Chapter I

Perhaps fearing that the activists swarming around the OBE might not prevail against the dark forces of Naturalism, antievolutionists in the General Assembly weighed in, Plain Dealer (2002a) and SEAO (2003). John Calvert supplied language that ended up as HB 481 by Reidelbach & Collier et al. (2002). It would require that “origins science” be “taught objectively and without religious, naturalistic, or philosophic bias or assumption” in Ohio schools, though with a Calvertian lack of specificity about what constituted “origins science” or how those proposed biases were to be evaded regarding actual evidential discussion in science class. And just to act as an additional backstop, HB 484 by Reidelbach & Calvert et al. (2002)—the Calvert in this instance being the unrelated Chuck and not John—would require the standards be approved by both houses of the General Assembly. Despite a day of exclusively pro-ID testimony before the House committee from Jonathan Wells, Stephen Meyer, John Calvert and David DeWolf (or maybe because of it) neither bill made it out of committee for a floor vote.

How deeply any of the General Assembly sponsors had studied the evolution issue is unclear (none appeared to have kept up their activism and Ohio term limits played some part in trimming careers). A few surfaced later over Kulturkampf issues and politics: Mike Gilb tried unsuccessfully to get the Ten Commandments officially recognized as the moral foundation of the state’s government so that they might be openly displayed in government buildings, Austin Cline (2003), while Jean Schmidt temporarily earned the nickname “Mean Jean” while in Congress for scolding ex-Marine Vietnam war vet John Murtha that “cowards cut and run, Marines never do” over his favoring an expeditious military withdrawal from Iraq, Babington (2005).

While some in the General Assembly were trying to politicize the educational processes, the Ohio Department of Education began to warn the Board that favoring only one “alternative” to evolution (Intelligent Design) would bring on the inevitable lawsuits (which legal precedent would suggest they would summarily lose). There were also grumblings about mass resignations from their own advisory panel should the OBE continue its stroll down the Intelligent Design Network/SEAO/Discovery Institute garden path.

The Standards Committee decided then to sponsor a public debate to thrash the matter out. Originally it was to be Jonathan Wells from the DI and Jody Sjogren squaring off against Ken Miller and physicist Lawrence Krauss, Candisky (2002a), but by the time the protagonists arrived at the Franklin County Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, Stephen Meyer had replaced Sjogren to render the pro-ID side a full Discovery Institute show (strengthened presumably by congenial audience members, such as ID-friendly flagellum researcher Scott Minnich coming all the way from Idaho).

Restricted to a firmly enforced fifteen minute time limit per speech (followed by an hour of Q&A limited to short responses), it was unsurprising that the ID advocates expeditiously reprised their talking points, and their opponents in turn quickly repeated their own criticisms of those positions. Local coverage like Feran (2002) was critical of the ID side. Clines (2002) in the New York Times was noncommittal, while Witham (2002a) was more ID-friendly for The Washington Times, the conservative paper owned by Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012) of Korea, whose controversial Unification Church has intersected the ID debate via one their denomination, Icons of Evolution’s Jonathan Wells (more on those connections in due course). Fred Hutchison (2002), the “Renaissance Fool” encountered back in section 1.3, waxed impenetrable under the Discovery Institute’s “Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture” banner, where readers would have a hard time knowing what arguments were being presented by any of the speakers.

SEAO (2003) was clearer but lopsided, detailing over six long paragraphs the points made by Wells and Meyer while dismissing in four shorter ones Krauss’ response (“casting aspersions on its adherents and tenets”) and Miller (“trying to refute” Wells and Meyer and claiming “that Wells had misrepresented some of the evidence in Icons of Evolution”) without mentioning any examples. SEAO thought Meyer & Wells won the debate, though “not by a large margin.” Ken Miller (2002b) was more forthcoming in his take on the exchange, having correctly anticipated that Wells would repeat his faulty criticism of one of Miller’s own textbooks, and so arriving well prepped for rejoinder.

But beyond the technical claims of ID was a revealing difference between the two camps when it came to the domain of their support. Krauss and Miller reminded the audience of 1500 that Intelligent Design had as yet earned no credibility in the sciences, and that doing a two-on-two debate in this manner incorrectly magnified the degree of ID popularity—another issue SEAO (2003) shuffled past by opining “the Krauss-Miller argument that ‘there is no controversy’ sounded quite hollow” while conceding with neck-snapping understatement how “the modern synthesis of intelligent design is not yet well established in the scientific community.”

Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum (2002) tripped on this matter of earned expertise in a last-minute promotional announcement for this “historic debate” by enthusing that “All panelists are experts in the field of science” and alluding to some of their publication histories as though all were equally qualified in the ways that counted (evolutionary biology and paleontology). Krauss offered a less flattering but more accurate proportion if the debate had reflected the scale of the bigger research world: there should have been 10,000 scientists to one Discovery Institute Senior Fellow. My own investigation of how few core ID theoreticians there are (arguably less than a dozen) versus just the number of working scientists (easily 28,000) authoring technical papers relevant to creation/evolution issues would suggest a couple thousand to one as a fairly defendable minimum floor, putting Krauss’ number at least in the ballpark.

A further sign of ID’s distance from the cutting edge of science is the absence of any sign of researchers actually using any of their concepts, as Gilchrist (1997) and Scott & Branch (2002) had noted. Coverage of the ID debate in a special issue of U.S. News & World Report by Holly Morris (2002) included quite good articles by Hayden (2002) and Ruvinsky (2002) on current evolutionary research and investigating speciation. Discovery Institute News posted the Morris article (a selective welcome of positive coverage insofar as Morris had contrasted old style creationism with ID in a manner concordant with the ID “we’re not creationism” position) but did not include the two companion articles that would only have spotlighted how uninvolved the design community was in the workaday activities of contemporary biological science.

The lack of an operational foundation for Intelligent Design contributed to the short bumpy ride William Dembski’s “Michael Polanyi Center” had at Baylor University, Kern (2000) and Scott (2000c). Dembski had met Baylor’s President Robert Sloan (the first Baptist minister to lead the university since the 1960s) in 1996 when Dembski taught his daughter at a Christian summer camp, and went around the usual channels to bring Dembski and his colleague Bruce Gordon to Baylor in 1999 to set up the center. Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was a brilliant polymath whose philosophy of science included an occasional concern for the “testability” of evolutionary theory that creationists found congenial—and hence was a name with a readymade antievolutionary cachet for a center intended to play a part in the expanding ID Wedge. But this proved to be a slice of Wedge that cut the wrong way. Misgivings among Baylor’s academics about the science import of Dembski’s ID portfolio prompted the center’s relocation from the science department to the philosophy section. Then Polanyi’s name was removed because the religious slant of Intelligent Design apologetics was deemed inconsistent with Polanyi’s own rejection of any creator. And finally, after antagonizing his remaining supporters in the university’s administration, Dembski departed in a buzz of press releases, to the consternation of ID supporters, such as Fred Heeren (2000b) decrying “The Lynching of Bill Dembski” for The American Spectator.

Around this time Dembski and the ID cadre were launching what they intended as a vibrant base for the academic promotion of their views: the optimistically titled International Society for Complexity, Information and Design. A December ISCID (2002c) email announced their plans to establish “A Strong Internet Presence” and reported on their progress so far:

The Teleological Origin of Biological Information was “an online conference to investigate the prospects of teleological approaches in biology” consisting of a familiar cast of characters: “William Dembski, Michael Behe, Robert Koons, Guillermo Gonzalez, and others.”

Live Chat Events involved “prominent theorists in various academic fields,” such as “David Chalmers, Stuart Kauffman, Ray Kurzweil, William Dembski, Jay Richards, and Christopher Langan.” More an exercise in shoulder-rubbing PR than genuine discovery, none of the prominence of the first three scientists interviewed in 2002 appeared to have rubbed off on that latter ID trio by osmosis subsequently.

ISCID Student Workshops “for high school and college students” were led by ID advocates “Jed Macosko, Paul Nelson, Michael Behe and others.” So much for the prospect of bringing in “various academic fields” to stimulate discourse.

Brainstorms Discussion Board, their “unique online discussion board” that would be joined by “well known professors from major universities.”

Progress in Complexity, Information and Design was their “online journal for scientific exploration.” ID exemplars Dembski (2004f) and Wells (2004) would appear there, but so too YEC visitors like Royal Truman (2004a-b).

Although Dembski had invited Richard Dawkins to become a fellow of their society and contribute to their planned journal, Dawkins (2002b) decline this honor declaring at age 60 he had more pressing things to do than engage “in a gratuitous waste of precious time.” For the next few years the ISCID operated as a glee-club for the Discovery Institute group to post their arguments and respond to their critics, though by 2008 it had spluttered even in that ambition, leaving its ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy (encountered in section 1.3 earlier regarding Punctuated Equilibrium) as a lasting online monument to exactly how savvy Dawkins’ snarky assessment had been.

But the Design community tends to attribute any absence of institutional respect to factors other than their sublime lack of utility. For Hartwig (2002a) “the claptrap” represented by Krauss (2002)—that science isn’t a popularity contest, and there are minimal standards of evidence which pseudosciences from UFOs to ID have yet to attain—was merely “gallows humor” prompted by “the growing success of the Wedge.” But then, like Tanya Green, Hartwig thought “the Darwinists’ campaign in Kansas was noteworthy for its viciousness” without offering any judgments on Tom Willis’ geocentrism or a whiff of criticism of the YEC cosmology in those 1999 standards.

Phillip Johnson mounted a similar steed. After Ohio Academy of Science director Lynn Elfner questioned Intelligent Design’s scientific status (“Most mainstream scientists say the concept is scientifically untestable”) Johnson (2002a) recognized only exclusionary elitism: “I guess saying that is how they got admitted to the mainstream.” And when 15 Ohio university presidents weighed in to oppose the inclusion of ID in the science standards, Glidden et al. (2002), Johnson (2002c) decided “Darwinism is facing a huge crisis,” with the concerns of all those Ohio college presidents representing only “a desperate measure that indicates how fearful Darwinists are at the prospect of losing their monopoly over education.” In Johnson’s framing, apparently no scientist or academic is permitted the integrity of their own convictions should they not coincide with his own. SEAO (2003) took the more traditional approach to skew the perception of ID support by skipping mention of the presidents’ message altogether.

At the Columbus debate Meyer made a populist appeal by noting a poll of Ohio voters that showed over 70% favored their “teach the controversy” approach. But any hope to decide science education content by plebiscite depended on how many of a state’s vox populi were going to follow technical issues at the level necessary to reach an informed decision, and that was pushing wishful thinking to the wall. A case in point concerned Greenspan & Canamucio (2002), a deft anti-ID critique in The Scientist that the libertarian denizens of the FreeRepublic website posted in full and vigorously commented on. Although the authors explicitly offered examples of work that undermined the claims of Intelligent Design, such as Bugge et al. (1996) apropos Michael Behe’s “irreducibly complex” characterization of blood clotting—covered at length in Chapter 4 of Downard (2004)—not one of the posting commenters (whether they favored ID or not) bothered with any of those particulars and instead simply repeated their cozy mantras.

That this was the case broadly in Ohio was supported by a later poll conducted by The Plain Dealer, Stephens & Mangels (2002b), showing a somewhat lower 59% of Ohioans wanted evolution and intelligent design taught in their schools, but that they favored that primarily “because it appealed to their sense of fairness,” Vicki Johnson (2006, 232), not because they understood what ID meant or had been following the debate. When The Plain Dealer (2002c) editorialized that ID “should be covered in schools,” but only “for theology or philosophy classes—not science,” Hartwig (2002d) tried to spin that into a flip in position by quoting their “best option” fallback position given theology and philosophy classes weren’t common in public schools: “simply teach evolution honestly, explaining the theory’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the truth that plenty of gaps exist in man’s knowledge about life’s development.” That such an approach wouldn’t be helping ID’s claim to offering their portfolio of “weaknesses” was suggested by a sentence from the editorial Hartwig did not quote: “Presenting intelligent design as science would be a perversion of that teaching.” SEAO (2003) offered similar spin as Hartwig.

The Plain Dealer (2002b) didn’t accept the ID effort to distance themselves from “the Bible-based notion of creationism,” and “While intelligent-design advocates insist the concept has no religious overtones, Ohioans aren’t buying that, either,” Stephens & Mangels (2002b). That’s because The Plain Dealer poll also found 68% identified God as the designer—no space aliens here, or the vague “higher being” Calvert let slip when interviewed by Pyeatt (2002)—and almost half of those were YEC Genesis literalists. Apply then some basic long division: if around 30% of Ohioans are YEC and supposing a lot of those fell in the “teach the controversy” fairness camp (and how likely was it that a significant number of them had answered otherwise), that meant roughly half of Ohio’s pro-ID base were the very Young Earth Creationists Calvert and SEAO would prefer not to think about—SEAO (2003) did not mention the magnitude of creationist belief in Ohio when they discussed the poll.

Though evolution backers weren’t encouraged by The Plain Dealer poll, there were aspects of it that should have been raising comparable flags regarding how little traction the Calvert (godless) Naturalism vs. (unspecified “designer”) Design polarity was getting. “Asked if intelligent design is just a way to slip religion into schools, 56 percent answered no,” Stephens & Mangels (2002b), which would be a plus for the Calvert approach, were it not for the other shoe that dropped: “Nearly two-thirds of the respondents disagreed with the suggestion that teaching evolution is an attempt to remove God from society.”

Fishing for further confirmation, the Discovery Institute had commissioned Zogby International to include some questions on “Views on Teaching Theory of Evolution” to assess the support in Ohio for their “teach the controversy” approach, Mark Edwards (2002a) with Weekly Wedge praise from Hartwig (2002b). The unsurprising results were in line with the prior surveys: while 19% agreed that “Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it,” 65% preferred “Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution but also the scientific evidence against it.” The remaining 16% chose “Neither/Not sure.” Interestingly, Bruce Chapman & Stephen Meyer (2002) gave numbers for the Zogby International (2001) poll with the same questions: 15% for the (A) evolution approach and 71% for “teach the controversy” (B)—suggesting that their intensifying ID efforts had managed to erode support for their own position by several percentage points.

Sjogren et al. (2002), meanwhile, played the popularity contest game in another way by assembling a list of 52 Ohio scientists calling for “Academic Freedom on Darwin’s theory.” It was interesting that among the signatories were prominent YEC creationists Jerry Bergman and Georgia Purdom. The Discovery Institute did not show comparable enthusiasm when Ohio Citizens for Science (2002) marshalled their own petition of over 2700 to keep the evolution standards intact.

Showing they knew how to perform authority quoting just as energetically as their YEC counterparts, though, the Discovery Institute (2002b) also prepared an annotated bibliography of forty-some secular science papers for the OBE that Meyer (2002) contended “raise significant challenges to key tenets of Darwinian evolution,” and which Hutchison (2002) inflated into papers “written by intelligent design theorists”—prompting a hasty disclaimer to be added opting for the Meyer phrasing (and when I checked in March 2014 Hutchison’s piece was no longer available).

While Tristan Abbey (2002) confidently repeated claims culled from the Ohio bibliography at the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center, NCSE (2002b) criticized the DI treatment as “frequently inaccurate and tendentious” and included the complaints of many of the authors concerning the DI’s misrepresentation of their work, Branch (2002b)—incidentally, Abbey’s status as a strictly ID defender is arguable, given he contributes to the YEC Geoscience Research Institute, Abbey (2007). The response by Discovery Institute (2002b) was firm: “Every case of misrepresentation claimed by the NCSE dissolves entirely on close inspection.” Quote-mining pros Henry Morris or John Ankerberg couldn’t have said it better (the technical content of the Ohio bibliography and how the DI treatment measured up on the sound scholarship meter will be covered in subsequent chapters as the topics arise).

The Ohio DI bibliography bad penny surfaced again in Wisconsin when the Grantsburg School Board caught the “teach all theories of origin” bug in 2004, motivated especially by two members: Cindy Jensen and the chairman David Ahlquist (who also was pastor at the local Grace Baptist Church), Vitale & Vitale (2004) and Petto (2005). While their new policy did “not call for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design,” all their evidence consisted of Discovery Institute downloads and the bibliography of sources they offered just happened to match the DI’s list in 42 of 44 items—though local creationist supporters were as liable to invoke YEC works like Jonathan Sarfati’s Refuting Evolution as well. By now grassroots activists were primed not to let such maneuvers go unchallenged, but Ahlquist’s redoubt was tough to scale: the board welcomed “expert” ID speakers but refused scientists a response hearing, and would not reconsider even after letters signed by some 400 Wisconsin scientists and educators (representing biologists, geologists and anthropologists) opposed the new policy, Benson et al. (2004), Abler et al. (2004), Anapol et al. (2004) and Adam et al. (2004). Ahlquist and Jensen narrowly survived election challenges and so maintained the “all theories” provided it matched what they wanted to be true policy in place.

There was another well-publicized debate on ID the following month at the American Museum of Natural History, with Behe and Dembski facing off Ken Miller and philosopher Robert Pennock, moderated by Eugenie Scott. AMNH lending yet more attention to the flexing ID movement was considered a controversial move at the time by some, and the Discovery Institute characterized the meeting as “an historic confrontation” in a comment appended to their reprint of Scott Stevens (2002) reporting for the Plain Dealer. Samples of the participants’ positions were presented in Natural History magazine and distributed at the debate: Behe (2002), Dembski (2002c), Miller (2002a), Pennock (2002) and Scott (2002), with additional perspectives by Wells (2002a), Forrest (2002) and Tattersall (2002b).

Hartwig (2002e) grumped in the Wedge Update (by then no longer striving to be Weekly) that “the whole exercise clearly was to trash ID” because Behe, Dembski and Wells weren’t given opportunity to reply in the magazine first, an odd position to take given that it was the object of the debate itself to exchange critiques. Sounding like the YEC Apologetics Press (in section 1.3 above) Hartwig also complained about Rennie (2002b) on “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” in Scientific American. “Much of Rennie’s article is disingenuous, and in places factually wrong,” but offered no examples for us to assess the character of that “substantive debate” Hartwig was sure Rennie’s article would provoke.

The campaign to support ID played out on Kulturkampf but not scientific fields. Rick Santorum (2002) warned about “Illiberal education in Ohio schools” at The Washington Times: “If the Education Board of Ohio does not include intelligent design in the new teaching standards, many students will be denied a first-rate education.” Santorum was also intimating that Edward Kennedy’s support for his amendment translated into approving of Intelligent Design, and when Kennedy objected to this mischaracterization, Dembski (2002b) swung in to dismiss the senator from Massachusetts as “no scientist or philosopher of science” (quite true) who merely took his cues from opponents of ID—sliding past the fact that the same charge of superficiality would apply even more to Santorum and the ID proponents he was relying on. “The problem with intelligent design is not that it fails as science,” Dembski explained with question-begging sincerity, but just a contest for turf: “The problem is that evolutionary biology holds a monopoly that it is reluctant to relinquish.”

Down in the underbrush, SEAO (2003) reported how they “led the effort to get thousands of Ohioans” to send emails objecting to the “evolution only” approach still being favored by the main OBE, while Owens-Fink and Stephen Meyer appeared on Focus on the Family’s radio show to press their case among the faithful. Focus on the Family also joined with the Discovery Institute and Phil Burress’ Citizens for Community Values (meaning the community that disapproved of abortion and gay rights) to show on five Ohio television stations the “excellent” new “Icons of Evolution” video based on Wells’ book, affording many more people to experience Wells’ propaganda from the comfort of their living room couch.

In June yet another evolution/ID face off occurred at the CSICOP Fourth World Skeptics Conference in Burbank, California between Dembski and Paul Nelson contra Wesley Elsberry and Ken Miller, Massimo Pigliucci refereeing this time. Dembski (2002g) offered an especially rosy picture of the rising tide of design support, including “glimmers of a thriving design-theoretic research program.” He plucked the populist string as well by contrasting “the educated elite that love evolution” with the masses who “are by and large convinced of intelligent design,” citing with evident pleasure the Plain Dealer poll’s 59% support for teaching the controversy. Dembski did not allude to that poll’s findings on the 30% creationist component, and so steered clear of pondering how much of ID’s popularity rested on the backs of the YEC subculture.

Viewed over a decade later, though, the AMNH and CSICOP meetings can be seen as only a minor blip in an Intelligent Design campaign that went exactly nowhere scientifically. A typical measure of wheel-spinning would be the ID-friendly National Association for Objectivity in Science (2002), which included Richard Milton (1997) along with the expected Michael Behe, Michael Denton, Phillip Johnson, and Of Pandas and People (though not Icons of Evolution, surprisingly enough) on a short list of recommended works that could explain how they managed to get the science basics so very wrong (from the idea that “virtually all genetic mutations are detrimental to organisms” to the supposed lack of intermediate forms or structures in fossil taxa). A check of their website (updated only as of 2010) in February 2014 showed no changes to their reading list, not even the newer ID tomes like the Of Pandas and People replacements, Explore Evolution and The Design of Life—but then there wasn’t really anything novel to add conceptually even had they been included.

If the idea behind having such debates or to flood members with pro-ID emails was to sway the remaining fence straddlers on the main OBE, it backfired, as the board now split right down the middle pro and con, and the main writing committee showed little inclination to water down the evolution standards to suit the Lattimer camp. From faraway Colorado, Andrea Korow (2002) put up a “Prayer Alert” at the Alpha Omega Institute to encourage their Ohio brethren not to abandon the Santorum-inspired inclusion of Intelligent Design.

Ironically, just as one Ohio school district was stepping up to be the first in the state to openly include Intelligent Design in their schools, Sidoti (2002a), the ID advocates on the writing committee were giving up on that idea in favor of tweaking the remaining references to evolution and origins to stress their supposedly speculative nature, Candisky (2002b). In October 2002 the Ohio Board of Education unanimously voted (with one abstention, Martha Wise) for this dual approach of teaching evolution while flicking a wink at the criticism, and allowing local school boards to include ID but without any mandate to do so, Candisky (2002c), Sidoti (2002b) and Stephens (2002a), an outcome met with kudos from Discovery Institute (2002f) and Hartwig (2002h).

Savoring this ID victory, Hartwig offered his Weekly Wedge readers a helpful collection of “Teaching the Controversy” resources consisting only of their side: starting with his own Hartwig (2000b-c), the unavoidable Wells (2000a), the more targeted Kulturkampf apologetics of Johnson (1997b), a light cartoon-based dialogue from Newman & Wiester (2000) that thought to disentangle YEC issues from the “creationism” tag without actually disputing any of them, an anthology of the ID choir assembled by Dembski & Kushiner (2001), Discovery Institute (2001a) going after the PBS Evolution series (more on that program and antievolutionists characterization of its content in later chapters), and the legality of all this ID pedagogy affirmed by DeWolf et al. (1999; 2000)—that last citation of debatable depth given its peculiar misrepresentation of Niles Eldredge’s Reinventing Darwin (noted in section 1.3 above) as somehow antievolutionary.

When the American Association for the Advancement of Science and its chief executive officer deemed the OBE’s decision most inauspicious, AAAS (2002a-b) and Leshner (2002a-b), Hartwig (2002i) chalked this up to “Darwinist anxiety” as Teach the Controversy (now abbreviated to TTC) successfully took aim at “the Darwinist party line.” In December the final OBE vote stuck with the evolution-only (plus a wink) approach, Meikle (2002) satisfying SEAO (2003) and their orbiting allies at Focus on the Family, the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design Network.