The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA

241 Pages·2007·7.69 MB·English

by  Gordy Slack

ffirs.qxd 4/1/07 7:51 AM Page i
BATTLE OVER
THE
MEANING
THE
EVERYTHING
OF
•
Evolution, Intelligent Design,
and a School Board in Dover, PA
Gordy Slack
John Wiley & Sons
ffirs.qxd 4/1/07 7:51 AM Page ii
Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons,Inc.All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street,San Francisco,CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or
by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,scanning,or otherwise,except as permit-
ted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act,without either the prior written
permission of the publisher,or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the
Copyright Clearance Center,Inc.,222 Rosewood Drive,Danvers,MA 01923,978-750-8400,fax 978-
646-8600,or on the Web at www.copyright.com.Requests to the publisher for permission should be
addressed to the Permissions Department,John Wiley & Sons,Inc.,111 River Street,Hoboken,NJ 07030,
201-748-6011,fax [phone],or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty:While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in
preparing this book,they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or complete-
ness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fit-
ness for a particular purpose.No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written
sales materials.The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation.You should
consult with a professional where appropriate.Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss
of profit or any other commercial damages,including but not limited to special,incidental,consequential,
or other damages.
Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information
may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores.To contact Jossey-Bass directly call
our Customer Care Department within the U.S.at 800-956-7739,outside the U.S.at 317-572-3986,or
fax [phone].
Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats.Some content that appears in print
may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Slack,Gordy.
The battle over the meaning of everything:evolution,intelligent design,and a school board in
Dover,PA / Gordy Slack.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7879-8786-2 (cloth)
1. Kitzmiller,Tammy—Trials,litigation,etc.2. Dover Area School
District (Dover,Pa.)—Trials,litigation,etc.3. Evolution (Biology)—Study and teaching—Law and
legislation—Pennsylvania—Dover.4.Intelligent design (Teleology)—Study and teaching—Law
and legislation—Pennsylvania—Dover. I.Title.
KF228.K589S59 2007
344.748'41077—dc22 2007005825
Printed in the United States of America
first edition
HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ftoc.qxd 4/1/07 7:53 AM Page iii
•
c o n t e n t s
Prologue v
1 The Takeover 1
2 The Train to Dover 16
3 The Theory Is Not a Fact 23
4 Assembling Goliath 43
5 Thomas More and ID Lite 61
6 ID Heavy and the Wedge 74
7 Down by Law 85
8 Search and Replace 98
9 The Varieties of Materialistic Experience 109
10 The Flagellar Fandango 124
11 Liars for Christ 144
12 The Unraveling 158
13 The Fortieth Day 170
14 The People’s Court and the Gospel According to John Jones 182
15 Afterword 199
Notes 209
Acknowledgments 219
About the Author 223
Index 224
iiiiii
fbetw.qxd 4/1/07 7:50 AM Page iv
For my sons Leo and Jonah:may you continue to
joyously pursue the truth and to regard with skeptical
respect those who swear to have found it
•
flast.qxd 4/1/07 7:52 AM Page v
••
P RO LO G U E
The intelligent design movement had taken the nation by storm,and in the
process I had lost a bet.Sort of.
In January 1998,my father and I had marched down Berkeley’s Col-
lege Avenue,overdressed in suits and sweating like Mormons at the equa-
tor.It was extraordinarily hot,and the midday sun raised bubbles in the
asphalt.We were arguing about evolution,as usual,as we raced toward Boalt
Hall,the University of California at Berkeley’s law school.We were going
there to meet Phillip Johnson,professor of law,author of a book called Dar-
win on Trial,and the founding father of what my dad described as the “neo-
creationist”intelligent design (ID) movement.
I was an editor at a natural history magazine,and the theme of my
work was evolutionary biology.That fact was a big bee in the bonnet of my
dad,a Princeton-trained experimental psychologist who,to my dismay,had
recently turned super-Christian anti-evolution neo-creationist proponent
of ID.He’d been corresponding with Phil Johnson and had somehow talked
him,and me,into having lunch together.
When we burst into his office ten minutes late,breathless and hot,
Johnson offered us each a glass of water.I would have much preferred a dou-
ble scotch.What the hell was I doing here? Why had I,a science writer and
evolutionist,agreed to have lunch with a crusading creationist lawyer? How
could this possibly turn out well?
v
flast.qxd 4/1/07 7:52 AM Page vi
• prologue •
Johnson,at fifty-six,looked older than his years.He was a short,
squarish person with mischievous crinkly eyes and a thin wisp of gray hair
that breached the top of his shiny head.He expressed lots of both confi-
dence and humility,and they commingled disarmingly.Despite his mission,
he had none of the fundamentalist preacher about him.He was urbane,
articulate,and smart as a whip;not at all what I expected to find in the guy
who’d resurrected creationism from the dung heap of America’s really bad
twentieth-century ideas.
We walked the short distance to the comfortable,redwood-shaded
Berkeley Faculty Club. Once we settled in to our meal, Johnson and
I argued intensively,ceaselessly,but civilly for an hour and a half,taking
turns so we could eat our chicken and mashed potatoes between bursts of
rhetoric.
Though the intelligent design movement was still an infant,all of its
basic arguments were already in place.Johnson argued that evolution was
an ideology,not a science;that what passed for scientific proof in evolu-
tionary biology was neither scientific nor proof but rather rhetoric resting
on bad philosophy.Evolution was bad science,he said,but what this debate
was really about was neither evolution nor ID,but the worldviews they
enabled.Evolution,he said,permits a relativistic,purposeless,Godless
view of the world,in which self-aggrandizement and pleasure are sufficient
ends in themselves,and the only objective measure of goodness is repro-
ductive fitness.
I stood up for evolution,citing the ever-stronger evidence found in
the fossil record,the avalanche of new genetic evidence,and lab work
directly observing evolution not only in microorganisms but in big ones such
as fruit flies.Natural selection had not only helped create a coherent narra-
tive about the source of life,I said,but also helped create drug-resistant
pathogens and the new medicines used to treat them.
Johnson shook his head.No,he said,and cited a new book in which
Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe allegedly took apart each of
Darwin’s claims.In addition to revealing Darwin’s fallacies,Behe also
showed that the biological world was riddled with structures which were
vi
flast.qxd 4/1/07 7:52 AM Page vii
Prologue
complex in a way that Darwin’s step-by-step natural selection couldn’t begin
to explain.Design—intelligent design—was the only other explanation,
Behe and Johnson said.
If there’s any evidence for natural selection,Johnson said,it is only
for minor changes within a species.The big stuff,evolution of new kinds of
life from old ones,complex ones from simple ones,birds from dinosaurs,
just doesn’t fly,he said.It couldn’t.You don’t find an organism with half a
lung,half an eye,half a flagellum,he said.
“What about lungfish?”I asked.“Aren’t they a likely candidate for the
ancestor to all terrestrial vertebrates? Don’t they have something like half
a lung?”
“No,”he said.
“Yes,”I said.
“No,”he said.
Neither Johnson,the lawyer,nor I,the science writer,could settle the
question there.Although we were both better equipped with facts and the-
oretical understanding than most people having this debate,it still boiled
down to a basic difference.I believed in evolution,he did not.
Darwin’s theory of evolution was,for me,a fundamental belief.If nat-
ural selection couldn’t explain some irreducibly complex structure now,I
said,one day either it,or some other natural process,would be able to.I
just knew it.
“Okay!”he said,as if crying Eureka! “You’ve said it! You assume that
even if Darwin’s theory is wrong,that one day there will be some other nat-
ural,mindless,unintentional explanation of life’s history ...that’s exactly
the assumption that props up the whole materialistic view of the world.It
locks intelligent design out of science by definition,whether there is evi-
dence for design or not.And that’s exactly the view of the world that ID is
going to bring down like a house of cards,”he said,not even trying to sup-
press his impish smile.
Just like a kid,I reached out to shake his hand,saying,“Want to bet?”
He ignored my hand.“Give us five or ten years,and you’ll see scien-
tific breakthroughs biologists hadn’t dreamed of before ID,”he said.“Today
vii
flast.qxd 4/1/07 7:52 AM Page viii
• prologue •
science can’t follow the evidence where it leads.If data points toward ID,
scientists have to ignore it.But people can’t do that forever.And when they
accept the evidence for design,there won’t just be a new scientific para-
digm.The cultural legacies of materialism will implode as well.”
“That’s a bold prediction,”I said.“We’ll see.”
“Yes,we’ll see,”he said.
We finished our coffee,exchanged business cards,agreed that it had
been interesting,and said goodbye.
My dad and I walked out of the shady redwood grove that surrounds
the Faculty Club and back into the afternoon sun.I felt like I was leaving
Alice’s Wonderland,where I’d been talking to a mad genius,one whose
paranoia and craving for meaning led him to a view of the world that,while
internally coherent,was completely out of whack with the real world as I
knew it.
I still haven’t bought ID,even in its most discounted versions.But
since that lunch with Johnson,I no longer see the debate as open and shut.
It is more nuanced,philosophical,and complex—in a word,it is more fas-
cinating—than I ever could have imagined before that meeting,which is
what makes this story so much fun to tell and what will make it so surpris-
ing and perhaps compelling to read.
In addition to giving me a crash course in the craziest theory since
cold fusion,Johnson taught me something I’d not known about myself:I had
a deep attachment to a world run by atoms and their properties,a world
free from God and His personality.My bias was informed by data,experi-
ence,and a lot of presumably well-placed faith in the scientific establish-
ment.But beneath all that I had to admit an inclination,a proclivity,a
prejudice,an assumption that the world was ultimately,in itself,without
meaning.
Johnson was wrong about evolution,I was sure,but he was a provoca-
tive lunch date.As my creationist dad and I walked home,I wondered if I’d
ever see or hear anything about Johnson again.
V
viii
flast.qxd 4/1/07 7:52 AM Page ix
Prologue
I did,and in spades.He has become an icon among neo-creationists;
the George Washington of ID.1
But it isn’t until September 2005, when I am assigned to cover
Kitzmillerv.Dover Area School Districtin Dover,Pennsylvania,for Salon.com,
that I look back at the notes I’d written after the lunch with Johnson eight
years before.Eight years! Right in the sweet zone,between the five and ten
years Johnson had predicted it would take for ID to fly.I know we never
shook hands on the bet,but still,what better chance to test his claims than
to put them before a federal judge and have the world’s authorities on both
sides of the issue hold forth?
Time and again,as the story of this remarkable trial unfolds,I will
think of Johnson and his prediction that intelligent design would bring about
great scientific innovations and then,after it had decapitated evolution,cat-
alyze an implosion of what he calls the “cultural legacies of materialism”—
in other words,the modern world as we know it.
V
Of course,there’s much more at stake in the Dover trial than the sta-
tus of my almost-bet with Johnson.For one,there are the First Amendment
rights of Dover High’s students;if ID is a religious view and not a science,as
the parents bringing the suit against the school board argue,then teaching
it would be promoting religion,a constitutional no-no.Second,there are
all the school boards across the country ready to introduce ID into their
curriculums if it passes the Constitutional hurdle in Dover.Third,every
advancement of ID,and its perceived status as science,is a big political boon
to the conservative Christian wing of the Republican Party.Lending the
authority of science,even marginal science,to the evangelical-driven polit-
ical right could influence battles over everything from abortion and stem
cell research to preemptive military strikes in places such as Iran and Korea.
This is a metaphysical debate,but it has extremely practical consequences.
Proponents and opponents of ID are on opposite sides of just about every
hot-button political issue in America.They are almost certain to disagree
ix