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Lawyers lay out arguments in evolution trial
Intelligent design's scientific status challenged in Pa. courtroom
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:30 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2005
HARRISBURG, Pa. - “Intelligent design” is a religious theory that was inserted in a school district's curriculum with no concern for whether it had scientific underpinnings, a lawyer told a federal judge Monday as a landmark trial got under way.
“They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its scientific validity,” said Eric Rothschild, an attorney representing eight families who are challenging the decision of the Dover Area School District.
But in his opening statement, the school district's attorney defended Dover's policy of requiring ninth-grade students to hear a brief statement about intelligent design before biology classes on evolution.
“This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda,” argued Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Dover's modest curriculum change embodies the essence of liberal education.” The center, which lobbies for what it sees as the religious freedom of Christians, is defending the school district.
Latest chapter in debate
Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the opening of the trial in federal court marked the latest legal chapter in the debate over the teaching of evolution in public school.
The eight families argue that the district policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
About 75 spectators crowded the courtroom of U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III for the start of the nonjury trial. But the scene outside the courthouse was business as usual, except for a lone woman reading the Bible.
Arguing that intelligent design is a religious theory, not science, Rothschild said he would show that the language in the school district's own policy made clear its religious intent.
Dover is believed to be the first school system in the nation to require students be exposed to the intelligent-design concept, under a policy adopted by a 6-3 vote in October 2004.
It requires teachers to read a statement that says intelligent design differs from Darwin's view and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, “Of Pandas and People,” for more information.
Intelligent design, a concept some scholars have advanced over the past 15 years, holds that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms. It implies that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force.
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language, and it does not belong in a science curriculum.
Brown University professor Kenneth Miller, the first witness called by the plaintiffs, said pieces of the theory of evolution are subject to debate, such as where gender comes from, but told the court: “There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.”
On the other hand, he said, “Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community.”
Miller also challenged the accuracy of “Of Pandas and People” and said it almost entirely omits any discussion of what causes extinction. If nearly all original species are extinct, he said, the intelligent-design creator was not very intelligent.
Eighty years of litigation
The history of evolution litigation dates back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.
The clash over intelligent-design is evident far beyond this rural district of about 3,500 students 20 miles south of Harrisburg. President Bush has weighed in, saying schools should present both concepts when teaching about the origins of life.
In August, the Kansas Board of Education gave preliminary approval to science standards that allow intelligent design-style alternatives to be discussed alongside evolution.
Richard Thompson, the Thomas More center's president and chief counsel, said Dover's policy takes a modest approach.
“All the Dover school board did was allow students to get a glimpse of a controversy that is really boiling over in the scientific community,” Thompson said.
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'Intelligent design' faces first big court test
Parents sue after alternate to evolution added to science curriculum
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 6:24 p.m. ET Sept. 23, 2005
A federal judge in Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit that both sides say could set the fundamental ground rules for how American students are taught the origins of life for years to come.
At issue is an alternative to the standard theory of evolution called “intelligent design.” Proponents argue that the structure of life on Earth is too complex to have evolved through natural selection, challenging a core principle of the biological theory launched by Charles Darwin's “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Instead, contend adherents of intelligent design, life is probably the result of intervention by an intelligent agent.
Intelligent design has been bubbling up since 1987, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion.
Critics deride intelligent design as creationism gussied up for the courts; advocates say it is an explicitly scientific construct that makes no supposition about the identity or nature of the designer.
The disagreement has led to anguished public debates and hearings before local school boards for almost 20 years. While judges have considered smaller questions barnacled to the issue, the trial that opens Monday is believed to be the first time a federal court has been asked to decide the fundamental question: Is intelligent design religion or science?
Finally, a chance for a definitive ruling
The Pennsylvania case “is probably the most important legal situation of creation and evolution in the last 18 years,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which opposes challenges to the standard model of evolution.
“This will be the first legal challenge to intelligent design, and we'll see whether they have been able to mask the creationist underpinnings and basic orientation of intelligent design,” she said. Regardless who wins, “it will have quite a significant impact on what happens in American public school education.”
The suit, brought by 11 parents, challenges the Dover Area School District's adoption last year of an addition to the science curriculum directing teachers — in addition to teaching evolution — to tell students about intelligent design and refer them to an alternative textbook that champions it. Three opposing board members resigned after the vote.
The parents contended that the directive amounted to an attempt to inject religion into the curriculum in violation of the First Amendment. Their case was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation for Church and State, with support from Scott's organization.
The school board is being defended pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich. The case is being heard without a jury in Harrisburg by U.S. District Judge John Jones III, whom President Bush appointed to the bench in 2002.
Science organizations have generally turned their backs on forums in which they have been challenged to defend Darwinian evolution, on the theory that engaging the intelligent design school in any way is to take its ideas too seriously. For example, when the Kansas Board of Education held hearings this year on new science standards that criticized evolution, science groups boycotted.
The Pennsylvania case, however, gives scientists the chance to go on the attack, forcing intelligent-design advocates to defend their beliefs. But because local school boards have almost complete latitude to set the content of the curriculum, the plaintiffs must navigate a narrow path.
It isn't enough for them to discredit intelligent design — indeed, that is almost irrelevant to the legal question. Instead, what they must do is show that the school board's decision would have an unconstitutionally religious purpose and effect, Scott said.
Even so, Scott and others make no bones about their principal motivation: Intelligent design as science is bogus, they insist, and teaching it is a grave disservice to students.
“Intelligent design is simply the most recent version of creationism, which is admittedly a religious concept,” said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and publisher of the journal Science. “There is no scientific basis to intelligent design.”
Debating the terms of the debate
This is where things get sticky, because it all boils down to a basic argument over just what is evolution and what is religion.
Advocates have labored for years to have intelligent design be taken seriously as science. Although many of the leading thinkers in the movement openly acknowledge their Christian faith, they also sport Ph.D.s in hard science and maintain that their suppositions are rooted in principled observance of the scientific method.
And they generally have no problem with much of evolutionary theory, which can — in part —be stated as the change of species over time. Evidence, they agree, amply bears out this observation, which is known as micro-evolution.
Where they dissent is in what's known as macro-evolution — the transformation over time of a species into another species. The distinction is drawn in “Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins,” the alternative text endorsed by the Dover school board:
“Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appear in the rock record with their primitive features intact, rather than gradually developing.”
In other words, their argument is not so much with evolution per se as it is with what they see as the failure of evolution to account for how it all started. It is perfectly reasonable as science, they believe, to explore whether an outside agent triggered diversity of complex biological structures seemingly engineered to sustain life on Earth.
Intelligent-design supporters are careful to say they don't know who or what that outside agent was, but to the large majority of biologists, that's beside the point: Science is concerned with the natural world, while intelligent design supposes an agent independent of the natural world.
You can teach such concepts, Leshner and Scott say; indeed, you should — just do it in philosophy and religion and literature classes. Don't do it in science classes, because, by definition, that's religion. It isn't science.
“If we human beings evolved as a result of natural cause, are we special to God? Does life then have some sort of purpose?” Scott asked.
They're legitimate questions, but “these are issues that are outside of science,” she said. “These are not issues that should be part of the science curriculum.”
Tough spot for ID crowd
The Dover case raises difficult issues for many advocates of intelligent design, who sometimes feel as if they're dismissed as rubes or Bible thumpers trying to wiggle God back into the classroom in a white lab coat.
Indeed, the Discovery Institute — the Seattle-based think tank that is the intellectual engine of the movement — finds itself opposing both sides. While it criticized the ACLU for pursuing an “Orwellian” stifling of scientific debate, it also disagreed with the Dover school board's vote last year.
“Discovery Institute strongly opposes the ACLU's effort to make discussions of intelligent design illegal. At the same time, we disagree with efforts to get the government to require the teaching of intelligent design,” the institute said in a statement this week.
“Misguided policies like the one adopted by the Dover School District are likely to be politically divisive and hinder a fair and open discussion of the merits of intelligent design among scholars and within the scientific community, points we have made repeatedly since we first learned about the Dover policy in 2004.”
Regardless, the end result could be some judicial proclamation of that kind. Because the losing side is likely to appeal every step of the way, the case may well end up at the Supreme Court, leading to a ruling that could set a national precedent.
That is “a disturbing prospect,” the Discovery Institute said — judges should not be telling scientists “what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not.”
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Why scientists dismiss 'intelligent design'
It would 'become the death of science'
By Ker Than
LiveScience
Updated: 2:30 p.m. ET Sept. 23, 2005
In his highly influential book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," science philosopher Thomas Kuhn presented the idea that science is not a gradual progression toward truth, but a series of insurgencies, with scientific theories constantly usurping one another.
That is sometimes true. And proponents of intelligent design love Kuhn's argument.
They see intelligent design (often called ID) as a revolutionary new science and themselves as revolutionaries. They envision toppling Darwinian evolution — once a revolutionary idea itself — and erecting in its place a theory about life that allows for supernatural explanations, a theory that makes God, or some entity very much like him, not just possible but necessary.
But in order to attract converts and win over critics, a new scientific theory must be enticing. It must offer something that its competitors lack. That something may be simplicity, which was one of the main reasons the Sun-centered model of the solar system was adopted over the Earth-centered one centuries. Or it could be sheer explanatory power, which was what allowed evolution to become a widely accepted theory with no serious detractors among reputable scientists.
So what does ID offer? What can it explain that evolution can't?
To answer this, it is necessary to examine the two main arguments — irreducible complexity and specified complexity — that ID proponents use to support their claim that a Supreme Being is responsible for many or all aspects of life.
Irreducible complexity
Irreducible complexity asserts that certain biochemical systems in nature contain parts that are too well matched to be products of evolution.
Every part of an irreducibly complex system is necessary: take away even one, and the entire system will no longer work. Because their parts are so intricate and so interdependent, such systems could not possibly have been the result of evolution, ID supporters argue.
Irreducible complexity's main proponent is Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Among the systems that Behe claims are irreducibly complex are the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic whip-like structure that some bacteria use to swim, and the cascade of proteins that make up the human blood-clotting system.
Darwin himself admitted that if an example of irreducible complexity were ever found, his theory of natural selection would crumble.
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down," Darwin wrote.
Yet no true examples of irreducible complexity have ever been found. The concept is rejected by the majority of the scientific community.
To understand why, it is important to remember that Behe's main argument is that in an irreducibly complex system, every part is vital to the system's overall operation.
A necessary — and often unstated — flipside to this is that if an irreducibly complex system contains within it a smaller set of parts that could be used for some other function, then the system was never really irreducibly complex to begin with.
It's like saying in physics that atoms are the fundamental building blocks of matter only to discover, as physicists have, that atoms are themselves made up of even smaller and more fundamental components.
This flipside makes the concept of irreducible complexity testable, giving it a scientific virtue that other aspects of ID lack.
"The logic of their argument is you have these multipart systems, and that the parts within them are useless on their own," said Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. "The instant that I or anybody else finds a subset of parts that has a function, that argument is destroyed."
Viewed this way, all of the systems that Behe claims to be irreducibly complex really aren't.
A subset of the bacterial flagellum proteins, for example, are used by other bacteria to inject toxins into other cells and several of the proteins in the human blood-clotting system are believed to be modified forms of proteins found in the digestive system.
Evolution takes pieces and parts and re-uses them.
Specified complexity
The second major argument for intelligent design comes from William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher affiliated with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based Christian think tank that serves as the nerve center for the ID movement.
Dembski argues that nature is rife with examples of non-random patterns of information that he calls "complex specified information," or CSI for short.
To qualify as CSI, the information must be both complex and specified. The letter "A," for example, is specific but not complex. A string of random letters such as "slfkjwer," on the other hand, is complex but not necessarily specific. A Shakespearean sonnet, however, is both complex and specific.
An example of CSI from nature is DNA, the molecule found in all cells that contains the genetic instructions for life. DNA is made up of four repeating chemical bases arranged into complimentary pairs. The bases can be thought of as "letters" in a four-letter alphabet and can be strung together to form genes, which can be thought of as the "words" that tell the cell what proteins to make.
The human genome is made up of some 3 billion DNA base pairs and contains about 25,000 genes. DNA is obviously complex. The fact that humans always give birth to humans and not chimpanzees or naked mole rats shows that DNA is also specific.
The fact that CSI exists in nature is evidence for design because intelligence is necessary to produce CSI, Dembski says. This is the part of Dembski's argument that many scientists have trouble with.
The nylon problem
There is a way to settle this, however, because like Behe's irreducible complexity, the concept of specified complexity can also be tested.
"If Dembski were right, then a new gene with new information conferring a brand new function on an organism could never come into existence without a designer because a new function requires complex specified information," Miller said.
In 1975, Japanese scientists reported the discovery of bacteria that could break down nylon, the material used to make pantyhose and parachutes. Bacteria are known to ingest all sorts of things, everything from crude oil to sulfur, so the discovery of one that could eat nylon would not have been very remarkable if not for one small detail: nylon is synthetic; it didn't exist anywhere in nature until 1935, when it was invented by an organic chemist at the chemical company Dupont.
The discovery of nylon-eating bacteria poses a problem for ID proponents. Where did the CSI for nylonase—the actual protein that the bacteria use to break down the nylon—come from?
There are three possibilities:
The nylonase gene was present in the bacterial genome all along.
Apart from simply being the most reasonable explanation, there are two other reasons that most scientists prefer the last option, which is an example of Darwinian natural selection.
First, hauling around a nylonase gene before the invention of nylon is at best useless to the bacteria; at worst, it could be harmful or lethal. Secondly, the nylonase enzyme is less efficient than the precursor protein it's believed to have developed from. Thus, if nylonase really was designed by a Supreme Being, it wasn't done very intelligently.
'Death of science'
After examining ID's two main arguments, the answers to the original questions — what does ID offer? And what can ID explain that evolution can't? — is not much and nothing, leading scientists say.
"The most basic problem [with ID] is that it's utterly boring," said William Provine, a science historian at Cornell University in New York. "Everything that's complicated or interesting about biology has a very simple explanation: ID did it."
Evolution was and still is the only scientific theory for life that can explain how we get complexity from simplicity and diversity from uniformity.
ID offers nothing comparable. It begins with complexity — a Supreme Being — and also ends there. The explanations offered by ID are not really explanations at all, scientists say. They're more like last resorts. And, scientists argue, there is a danger in pretending that ID belongs next to evolution in textbooks.
"It doesn't add anything to science to introduce the idea that God did it," Provine told LiveScience. Intelligent design "would become the death of science if it became a part of science."
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