Chapter I

The same issues of antievolutionary persecution appeared with Rodney LeVake, a biology teacher at Faribault High School in Minnesota who sued school officials for violating his religious and academic freedom after he was reassigned from biology to freshman science for refusing to stop offering creationist criticisms of evolution in class. John Calvert brought him up during Kansas II, saying he’d been reassigned “because all he wanted to do was teach evolution honestly,” Talk.Origins Archive (2005j).

There was the expected media coverage, of course, such as Lieblich (1999), Channel 4000 (1999) and Tyrangiel (2000), along with plenty of critical reactions: Matsumura (1999d), Scott (1999c; 2000b,d; 2010c, 243), Ecological Society of America (2000), Robert Carroll (2001), Applegate et al. (2002; 2003), Randy Moore (2004; 2013e), Than (2005) and Maloy (2012b). The creationist and ID coverage will be examined shortly.

The LeVake case was unusual in that it ended up in court (Freshwater would also), and for a change it wasn’t the Rutherford Institute but Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice that defended the teacher. Founded in 1990 by Pat Robertson (described by their website as “a Yale law school graduate, religious leader, entrepreneur, and concerned citizen”), the ACLJ embodies the conservative religious ideology of its parentage. Although the organization regularly fulminates on abortion, homosexuality and anything to do with liberal political policies and file legal briefs on issues of concern to them, the LeVake case was the only time the ACLJ stepped into the evolution debate, and the results may give a clue why.

LeVake was a middle school general science teacher with a masters degree in biology who hoped to apply that background by switching to the biology section. A likable fellow who did not hide his fundamentalist Christianity but didn’t provoke heated arguments over it, he belonged to a church denomination that explicitly rejected evolution, and those beliefs raised a problem for his desired career move because he could not honestly teach the chapters on evolution. Fortunately, LeVake said his retiring predecessor told him he hadn’t taught evolution either and that LeVake wouldn’t have to if he didn’t want to, Lieblich (1999). Only the teacher in question recollected things differently: not spending a lot of time on it but still covering the chapters in class.

This often striking mismatch between LeVake’s dissembling mindscape and his overt actions continued from the moment he took up his new teaching post, as press accounts and subsequent court depositions showed. The amiable and popular LeVake held true to his convictions and skipped the evolution unit (omitting mention of evolution in tests) and explained this afterward as due to time having run out in a shortened term. But class hours had been lengthened to compensate for the short term (during which the other science teachers had managed to include some of the evolution unit), and one of LeVake’s own students (a sympathetic one at that, who enjoyed the class overall) reported that LeVake had announced on the very first day that he wasn’t going to be teaching evolution. In their court submission American Center for Law and Justice (1999a) ran that information under the bus when they attested that LeVake “anticipated teaching a unit on evolution during the academic year” but “never reached that section of the book” only on account of the truncated school year.

LeVake did find class time to discuss creationist works, though, and a student who reported on an article in Answers in Genesis’ Creation magazine earned extra credit points. LeVake also happened to belong to the Institute for Creation Research, putting his activities in touch with the output of both major players on the Young Earth creationist scene in the late 1990s.

Leaving out chunks of the assigned curriculum is not a way to endear you to the school administration even without the creationist trimmings, and the science chair at Faribault, Ken Hubert, arranged for LeVake to work through his issues with the principal and district science coordinator. LeVake said he could teach the evolution unit after all, provided he was allowed to present the “evidence against evolution,” and LeVake was asked to prepare a paper describing what revisions he had in mind for this customized curriculum change.

The resulting six page “position paper on the teaching of evolution” made many things abundantly clear. Following the “no one was there” tack of modern antievolutionism, LeVake (1998) started off by claiming both evolution and creation were untestable and hence technically not “considered a science (Biology).” A second methodological shoe dropped when he insisted that “The process of evolution itself is not only impossible from a biochemical, anatomical, and physiological standpoint, but the theory of evolution has no evidence to show that it actually occurred,” and listed several dozen supposed biological problems for evolution (including such minutia as “the woodpecker’s tongue and shock absorber”) that have circulated in creationist literature, along with newer terminology (like Behe’s “irreducible complexity”) cribbed from the developing ID camp.

The unspoken logic chain here was consistent with creationist thinking, and it carried a concealed apologetic bomb. The “either creation or evolution” dichotomy seen at Edwards v. Aguillard meant that if you established evolution as “impossible” then Creation (the YEC model that was the sole allowed alternative) must be true by default, whether or not LeVake bothered to mention God or religion in class. That meant every time LeVake brought up some “evidence against evolution” it was playing into a presupposed sectarian dogmatic context.

Left on the consistency floor was the absurdity of claiming evolution was “untestable” while insisting it was “impossible” based on physical evidence. Isn’t that the very essence of testing a scientific hypothesis? But if that were conceded, how then could the untestability of Creation be maintained as well? The creationist apologetic game of Hide the Ball whereby all argument was about evolution and not its proposed alternative fit well with the necessity since Edwards v. Aguillard of keeping God and extrovert religious defenses out of the picture, but forced activists like LeVake to wing it from an increasingly eroding promontory composed of secondarily scavenged talking points that would still have to stand or fall on their merits just like any other factual claim. Testability was never going to be a one way street devoid of contentious cross traffic.

While LeVake (1998) declined to “spend time on what I see as supporting evidence for a creationist point of view” that resolve didn’t last long: on the following pages he threw in “polystrata” (sic: polystrate) fossils, problems with radiometric dating, and the notion that the Second Law of Thermodynamics precluded evolution—all of which (apart from a more recent idiosyncratic defense of entropy arguments by Granville Sewell) being diagnostically distinctive turf for the Henry Morris brand of Young Earth Creationism.

Knowing these elements of LeVake’s thinking and what creationists have been contending for years, there was nothing unexpected when LeVake (1998) repeated the ubiquitous antievolutionist conviction that “There has never been a creature discovered that could be considered a logical intermediate of any two major classes of animals or plants.” He mentioned only Archaeopteryx as an example, summarily flicking it aside with: “considered by many to be a link between reptile and bird, but has recently been questioned.” By whom he neglected to say. In fact, it was a free for all to imagine from his Position Paper how he might have assembled his understanding of anything, as the only time he identified specific sources was to elbow the fine art of creationist redaction off a scholarly cliff:

Thousands of scientists with advanced credentials have begun to take a second look at what we all were taught in school as “fact.” I encourage you to read Michael Denton’s book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, (1985, Adler & Adler), Phillip E. Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial (1991) and Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box (1996, Touchstone). Although I have not personally read the last two books listed as of yet, they are nationally acclaimed as critical reviewers of the theory of evolution and are on my list of books to read. LeVake (1998).

Besides the chutzpa of carving “thousands of scientists” down to just three problematic examples (or two, if you remember Johnson was a lawyer), for someone who hadn’t even read Behe’s book, LeVake appeared remarkably eager to repeat his conclusions as established, giving a good measure of how LeVake may have been operating elsewhere in his “honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies” of evolution (as well as the common readiness of YEC apologists to expediently reload with refreshed ID ammunition).

Although Lieblich (1999) reported LeVake saying he “relies heavily” on Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, there’s reason to suspect more cognitive disconnect here as very little of his position statement assertions could have been mined from Denton’s book. But if taken at face value, LeVake’s debt to Denton would only saddle him with an even narrower credulity and rank hypocrisy to the extent that he failed to apply the “critical thinking skills” he wanted so to instill in his students to the only source he intimated he had actually read.

If LeVake thought to give Denton more credit here than he deserved, it may have been because he didn’t want to identify some of the sources he was paying attention to. Ironically, the court depositions occasioned by his lawsuit pried several from under cover, Koch & Bjorklund (2000). Ken Hubert spotted the Jehovah’s Witness antievolution book Life—How did it get here? open on LeVake’s desk. Though LeVake stipulated he had not used that work directly in class, I encountered many of his specific position statement examples in Watchtower (1985, 46, 74, 79, 105-107, 161, 166, 171). LeVake could have got his Archaeopteryx and flagellum examples from Denton (1985), but even those points were in Life—How did it get here? too.

As for its scientific utility, the review by Levin (1992) noted Life—How did it get here? trod the same path as Henry Morris’ Scientific Creationism with a rampant reliance on quoting dated sources out of context, especially regarding fossil evidence. Where it differed most from Morris was in not regarding creation and evolution as equally untestable (whereas LeVake tracked the ICR approach in his Position Paper) and failing to compartmentalize the religious element as Scientific Creationism had (which came in two versions, a public school edition bereft of scripture, and another aimed for religious schools where supplementary Bible readings wouldn’t pose a constitutional or apologetic problem). Since Watchtower (1985) constantly referenced the Bible, it would have been Hell Fire hot for public school use in principle.

And yet LeVake did admit to using Jobe Martin’s The Evolution of a Creationist in class, the work that had so impressed Joe Baker but likewise shouldn’t have passed muster (overtly religious and factually wrong besides). LeVake also drew upon Bone of Contention: Is Evolution True?—a booklet by British creationist Sylvia Baker that has gone through several editions since 1976 but was just another recap of standard YEC doctrine. Apart from reading Life—How did it get here? as a potential well of misinformation, LeVake may have avoided using it in class for reasons other than technical content: because its specific Jehovah’s Witness sectarian provenance differed too much from his own.

You can keep Rod LeVake in mind in the chapters to come as those volumes come under critical scrutiny (particularly Evolution: A Theory in Crisis) and think back to the idea that LeVake would have considered any of it suitable for inclusion in a public school biology course. Viewed methodologically, LeVake’s position statement was a tangle of creationist factoids and deck-stacking assumptions. The result was something Eugenie Scott (2000b, 815) described in Science as “an evidence-against-evolution curriculum indistinguishable from Creation science. Only the terminology has been changed in order to circumvent the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishment of religion.”

How many students could have seen the scientific terrain through LeVake’s creationist camouflage was debatable, and the school district decided to relocate him to earth science for the 1998-1999 year—though (as with the DeHart case) it might be wondered how long it would have taken before LeVake felt the urge to challenge geological dating with his “polystrata” fossils. Things came to a head before that temptation could occur as LeVake launched his lawsuit in May 1999, with the ACLJ asking for $50,000 in “compensatory damages” in a legal defense building on the belief circulating after Edwards v. Aguillard that individual teachers should be allowed to present their antievolutionary arguments so long as it was on their own initiative, and that a school would be violating the teacher’s academic and religious freedom if they objected.

Given the background of LeVake’s views, it is noteworthy that at no time in any of its public press announcements about the case or in the legal submissions to the court did the ACLJ ever discuss LeVake’s creationist associations or the resources he drew on, Manion (1998) and American Center for Law and Justice (1999a-b; 2000). At all times LeVake was painted generically as a dedicated teacher “barred from teaching biology because of his religious beliefs,” an object of “educational McCarthyism” over his “extremely limited and reasonable request” to present relevant and truthful information. American Center for Law and Justice (2000) even climbed onto a populist stump to suggest “that LeVake, like all teachers, has a right to present facts to his students even if those facts are disturbing to those in power.”

The ACLJ tiptoed very close to the concealed backstory at times, as when their lead lawyer, Francis Manion (1998) insisted to the court that LeVake:

has no intention of teaching “creation science” or imparting his or anyone else’s religious views to his students. All he wants to do is to present the theory of evolution as just that—a theory subscribed to by the majority of scientists today but not without some reputable, non-religious dissenters. Only a school district interested in imposing a “pall of orthodoxy” on its classroom could object to such an approach.

This was a disingenuous assertion of biblical proportions given that LeVake had been conveying the exclusive claims of Creation Science extracted from identified Creation Science sources (unless Manion wanted to trot out some reliable non-YEC secular spokesman who has ever considered “polystrata” fossils pertinent to descent with modification). That LeVake (1998) sought to wriggle the provenance of his arguments under the cloak of Denton and Intelligent Design only underscored the irony of a “situational ethics” regarding that commandment on bearing false witness, abetted by the ACLJ to the extent that they reprised his assertions in defiance of the evidence—LeVake (1998) was attached to the ACLJ’s submitted court complaint as their own Exhibit A.

American Center for Law and Justice (1999b) quoted Manion: “School officials may not pry into an employee’s religious beliefs and then discriminate against him because of what officials think about those beliefs. That kind of action is unconstitutional and we intend to prove it in court.” Only they failed (miserably) to prove that in court, and that was because at no time were LeVake’s religious views under scrutiny in the way the ACLJ implied (no one suggested LeVake had to forsake a belief in God in order to teach evolution, and none of the many treatments even alluded to what church he belonged to apart from its creationist beliefs). What was in dispute was LeVake’s injection of books and articles of dubious scientific merit while showing a complete unwillingness to teach the assigned evolution section (again in contradiction to the spin the ACLJ put on it in court and in their press releases) unless he could do it his way and his way alone.

Manion (1998) offered a specious analogy in the ACLJ’s demand letter when asking if a teacher should be “disqualified from teaching the subject of biology” solely on account of their religious belief:

May a teacher who, personally, finds socialism to be a superior economic philosophy teach a high school class on economics where the textbook is written from a pro-capitalist perspective? Does a teacher who privately prefers the parliamentary system of government automatically forfeit her right to teach a high school U.S. Government class?

If they were editing out part of the course they didn’t like and insisting on interpolating their own ideological works in the way LeVake did on evolution, not only would they be unjustified in doing so, but in the case of the socialist, odds are the ACLJ could be prodded into complaining about such class indoctrination in their incessant email alerts.

LeVake departed from his private conviction the moment he started using a book with the provocative title The Evolution of a Creationist in class. Manion did not venture how any administrator could have avoided asking how much of LeVake’s use of books like Martin’s stemmed from merely disinterested pedagogy and how much because he “professes Christianity of a certain type” (as Manion euphemistically put it in his demand letter) shared uniquely with their authors and so accorded them unwarranted credibility on those grounds. Had LeVake skipped a section on Mesoamerican accomplishments in a history class while replacing it with extracts of Chariots of the Gods? any investigation could be considered derelict to the extent it failed to “pry” by asking if the teacher believed in ancient astronauts.

Although making so much of the religious liberty issue was a tacit admission that what LeVake was doing in class was intrinsically religious, the court did not need to address that side of things in part because LeVake had been too good at keeping his creationist beliefs under wraps around his colleagues and students, nor could he claim that his personal religious practices had been in any way curtailed by what he wasn’t allowed to say when wearing his teacher’s hat. He hadn’t been fired nor even reprimanded for his beliefs, only reassigned and enjoined to stick to the curriculum he had been hired to teach. That left the remaining element of ACLJ’s plaintiff argument, that a teacher could rewrite mandated curricula at will (independently from what motivations underlay that desire or whether the information the teacher wanted to inject was sound or folly). It was difficult to imagine any court buying into that carte blanche either, and the district court dismissed LeVake’s case on all counts. LeVake lost on appeal, Foley (2001), and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Rev. Tom Pedigo (2002) of the National Alliance Against Christian Discrimination in Colorado reflected the conservative Christian reaction to the LeVake decision when he summed it up as “Monkeys 1; Christians 0.” Plenty of spleen was also vented at Ken Hubert: “Letters claimed that Hubert was a Nazi, that the Bible records all of the basic laws of science, that evolution is a lie, that teachers who teach evolution should be fired, and that the teaching of evolution is responsible for premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, drugs, gangs, Satanism, and suicides,” Randy Moore (2013e).

Tales of LeVake’s martyrdom circulated among Kulturkampf Christian apologetic groups. Some were minor ones, like Resurrection Power (2000), an apologetic website that was still active in 2014 but hadn’t added anything new since 2001, or Maranatha Christian Journal (1999). A familiar set of characters weighed in: Frank York (2000) for Focus on the Family, Julie Foster (2000c) at WorldNetDaily; American Family Association posting Buehrer (2001) from “Gateways to Better Education” and WorldNetDaily (2001) weighing in again. The narrowest circle of incestuous argument followed Candi Cushman (2001) at World Magazine, recommended by their partners at the Christian Broadcast Network and by Catherina Hurlburt (2001) at Concerned Women for America. Cushman reflected the ACLJ account without reservation—and the ACLJ returned the favor by heartily recommended her treatment. Secondary sprinters with more stamina could get their Cushman via Christopher Johnson (2011a) recommending the Twin Cities Creation Science Association (2001) that had cribbed the World Magazine article.

All ended up sounding a lot like the skit on Conan where an avalanche of clips from local news reporters catch them reading the same canned message. LeVake’s defenders chorused how he had not taught “creationism” or pressed his religious views, often interlaced with corroborating quotations mined from Manion and the ACLJ. What none of them did was examine any of the explicitly creationist examples in LeVake’s own Position Paper (even the ones who mentioned LeVake’s preparing it) or the court deposition information that belied his claims. The concealment of LeVake’s creationist beliefs extended even to Answers in Genesis (2000d; 2002a) and Brian Thomas (2008f) at the Institute for Creation Research—the very groups you’d think would be most disposed to embrace him as one of their own.

Possibly because their legal case belly flopped in court, the LeVake affair has been conspicuously absent from their evolving position statements on teaching creationism: American Center for Law and Justice (2001; 2003; 2013d) have ramped down allusions to creationism in favor of the increasingly prominent Intelligent Design rhetoric, as has their spinoff organization, European Center for Law and Justice (2007). While Jay Sekulow (2003b) held “creationism does deserve to be taught along with evolution” provided “it does not promote a religious purpose,” he declined to specify by illustrative example how anyone could do that (evidentially or legally), and replied to reader questions on evolution, creationism, and ID in schools with little beyond an encouraging thumbs up that evolution was getting criticized, Jay Sekulow (2002a-b; 2004).

Perhaps not coincidentally, over this period Pat Robertson came out of the geochronology closet and decided humans really did live after dinosaurs, a slice of antievolutionary theater that brought howls from Pandas Thumb and growls from Answers in Genesis, with Ken Ham eventually deciding Robertson was “misinformed and deceived,” David E. Thomas (2012b), Tommy Mitchell (2012) and Zaimov (2014b).

Viewed with the perspective of time, Moore & Cotner (2013) noted that the LeVake case was atypical in that most creationist teachers “are tolerated—and sometimes even encouraged.” Which can be compared to Jerry Bergman (2012a) demonstrating once again his manipulative use of source material when he cited the LeVake court case and Randy Moore (2004) of all people to justify this claim: “Another problem is that many teachers who teach Darwinism objectively are accused of not teaching it at all when, in fact, they cover it in much more depth than most teachers.” False on all counts. LeVake was the only subject of Moore’s interview, and Moore made no such claim for LeVake (recounting at length his failure to cover the assigned material compared to his colleagues) or any “teachers who teach Darwinism objectively” (by which Bergman meant creationists like himself) let alone that “many” had done so.

Meanwhile, LeVake had shown no apparent inclination to hone his own “critical thinking skills” regarding evolutionary matters, as paleontologist (and a Christian himself, albeit a fairly doctrinally liberal one) Robert Asher (2012b) spotted regarding his own specialty of the fossil record:

Teachers do not have the “academic freedom” to distort this evidence, for example by stating that animals since the Cambrian show “very little change throughout the rock layers,” as Mr. LeVake did in a 2008 interview with the Discovery Institute. A civil society cannot force him to reject belief in static species, custom-designed by a human-like god who circumvents natural processes. However, because his job required knowledge of history and science, his beliefs on those topics should not be insulated from scrutiny by his employer.

Which brings us to the person doing the Discovery Institute interviewing: Casey Luskin (2008x-y). Like the Kulturkampf warriors noted above, Luskin (2009al, 21-24; 2010h; 2014o) has repeatedly called attention to LeVake as an aggrieved martyr to academic freedom. The 2009 Hamline University Law Review article (and its online reprise in 2010 for Evolution News & Views) ought to have been the most thorough, but it was simply a repetition of the contentions of LeVake and the ACLJ legal briefs. As to LeVake’s having “allegedly failed to adequately cover the curriculum requirements for evolution” Luskin (2009am, 21-22) supplied a documentary footnote that consisted only of a transcript excerpt of his 2008 podcast interview:

Casey Luskin: There have been people including both the court and some Darwinists involved with this situation who claimed that you refused to teach evolution. Is that true?

Rodney LeVake: No, that was actually not the case at all. It wasn’t that I was refusing to teach evolution. They wanted to know my views about what I thought about evolution. And I told them that I had some concerns about it from a scientific standpoint. I thought that would be a good quality to have and help my biology students to think critically about this. After all, that’s what science is all about, trying to help students to think critically about topics, and evolution would be one of them. And so I didn’t think it as a defiant proclamation on my part. I was just simply mentioning that I thought that Darwinian evolution had some flaws that would be worthwhile taking a look at.

Casey Luskin: They’ve also said Mr. LeVake that you refused to teach basically the full curriculum regarding evolution and what you were supposed to teach. Was that a true charge against you?

Rodney LeVake: No. As I had mentioned, on the side as I was talking earlier, I was teaching the very same thing as my mentor teacher was right next door. Every single day I taught the very same thing that he taught.

Well, if that’s what LeVake said happened in response to your softball questions, why gosh, it must be true, mustn’t it?

In one sense Luskin’s account was of a piece with the other LeVake defenders: no exploration of what LeVake specifically taught or the sources he relied on or even what the teacher had written in his own 1998 Position Paper (which Luskin did not mention). But this was no squib for WorldNetDaily or Focus on the Family, but a law review article where standards ought to have been a bit higher. Yet Luskin failed to put any non-LeVake testimony in the dock or acknowledge the Kulturkampf component of the affair reflected in the ACLJ’s botched involvement in the litigation (whose details contradicted LeVake’s version and which Luskin also did not discuss).

Luskin topped off his closed circuit gloss in the Hamline University Law Review with exactly one (very non-disinterested) opinion on LeVake’s legal import, cited presumably because it happened to concur with his own: Christian philosopher Francis Beckwith (2002), occasional fellow of the Discovery Institute and advisor to the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center where arguments from Luskin and others found ready venue. Interestingly, Robert Vischer (2006, 85) cited Beckwith (2002) along with DeWolf et al. (2000), but not regarding the LeVake case but only generally apropos the need “to give teachers academic freedom to ensure that students can ‘explore and develop new ideas,’ and to provide a bulwark against education becoming ‘indoctrination’.” Vischer’s paper will pop up again in an equally ambivalent role concerning the Dover Kitzmiller case.

However personable and charming Luskin can be on a personal level, just as Phillip Johnson had with Roger DeHart and Joe Baker before him, the moment he put on his apologetic hat, Casey jumped onto what had become a singularly narrow one rail line at the Discovery Institute that operated now at all levels and in all venues: only Intelligent Design exists as an antievolutionary position to be recognized. If there happen to be “creationists” somewhere (who might believe some manner of things totally outside the strictly scientific purview of ID), they are not whoever it is we are interviewing or writing about, and in any case could not be doing anything of concern provided we don’t look at them. All information presented by these “Intelligent Design” advocates must be valid and worthy of the most honored deference, though none of what they may have said or written will be discussed unless it coincides with the items covered by Icons of Evolution or the latest Discovery Institute videos.

There were other creationist teachers who bumped into the boundaries of acceptable science education during this period, though none got the prominence of DeHart or LeVake. Jefferson High School (Lafayette, Indiana) chemistry teacher Daniel Clark was reprimanded for inviting Geoff Stevens of Answers in Genesis to speak to his class on “The Nature of Science Regarding Origins.” When the school declined to rescind the wrist slap, Clark quit over this “persecution” and moved to Frontier School Corporation (Indiana’s term for school districts). Stacia Byers (2001) at AiG wished “Dan the best as he teaches his new students the nature of true science.” As no subsequent incidents have cropped up regarding Clark, it is unclear whether this means he has revised his conception of “true science” or kept any AiG addenda more to himself (or simply found a school environment less prone to reprimanding). Stevens continues to lecture for AiG, but lacks any discernable written oeuvres to calibrate his reliability.

Across the continent, biology teacher Kevin Haley did not get his contract renewed at Central Oregon Community College in 2000 following student and faculty concerns over how his religious disapproval of evolution and attitudes about women manifested in class (though he had taught at a Catholic girl’s school without apparent incident), Leatherman (2000) for Chronicle of Higher Education and Koe (2000) at Christian News Northwest regionally. In a familiar template, Haley was well-liked and had not explicitly advocated creationism in class, but an evangelical undercurrent to his thinking may have been the tipping point as far as the school was concerned:

“Students who doubt evolution are more likely to find God,” he noted. One student who filed a complaint against Haley said the instructor seemed not to understand how thoroughly his faith influenced his teachings and saw no reason to change. Koe (2000).

Answers in Genesis (2000a-b) was particularly peeved over the college’s disinclination to discuss the details of the case, but as Haley didn’t take any legal action over the contract cancellation (where depositions might have revealed much about what manner of resources Haley may have drawn on to arrive at his opinion on evolution), his case has had less traction in the Kulturkampf media: Foster (2000a-b) and WorldNetDaily (2001), Nancy Pearcey (2000d) at World Magazine, and Focus on the Family’s “Family News in Focus” show, noted by People for the American Way (2000b) in their monitoring of Right Wing media. Haley has stayed below the Internet search radar in the years since, such that Christopher Johnson (2011a) didn’t even have a picture of Haley to post when he channeled the decade-old coverage of Foster and Pearcey.

Another blip on the creationist science teacher scope passed by during this period, as Roanoke, Virginia biology teacher Larry Booher was told to stop his practice of passing out YEC material, which he had been doing for fifteen years apparently without anyone in the school system (supervisors or parents) noticing or complaining until a whistle blower called attention to it, Fox News (2005a). After Mehta (2014a) made the Booher (2005) supplement available it was possible to examine exactly what the now-retired Booher thought constituted valid evidence in favor of YEC, which turned out to be a repetitive 500-page collection of claims cribbed secondarily from a small well of dated creationist works (including the Lunar Dust Myth) covered variously in the Downard (2004) chapters.

Meanwhile, Phillip Johnson joined creationist Andrew Snelling for a joint lecture gig among the heathens of England, ICR (2005) reporting this congenial intersection of ID & YEC apologetics with blithe understatement:

Although approaching their subjects from somewhat different perspectives, Dr. Snelling and Professor Johnson found that they could minister well together. Professor Johnson emphasized that evolutionists do not have any mechanism which explains how macroevolution would have happened, and that all their anger expressed over creationism is a smokescreen to hide this lack of evidence, which suggests that they are really defending a religion, not science. Dr. Snelling presented evidence for a young earth from the RATE project, for the Flood from geological evidence, and then finished with the relevance of these issues to the Gospel.

And thus did Phillip Johnson hobnob with someone espousing stock creationist claims on radioactive dating and the Biblical Flood, without apparently having his methods umbrage meter quiver off flat line, unlike his hair-trigger skepticism regarding a range of macroevolutionary science data Johnson had shown not the slightest curiosity to explore at depth, as covered previously in Downard (2003; 2004) and in due course in this present TIP project. What indeed was left then of the illusion that there was some fundamental distinction between ID & YEC methodology?