such as the “Louisiana Family Forum Fact Sheet” including the antievolution “Battle Plan” of Kent Hovind (2000) in their site, which came to light after Louisiana Sen. David Vitter earmarked $100,000 in Federal money for the Perkins’ Louisiana Family Forum, which Vitter removed after protests, Branch (2007b) and Walsh (2007). Forrest (2008b) surveyed the Louisiana Science Education Act.

Around this same time Vitter admitted to a “very serious sin” (that he did not otherwise specify) after his phone number turned up in the little black book of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Palfrey, Moran et al. (2007). Following the lead of convicted felon Kent Hovind’s demonological view of things (the sea into which the Louisiana Family Forum was dipping its oar ever so gently), was Satan luring this antievolutionist warrior into sinful lust as part of his Byzantine scheme to defend evolution? Or is there a much simpler explanation: all the pompous protestations about how morally corrosive evolutionary thinking was supposed to be was frequently belied by the serendipitous hypocrisy of the more ideological antievolutionists.

2007 also saw the Kris Helphinstine case, where a young biology teacher was fired from his position in Oregon for using creationist material, Alisha Wilson (2007) and Stollar (2007). Helphinstine had been doing a Darwin-Nazi eugenics PowerPoint presentation for some time, but at an Oregon high school he added a Ken Ham (2003b) article from Answers in Genesis, feeling he was not teaching creationism because he excised all references to God but was only “wanted for the kids to look at the science he was presenting, not the worldview.” Helphinstine acknowledged that the Ham piece “comes from a biased source. You can see where the bias is—but the scientific information is accurate.”

But that was the point, was it “accurate”? And just how disposed was Helphinstein to “critically analyze” that? Ham’s article involved dog evolution and the range of speciation, an area of expertise in which Ham had none. If Ham was not dealing with most of the evidence and consequently was drawing invalid conclusions, without going deeply into the technical literature not covered by Ham, and making those resources available in his class, how could his high school biology students be expected to evaluate Ham’s credibility? Coppedge (2007g) contributed to the antievolutionist fog bank here as he riffed off the Fox News (2007) coverage of the Helphinstine affair to suggest Helphinstein got in trouble because he “dared question Darwinism” without mentioning what “supplemental material” was involved—though given Coppedge’s use of AiG and other YEC material himself, he presumably wouldn’t find any fault with it.

Ken Ham figured in a schism at Answers in Genesis during this period, NCSE (2006) and Petto (2007), with the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and South African groups declaring independence as Creation Ministries International from the now Kentucky-grounded American branch. Its causes were obscure to those following the affair, though apparently involving power plays between founder Ken Ham and rival Carl Wieland, as well as how the AiG financial pie (by then topping $10 million) was to be divvied. In the not entirely amicable process of separation the kids got yanked to and fro, with some of their resources (such as Creation magazine for general readers) ending up archived at CMI while others (such as the similarly titled and targeted Creation Ex Nihilo) are maintained AiG. Apparently they have no argument over theology or their creation science (as an even rudimentary familiarity with their views would attest) but differed over internal corporate organization.

CMI was interested in distributing editorial powers internationally and in being able to criticize fellow creationists for inaccuracy, while AIG-US was interested in maintaining control of content, not being subject to peer review by its international brethren, and refraining from criticism of the work of other young-earth creationists. NCSE (2006).

2007 also saw the rollout of Explore Evolution by Stephen Meyer et al. (2007), chronicled by Mead (2008). Just as Of Pandas and People had replaced “creationism” with “intelligent design” in the wake of Edwards v. Aguillard in the 1980s, the Pandas replacement Explore Evolution moved the goalposts again aiming to render it “legally unactionable” after Dover, Forrest (2008c, 191). That is how the latest Intelligent Design textbook ended up excising references to “intelligent design” altogether (no need for it in their Glossary or index), although the arguments being presented in front of the ever-shrinking curtain remained the same (novelty in their argument has not been an antievolutionary trait), and the concepts of Explore Evolution were those embodied in the 2005 Kansas standards, Matzke (2006d). Given the ineptness of Explore Evolution on the pivotal reptile-mammal transition (with similarly evasive treatment in the rival Design of Life book by Dembski & Wells), Downard (2014f), anyone thinking they were genuinely “exploring” evolution in Explore Evolution was being set up for a fall.

Barbara Forrest (2010a, 170) also noted after Dover the Discovery Institute “began its multistate promotion of model ‘academic freedom’ legislation that bears striking parallels to the 1980s balanced treatment laws.” Thus twenty years of strenuous legislative and courtroom punting and tackling had managed to move the Balanced Treatment football from yard line one back to yard line one.

With the 2008 Expelled movie (narrated by Ben Stein) the mantel of ID as a persecuted minority took hold, spurred on by the Sternberg affair occasioned by the biologist being called to the carpet over his editorial role in shepherding Stephen Meyer (2004b) into the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (associated with the Smithsonian). Denyse O’Leary (2005b), WorldNetDaily (2005) and Bill Morgan (2005ag) reflected antievolutionist umbrage on this matter, while Sternberg (2006; 2008) illustrated how difficult it is to work out what Sternberg’s positions were on the big picture tenets of evolution, Intelligent Design, or creationism.

But the Kulturkampf religious subculture was seldom far from the game, as evidenced by Indiana Congressman Mark Souder, interviewed in Souder (2004). His hearing on the Sternberg affair got him a spot in Expelled!, but his attraction to the venue went deeper (a fundamentalist upbringing that motivated him as a child to scratch out the devil’s on the Devil’s Food Cake packages in the kitchen and keep the Ten Commandments on display in his Capitol Hill office), David Brooks (2004). Souder took up the cudgels for Intelligent Design in Congress by hosting a briefing on Intelligent Design by the Discovery Institute in May 2000. When eight Baylor University professors (seven from their Biology Department and one from Psychology & Neuroscience) wrote a letter to object that Intelligent Design proponents were making “an emotional appeal and not a scientific argument” that was irrelevant to the existence of God anyway, Souder (2000) read into the Congressional Record how he was “appalled that any university seeking to discover truth, let alone a university that is a Baptist Christian school” could do that, since “qualified scientists are reaching the conclusion that design theory makes better sense of the data.” He also thanked Phillip Johnson for help in drafting this firm restatement of the Discovery Institute version of the world of science.

Souder’s video notoriety from Expelled! highlighted his skepticism about evolution and how far removed ID was for political advocates like Souder from the grubby details of gene sequences or geological evidence. In an interview with Sylvia Smith (2008) for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Souder reflected the wide theological frame that hung around the blurry ID collage:

I personally believe that there is no issue more important to our society than intelligent design. As an evangelical Christian, I believe the premise of a fall being the core of reforming lives. I believe the concept of grace and forgiveness comes from having fallen from something. Now, how that occurred—whether you believe in the young earth theory, gradual evolution, or whatever—is disputed. Those became religious.

This sentiment had a singularly ironic timing to it, as Souder was about to do some falling of his own (along with some forgiveness asking) when the affair he was having with an aide became public and the option of being expelled himself was rendered moot by his resignation, Bresnahan & Allen (2010). Given his professed religious and antievolutionary convictions (and despite the close proximity of the Ten Commandments on his congressional desk) Souder’s moral lapse appears to have been thoroughly uncontaminated by atheist secularism or Darwinian materialism.

By the time the Darwin Bicentennial rolled around in 2009, educators, scientists and secular advocates had taken to celebrating Darwin Day (either on his actual birthday, which he shares with Abraham Lincoln, or nearby weekends) to highlight science education as well as an opportunity to explain what evolutionary theory is (and isn’t) about. Goodman (2008) described some of these efforts at the University of Tennessee, “one of the oldest Darwin Day organizations.” My old alma mater, Eastern Washington University, hosts a science speaker each year (as well as a Darwin birthday cake baking contest), and our local Spokane Secular Society has a Darwin Day table at a downtown shopping complex every year.

Even though these activities are education oriented, atheist groups often take the opportunity to highlight the religious conflict present in the creation/evolution debate, which draws the ire of Kulturkampf antievolutionists (and hence is a good reason for avoiding that minefield). During the 2013 Intelligent Design presentation at a Seattle church (the same event where I challenged Casey Luskin on punctuated equilibrium in section 1.3), John West of the Discovery Institute stressed the religion-bashing flavor of some Darwin Day activities with pictures he had taken of banners and signs that clearly showed what a low opinion atheists can have of Christianity and religion in general, and his church pew audience swelled with vicarious disdain over their blasphemy. During the Q&A I took issue with West’s selective characterization of Darwin Day, since in our local Spokane activities there is no criticism of religion whatsoever—you can see the flavor of our presentation in the handout material shown as an Appendix to Downard (2014f).

Don McLeroy (encountered in section 1.3 above) continued his antievolution activities in Texas after he became board chairman in 2007, meaning the TBOE now had seven antievolutionist members: chairman Don McLeroy, David Bradley, Terri Leo, and Gail Lowe as carryovers from the last textbook war in 2003, but now joined by Barbara Cargill, Cynthia Dunbar and Ken Mercer, Schafersman (2008c; 2009a,c) and Rosenau (2008; 2009a-b).

The backers of the revisions were now all in the “strengths and weaknesses” mode, a tradition antievolutionists had been invoking since the 1980s creationist legislative campaign. Not that McLeroy or the other evolution opponents on the TBOE were specially disposed to highlight any strengths of evolution, only the supposed weaknesses. By now Explore Evolution was on the scene, and several critics of the TBOE revisionism called attention to its problems if the idea was to use it as a reliable resource at all. Some explicit flirtations with YEC arguments still cropped up, as Lowe trotted out the venerable creationist canard about “polystrate” fossils and Cargill offered amendments relating to planetary formation and tectonics, Schafersman (2008c; 2009a).

Live blogging from the hearings, Steven Schafersman (2009a) reminded his readers that it was entirely appropriate to thrash out the strengths and weakness of a scientific hypothesis—and in its early days Darwin’s proposals were certainly in the hypothesis stage and were therefore understandably subjected to exactly that. But once the hypothesis does get tested, as Darwin’s ideas certainly were, that’s another matter. Some of the conclusions turned out to be wrong (particularly Darwin’s speculations on the mechanism of inheritance, at that time completely unknown), but the parts that have stood the test of time have graduated to the status of a proper scientific theory, and is used today as such. Harkening back to the issues of the early pre-theory days by dangling authority quotes from Darwin, as TBOE member Cory Cunningham did at one point by way of justifying their “strengths and weaknesses” approach, seriously misunderstood the scientific process when it comes to differentiating the testing of scientific hypotheses from the teaching of tested scientific theories.

Stephen Meyer (coauthor of the flawed Explore Evolution) stumbled over this very point when his turn came to testify, Schafersman (2009a):

First up is Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute, who says that the “strengths and weaknesses” phrase should be returned to the Texas science standards. He also said that Biology’s evolution standards are now too dogmatic and should be changed. They ask that the students “review” information about evolution rather than “evaluate and analyze” this information, which he considers a step back. He gave a PowerPoint presentation to explain why S&W should be returned to several places in the TEKS, especially to rule c3A. He claimed that earlier scientific theories, now known to be wrong, had weaknesses. He mentioned the phlogiston theory of chemistry, geosynclinal theory of geology, and Newton’s theory of gravity. In fact, phlogiston and geosynclines were hypotheses that never became scientific theories, and Newton’s theory is still accepted today, so Meyer was wrong on every count.

TBOE member David Bradley wanted Ben Stein of the Expelled! movie to speak before the board, but his speaking fee was out of their price range. The Kulturkampf character of this move was not lost on Schafersman (2009a), who noted Stein’s lack of qualifications to address scientific issues.

Schafersman (2009a) detected a certain partiality about how witnesses were treated before McLeroy’s TBOE:

Jonathan Saenz, attorney with the Free Market Institute, the Texas representative of Focus on the Family, testified next. Despite the fact that he testified on November 19, he was allowed to testify again while all the other individuals who spoke in November were moved to the bottom of the list and thus will not be able to speak. This violation of his own rules shows that Chair Don McLeroy is biased and not a fair administrator of his State Board. This is very unfair and I want to state my objection here.

In fact, several of the Creationist-Religious Right SBOE members were allowed to move up other of their speakers from down on the list and permit them to speak during extra time added at the end of the public testimony. However, while these were Creationists who had no understanding of evolution or science, they had not testified in November and this was the first time they addressed the Board about this topic. Only Jonathan Saenz was allowed to repeat his testimony from November. No scientist received this consideration.

McLeroy’s tortucan proclivity for only thinking about things he wanted to think about spilled over into procedural matters, as Schafersman (2009a) observed a bit later:

Pat Hardy was outraged that seniority was not followed in the assignment of committee assignments. She and Mary Helen Berlanga, who both have seniority, were not placed on the committee of their choice, when they should have been appointed to different committees than what they intended. Mary Helen said, “This Board has just ignored its own rules that it recently adopted.” Next, Geraldine Miller stated her opposition to what happened. “Why even have rules if you are going to ignore them, ” she asked. She spoke directly to Chairman McLeroy: “You are making a mockery of democracy when you handle issues in this way. Will the same thing happen next week, next month?” Mary Helen Berlanga pointed out that she meets all the requirements for preference and she got none of her committee choices. She asked why this is the case? These three ladies--with many years on the State Board and thus much seniority--were denied their requested committee positions. They were legitimately angry that the rules were not followed.

Texas has continued to be a flash point in the education wars, including further appearances by McLeroy. The creationist role in the Texas charter schools movement has been noted, Texas Freedom Network (2013e-f; 2014), Kopplin (2013d; 2014) and Brantley (2014). Though it is not often easy to identity this factor just by the typically uninformative boilerplate of a school’s public face, such as the ResponsiveED (2013) parent/student booklet and website (responsiveed.com) that gave no indication of its curriculum content while affirming how student-friendly their environment was, all to encourage lifelong learning and worthwhile habits such as “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood.” Who could object to that?

Finally, an indication of just how disinterested ID is from religious apologetics, the Discovery Institute partnered up with Focus on the Family in 2014 to launch a college preparation DVD education program, Science and God (2014a-b), building on the explicitly Judeo-Christian apologetics of their 2010 God & Evolution book with Faith & Evolution (2011) as a study guide, and Michael Keas’ 2011 TrueU: Does God Exist? John West (2014b) supplied a piece suggesting how Christian churches could press forward in a collegiate world where so many of the faculty are atheists or agnostics and included a 45-minute documentary, The Toughest Test in College, gratis “to qualified churches and schools (while supplies last).” While I qualified as neither of those, I did get my own copy of Science and God (2014c) sent to me in June 2014, thus possibly cheating some deserving church or school from the manifold pleasure of its viewing.

What the 2014 TrueU initiative did illustrate was the narrow incestuous character of their resources. All of the written, video and website material offered reflected in-house DI apologetics or groups secondarily drawing on them, a one-stop Intelligent Design Walmart where visitors could meet all their spiritual and scientific needs in the world of Steve Meyer (their main DVD lecturer) without ever bumping into the competitive product over at the ICR or AiG big box stores just next door (let alone the far larger industrial park of the scientists actually doing the work out of their sight).

A signal that their Kulturkampf concerns hadn’t mellowed much, though, came courtesy of the Keas (2014, 9) “Event Leader’s Guide” conspicuously jumping onto what was by then a fast-sinking ship:

15. Some university faculty would consider it hate speech to even discuss the merits of research produced by social scientists that investigate ways to help those who wish to cease from homosexual behavior. To evaluate the legitimacy of this hate speech accusation, and to consider this as a case study that illuminates free speech disputes in other domains, visit http://narth.com—the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. NARTH declares: “We respect the right of all individuals to choose their own destiny. NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.” Do professional organizations devoted to individual rights and academic integrity (rather than politically correct ideology) exist in your field of study?

This was an indication that the Discovery Institute (or Focus on the Family, to which they were now attached at the hip) was no more fitted to revising dogma based on new data on sexual orientation and the flawed character of the “research” on which NARTH built its edifice as they were willing to compare their own methodology to that of their very active rivals, YEC creationism.

Creationism was given no play at all apart from a brief study question, Faith & Evolution (2011, 4): “Why does the word ‘creationism’ carry so much baggage? Can you describe the different ‘creationist’ views? What is intelligent design and how does it differ from creationism.” And thus were they excusing themselves from the unappetizing prospect of explaining how their demotion of methodological naturalism and giddy willingness to recycle the same hackneyed talking points (Cambrian Explosion, Haeckel’s embryos, etc.) wouldn’t let the YEC camp get to do just the same with their even bigger “critical analysis” data set (such as the RATE radioactive dating claims or Robert Gentry’s polonium halos).

Instead, Keas (2011) reflected the cosmologically-oriented Natural Theology approach favored by current DI argument, heavy on anthropic coincidences and designer interpretations of DNA but just as shy on the current technical science world as the YEC literature they do not acknowledge, let alone address. All Keas (2014) did for this college campaign was to recommend as their core resources a trio of their own work: Signature in the Cell, The Privileged Planet, and Explore Evolution (which latter was the only source even purporting to address paleontology), with their scienceandgod.org website adding Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt and Berlinski’s The Devil’s Delusion among the Recommended Resources.

“It’s a Small World After All”—and its name is Discovery Institute.