So, when the Texas BOE met in March to discuss controversial changes to the state’s proposed science standards, science educators all over the USA were worried. Would the BOE, chaired by an unapologetic creationist, introduce language into the standards to allow the teaching of creationism and and its clone, Intelligent Design, in the Texas schools?

To do so would be seriously damage science education in the Texas public schools. It would also likely influence textbook publishers’ treatment of evolution in biology texts, thereby affecting schools all over the USA.

The Texas BOE is nearly evenly composed of creationists and more sensible members, so the results were by no means predictable. In the end, the original changes, as proposed by the openly anti-evolution chairman and board members, were rejected. Instead, the BOE passed more coyly worded standards that still could be used to introduce pseudo-science and religion into Texas classrooms, but did not exactly trample science teaching.

Whether the new standards will induce textbook publishers to edit their books to make them more palatable to Texas remains to be seen.

A lot of bloggers have capably covered the Texas fracas already, so I will not go into the details here. Rather, I’d rather provide some background as an interested observer.

Textbooks
Right off, I want to reveal some personal bias. I hate most school textbooks. Invariably, they are written by committees of authors, who have to write to specific age-appropriate reading levels, include spiffy graphics and photos, chop the material into tiny, easily digestible chunks, and satisfy the requirements of 50 different state boards or departments of education. The result is a sometimes confusing, often dull piece of work that sucks the life out of any subject. For that reason, I avoided using high school physics texts as a teacher, sticking to college texts. As a one-man department at an independent school, I could manage that. Results may vary elsewhere.

Textbook publishing for the public schools is a major industry, now dominated by only a handful of large publishers. They tend to swing in the direction of the most populous states, Texas, California and New York, since those states will buy the most textbooks in any given replacement cycle. If Texas, for example, wants students to study the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolutionary theory, as was originally proposed, then publishers will try to add such material to their texts in an effort to close a deal with Texas. All other states will see identically worded texts. [It's inefficient and costly to publish 50 different versions of the same text, after all.]

The next textbook buying cycle in Texas is 2012, by the way. Real soon.

Science courses in US public schools are typically survey courses, by subject. At the high school level, that means a biology text one year, a chemistry text another year, etc. Middle school texts might be life science, earth science, environmental science and physical science.

Given the nature of the beast, and the typical school term of 180 days, any particular topic in a given field of study gets only cursory examination in most school texts.

Under these circumstances, treating a complex subject like the theory of evolution is a tough job. While I personally don’t like most school texts, I appreciate the hard work by their authors to serve their profession and subjects well. Most textbook writers and contributors are teachers themselves, or university professors, well versed in their subjects and in proper teaching methods. Their publishers’ bottom lines dictate the final products, not the authors’ own abilities.

So, take a complex subject like evolution, add a dash of “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory (whatever that means), mince it to fit within the parameters of the public school textbook, and the result would likely be a confusing exposition to a reader who might be at once an unmotivated learner and a disinterested student. Only a skillful teacher can pull his or her students out of that mire.

“Strengths and weaknesses”
The creationist/ID camp of the Texas BOE, lead by chairman Don McLeroy, proposed this amendment to the proposed standards: (A) analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information. The board rejected the amendment, 8-7.

At face value, the wording seems pretty harmless, but it was a ploy by creationists and Intelligent Designists to suggest that the theory of evolution has fatal flaws (no God pulling any strings, for example). McLeroy is an unabashed Young Earth Creationist (you know, God created everything in 6 days in 4004 BC), and the wording draws from the pro-ID Discovery Institute’s “wedge document” — a strategic plan to insert creationism/ID “science” into public instruction.

McLeroy and his cohorts also wanted similar treatments of other scientific theories, like the Big Bang and abiogenesis, and global warming. Evolution was just the poster child.

Since the First Amendment prohibits the state (public schools) from teaching religion (Genesis) to students, creationism and ID proponents have had to couch their “theories” carefully as “scientific” alternatives to the theories of evolution, abiogenesis and the Big Bang.

First, they have popularized the meme that evolution is a “theory in crisis.” [It isn't.] Then, they insist that scientists are trying to cover up their imperiled evolutionary theory’s weaknesses. [They aren't, since none exist.] The same scientists want to keep “alternative theories” out of the schools, since wider understanding of creationist and ID principles would further weaken “belief” in evolution. [Wrong again: the alternatives are not science.] Science should entertain all explanations for observed phenomena. [Sure, if they are scientific explanations.] Therefore, schools should “teach the controversy” to give students a more complete science education.

That ploy failed in 2005, when a federal judge (appointed by a Republican president and assumed to be “soft” on ID) categorically outed “teach the controversy” and ID as religious beliefs, not scientific explanations.

Now the creationist/ID camps have fallen back on a secondary ploy, to suggest that students should “critically analyze” the “weaknesses” in their rogue’s gallery of scientific theories. That was the eventual outcome of the Texas BOE’s deliberations.

The final wording of the major amendment was: In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of the scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student. Approved 13-2

Notice the magic words “critique” and “critical thinking” there, implying students can analyze evolution in the same way they can an American novel, or a political movement.

Two specific amendments to the biology standards also passed: Analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil record. Approved 13-2 Anti-evolution types insist there are gaps in the fossil record — no intermediate forms — indicating a weakness in evolutionary theory and evidence for Creation. And, analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell. Approved 13-2 ID proponents harp on the so-called “irreducible complexity” of living organisms as evidence for an intelligent designer.

Under earth sciences, the board also specifically struck an instructional goal that students should learn the universe is 14 billion years old, replacing the wording with current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe. Approved 11-3 Anti-evolutionists usually deny the universe is as old as most scientific estimates hold, though not all them accept a 6,000-year-old age either.

Outcomes
At this point, it’s hard to predict how the new standards will affect instruction in Texas. Asuming the Texas legislature doesn’t get involved somehow, some teachers might use the cleverly worded standards to teach creationism or ID in their classes (which is not to suggest some haven’t already been doing it). Egregious examples will likely end up in court, since it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that creationism and ID are religious ideas and cannot constitutionally be taught in public schools.

The ID camp, of course, is pleased as punch at the final results, since they did not lose categorically. Chairman McLeroy, however, is whining that the new standards are scientifically unsound and ultimately are a disservice to Texas students.

In that, he is ironically correct.

Links:
Minutes of the BOE meeting: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/sboe/summary/2009/March09Summary.pdf

Short article in the Baptist Standard: http://www.baptiststandard.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9355&Itemid=53

From the Skeptic Blog: http://skepticblog.org/2009/04/01/texas-science-standards-wrapup-yup-doomed/

Dallas Morning News report: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-evolution_28tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a87415.html

Salon.com coverage: http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/03/28/texas_evolution_case/

The bill purportedly would have protected instructors from punishment or job loss if they presented “scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution.” In fact, it was a ploy to enable suitably minded instructors to teach creationism or ID alongside evolutionary theory. Wording that is almost identical appears on a web page sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a pro-ID “thinktank.”

Full details are at The Panda’s Thumb.

Lest you think the bill might have had merit, allow me to provide a brief introduction to “creation science.” ID is just a variation of creationism, accepting an older age of the universe.

Creationism holds that:

• The account in Genesis is literal and true.
• God created everything in six days, about 6,000 years ago.
• Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all animals were vegetarians, death was non-existent, and predation/parasitism were unnecessary.
• God got pissed at Adam and Eve, and that wily serpent in the Tree, and cursed them with unending toil, mortality, and slithering on the ground. With the Fall, God also rebooted Creation 1.0 to introduce carnivorism, predation, parasitism and all the unhappy biological problems all His creatures now face.
• At this time, dinosaurs and other now-extinct organisms co-existed with humans. (The Fred Flintstone Hypothesis). They were wiped out, and the fossil record created, with the Great Flood that chased Noah, et al., into a big boat. Instead of rebooting Earth, God just wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Creation 2.0
• The organisms now living have always existed in their current forms since Creation 2.0. Evolution does not exist, and Earth’s organisms do not have a common ancestor. It goes without saying that humans and apes are not related at all.

Believe it or not, some teachers in the US have actually managed to teach this nonsense in public schools. Ohio’s John Freshwater is but one notable example.

So, if your legislatures are considering similar “academic freedom” measures, be forewarned. The wolf is wearing sheep’s clothing.

And yeah, it’s not written by a creationist or a believer in Intelligent Design. They never use four-letter words. Really. Just ask them.

On the face of it, “academic freedom” would sound like a good thing, but in today’s world of newspeak, this kind of “academic freedom” is shorthand for “let’s allow the public schools to teach creationism or Intelligent Design ideas alongside the scientific theories of the Big Bang and evolution.” Similar bills have been proposed in several other — mostly Bible Belt — states, and all have the same chance of success. None — except of course in Louisiana, where one actually passed.

These bills are merely a veiled attempt by Christian kooks to subvert the US Constitution (and proper science education) by suggesting that creationism and ID are really scientific theories, not religious ideas, and therefore should be taught as valid alternatives to evolution. Trouble is, the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that creationism was religious in nature, and cannot be taught in public schools, and in 2005, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that ID was also religious in nature, meaning the Dover, Pennsylvania, school system had violated the Constitution by permitting it to be taught in science classes.

Yet, the kooks persist, in a quixotic attempt to find some state stupid enough to pass so-called “academic freedom” legislation, so like-minded instructors can slip in so-called scientific alternatives to evolution.

Here is the wording of the Iowa bill:

EXPLANATION
4 5 This bill establishes the “Evolution Academic Freedom Act”.
4 6 The bill includes the general assembly’s findings and
4 7 declarations related to its intent to protect the right and
4 8 freedom of public school teachers and public postsecondary
4 9 instructors to objectively present scientific information
4 10 relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding
4 11 biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching
4 12 any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological
4 13 evolution.
4 14 The bill defines “scientific information” to mean germane
4 15 current facts, data, and peer=reviewed research specific to
4 16 the topic of chemical and biological evolution. For
4 17 elementary and secondary schools, the definition is linked to
4 18 the state’s core curriculum for science.
4 19 Pursuant to the bill, the general assembly finds and
4 20 declares that current law does not expressly protect the right
4 21 of instructors to objectively present scientific information;
4 22 that instructors have experienced or feared discipline,
4 23 discrimination, or other adverse consequences as a result of
4 24 presenting the full range of scientific views regarding
4 25 chemical and biological evolution; that existing law does not
4 26 expressly protect students from discrimination due to their
4 27 positions or views regarding biological or chemical evolution;
4 28 and that the topic has generated intense controversy about the
4 29 rights of instructors and students to hold differing views.
4 30 The bill prohibits an instructor from being disciplined,
4 31 denied tenure, terminated, or otherwise discriminated against
4 32 for objectively presenting scientific information relevant to
4 33 the full range of scientific views regarding biological or
4 34 chemical evolution.
4 35 The bill requires students to be evaluated based upon their
5 1 understanding of course materials through standard testing
5 2 procedures. Students shall not be penalized for subscribing
5 3 to a particular position or view regarding biological or
5 4 chemical evolution.

The key words here are “scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding
biological and chemical evolution.” The bill mentions nothing about creationism or ID, but the language contained therein is a dead ringer for similar language proposed by the ID “thinktank,” the Discovery Institute. Here is the wording of a petition on a DI-sponsored website:

“We, the undersigned American citizens, urge the adoption of policies by our nation’s academic institutions to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. Teachers should be protected from being fired, harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for objectively presenting the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory. Students should be protected from being harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for expressing their views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory in an appropriate manner.”

Like the fictional “war on Christmas,” the persecution of Christians who dare challenge the horrible monolith of evolution is a lot of hot air. It’s a meme fostered by the simply awful movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, that essentially bombed in the box office last spring. You can count the number of instructors fired or harassed for teaching creationism/ID on your fingers. In fact, in many cases they lost their jobs for other extenuating circumstances. (See the John Freshwater case for a recent example.)

Creationism and ID are religion, folks. In their current forms, they are clearly Christian-inspired. According to the Constitution and all subsequent court interpretations of the same, publicly funded schools cannot teach one particular religion to students. It is a very simple idea, which some legislators are apparently too thick to understand.

Dressing the wolf in sheep’s clothing fools no one, really. Iowa’s scientists are circulating a petition against the bill, which will probably die in committee anyway. Meanwhile, we (actually, you) will get to hear the same tired arguments about evolution, men are not monkeys, the word of God, blah, blah, blah.

It’s a lot of crap, and embarrassing to realize it is coming from the most powerful nation in the world (well, maybe not in economic terms, anymore …).

And I am proud to say I still haven’t seen the movie. I figured I’d wait until either it was dirt cheap in the DVD remainder bin, at the Goodwill, or available in the torrent channels.

Famed film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, must have had the same idea. He waited until now to publish a review of Expelled in his blog.

Briefly speaking, he doesn’t like it, not one bit. Two thumbs down. I don’t think he much cares for Ben Stein, the narrator and promoter of the film, either. He concludes his scathing analysis of the film, its promoters and Stein’s opportunism thusly:

Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

Read the entire entry. It’s classic Ebert.

Since I already had some familiarity with the court case it narrates, the 224 pages went by quickly, and I finished it in an afternoon. [Yes, I do read fast. It's how I survived four years at Princeton.] For a readable account of the Kitzmiller v. Dover case of 2005, I can recommend none better. Only the PBS Nova episode on the same case matches it for clarity and, yes, drama.

Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., was a watershed lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design in the ninth grade biology classes of the Dover, Penn., Area School District. A conservative, religiously biased school board sought to weaken the teaching of evolution in the schools by requiring teachers (all of whom refused, as it turned out) to read a four-paragraph cautionary statement about the theory of evolution, specifically mentioning Intelligent Design as another explanation for the origin of life.

Lebo’s narrative clearly lays out the religious motivations of the board members, who before hammering out the four paragraphs, had discussed in open meeting the need to bring creationism into the science curriculum. (Those same members later stated, under oath, that they had never used the creationism and accused the two reporters covering the board meetings of fabricating the statements. During the trial, however, it became clear the reporters were in fact correct.)

To make a long story short, a group of parents joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to contest the introduction of ID into their children’s classes. Tammy Kitzmiller, whose daughter would be among those first affected by the policy change, became the first plaintiff listed among the several, acquiring in a sense of kind of immortality, since the title of case is usually abbreviated Kitzmiller v Dover. After days of testimony, the presiding District Court judge, John E. Jones III, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, declaring that ID was not science, but religion thinly disguised, and as such had no place in the public schools. He chastised the defendants for the “breathtaking inanity” of their decisions to pursue both the new policy and risk a legal challenge.

Lebo is a reporter for the York Daily Record, born and raised in and around the Dover area. Throughout the book, she describes her agnostic’s struggles with religious faith and frustrations with reasoning against her fundamentalist father’s close-mindedness. Her personal battles reflect similar forays played out in Dover and elsewhere in the U.S. — that of a conservative, literalist faction of self-described Christians against everyone else.

While reading the book, I reflected on a potentially thorny question: When is a religious minority’s battle in the secular world “righteous” and when is it just plain wrong?

As a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a minority if there ever were one, I am familiar with the Society’s struggles against war and slavery, and for civil rights, decent prisons and humane mental hospitals. There were many times that the Quakers suffered for their testimonies, which spring from their understanding of the Scriptures and their own communion with the Divine. In many ways, the Friends were well ahead of their time — manumitting their slaves a century before the Emancipation Proclamation, for example — and now we would perhaps describe their efforts as “righteous.”

Contrast their efforts with those of the current religious right, which in many ways wants not only to rewrite U.S. history and the Constitution, but to bring God back into the public schools and other secular instiututions. Like the Quakers’ of the 18th and 19th centuries, their positions are unpopular among the majority and are obstensibly derived from an understanding of God’s word. Certainly, they believe their struggles to be “righteous,” but will future generations agree with them?

I would hope not. Let me try to explain why.

I’ll use the Friends’ attitudes toward slavery as an example of now widely accepted “righteous” behavior. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, many well-to-do colonial Quakers, including a branch of my own family, owned slaves. The practice was widely accepted by the community at large, in both the northern and southern colonies. Religious leaders pointed to the apparent acceptance of slavery in Scripture, giving the ownership of other human beings a kind of religious blessing.

Being an introspective bunch, the Quakers were not as easy with the practice as other Christians, however. Whereas most other Christian sects relied almost exclusively on the Bible (and their ministers’ interpretations of same) for guidance, Friends believed that Scripture was just one source of divine guidance, that the Divine could speak to each and every person individually. For that reason (and others), early Friends had no pastors or programmed worship, preferring if necessary to spend an entire Meeting for Worship in silence if the Spirit failed to move anyone to speak.

It was perhaps the treatment of slaves in the market, or by owners, that troubled some Quakers first. They could not see how the horrific treatment of slaves by the traders could be in any way “Christian,” in the light of Jesus’ example of loving-kindness. Another Quaker testimony is the belief that there is “that of God” in each person, regardless of skin color or religious background, using Jesus’ treatment of the Samaritan woman and other shunned members of Jewish society as examples. They saw the African slaves (and native Americans) as children of God in a very literal sense, worthy of respect and kindness. Quaker pioneers generally had an easier time co-existing with native Americans than other whites did as a result of this deep-seated belief.

Gradually it became clear to Quakers, first in the north and later in the south, that to own a slave was to disobey God’s Word and Jesus’ lessons. It was in direct contradiction to their own testimonies, for how can a person own another if both have “that of God” in them? The process took decades. George Fox, the founder of the Society, first advised Friends in Barbadoes to free their slaves in 1671. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (to which my slave-owning forebears probably belonged) circulated a series of queries to its member meetings in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. (Quaker tradition is to ask members to contemplate weighty issues in their hearts, seeking Divine guidance, rather than to simply tell them to follow the party line. The practice helps explain the snail-like pace of major changes in Quaker practice.)

1743: Do Friends observe the former advice of our Yearly Meeting not to encourage the importation of Negroes, nor to buy them after imported?
1755: Are Friends clear of importing or buying Negroes and do they use well which they are possessed of by inheritance or otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in the principles of the Christian Religion?
1765: ditto
1776: Are Friends clear of importing, purchasing, disposing of or holding mankind as slaves? And do they use well those who are set free and are necessarily under their care and not in circumstances through nonage or incapacity to minister to their own necessities? And are they careful to educate and ecourage them in a religious and virtuous life? [From Friends for 300 Years, by Howard H. Brinton, (c) 1952]

By the time of Revolution, there were virtually no Quaker slaveholders in the North. Southerners had a harder time letting go of their slaves, since the local governments passed laws forbidding the freeing of slaves. Instead, most of the Quakers from the Carolinas and Georgia picked up and moved into the Northwest Territories (Ohio, Indiana and Illinois), after the Revolution, freeing their slaves there.

Once they let go of their own encumbrances, Friends then joined the abolitionist movement to eliminate slavery everywhere, leading to Britain freeing its slaves by 1838 and of course to the US freeing its slaves three decades later by presidential proclamation.

Anyone who has a passing knowledge of the abolition movement would know that the general society, especially in the US, greeted the concept of freeing the slaves as ludicrous, if not un-Scriptural. Most other Christians did not share the Quakers’ belief of “that of God in everyone,” preferring to see blacks and native Americans as savage heathens inferior to whites, and placed by some sort of Divine intervention under the command of white Christians. [To be sure, there are some whites who still believe it, nearly 150 years after emancipation.] Abolition back then was not popular, despite its proponents’ belief in its righteousness.

Flip the calendar a century or two ahead, and come to the present day. There is an active, influential minority of Christians who find a correlation between the “moral decline” of the US and the increasing secularism of our society. They see every threat to remove God and Christian teaching from public buildings and public school instruction as yet another step toward the end of American civilisation as we know it. Believing that ours is a “Christian nation” they want to restore, as they say it, the religious back into American government and school curricula. Like the early Quakers, they rely on their religious faith and understanding of Scripture for guidance.

Unlike the nearly two-hundred-year efforts of Quakers to rid the US of slavery, the Religious Right movement is barely three decades old, gaining prominence just before Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to the presidency. Led by Pentecostal and Baptist televangelists, this religious movement skipped the gradual spiritual awakening favored by Quakers and jumped right into the secular arena, forming what amounts to political action committees. Their support helped Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush win their presidential elections, though most of what the candidates had promised to the Religious Right never came to fruition. [Some commentators suggest the belief in the Second Coming happening in 2000 probably spurred the sudden, desperate efforts to influence American politics and society.]

One of the battlegrounds for the Religious Right is in the public schools. The aims there are many, but principally they want to re-establish prayer in schools, once again allow the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, teach that the nation was founded on Christian principles, and more pertinent to this discussion, teach “alternatives” to “atheistic evolution,” if not abolish the teaching of evolution altogether. These goals, their proponents believe, are righteous.

As Lebo describes in her book, the methods to achieve these goals are far from “righteous.”

Largely frustrated in their attempts to sway national and state politics and law, the Religious Right has tried to foment change from the grassroots level. Since there is no national curriculum for US public schools, each school district being locally governed, the logical starting point to change the public schools is with the local school board.

In Dover, the school board elections were in the spring of 2001. Alan Bonsell, one of the newly elected board members, had campaigned on “a platform of frugal spending and taxpayer reform.” (p. 10) At his first board meeting, while other members raised concerns about all-day kindergarten, stricter discipline policies and block schedule, Bonsell, a Fundamentalist, discussed school prayer and creationism. Not much came of his concerns immediately.

Then in 2003 two members resigned from the board in a dispute over financing the high school renovation project. Bonsell asked two fellow conservative Christians, Jane Cleaver and Bill Buckingham, to fill the empty seats. It was at this time, as Lebo relates, that the school board took a sharp turn to the right, with Bonsell and Buckingham privately speaking of plans to teach creationism alongside evolution. In executive sessions, they talked with administrators about the Christian foundations of the USA and need to balance evolution with creationism. (p. 16) Bonsell, as chair of the board, met with science teachers individually to suggest that teaching evolution would have serious repercussions. (p. 20)

As Lebo describes them, Bonsell and his like-minded board members were woefully ignorant of their Constitutional responsibilities and of scientific theory. Their ministers (and perhaps televangelists) no doubt shaped their (mis)understanding of American history, and completely confident in their righteousness, they never stopped to analyze whether their actions were either legal or logical. That Bonsell would overstep his authority and meet directly with teachers — something only school administrators and/or union representatives should do — indicates the bullheaded behavior of these “soldiers of Christ.”

In June 2004 the private discussion of creationism among board members became public. Pressed by a former board member, Barrie Callahan, the board members admitted that they wanted new biology texts that were not, as Bonsell put it, “laced with Darwinism.” Buckingham said he wanted a text that balanced evolutionary theory with creationism, suggesting that, “If students are taught only evolution, it stops becoming theory and becomes fact.” (p. 23)

Two weeks later, the board reiterated its intention to teach creationism, with Buckingham insisting that nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a “separation of Church and State.” (p. 24)

Then in July, after the board either approached a national right-wing legal foundation or it them, all mention of creationism disappeared from public meetings. Instead board members started talking about the more scientific-sounding intelligent design. In a Nixonian moment, audio tapes of the June meetings, during which creationism had been discussed, disappeared. Board members denied, under oath during depositions before the bench trial, that any of them had said anything about creationism, saying they had instead said intelligent design. When confronted with newspaper reports contradicting their statements, the board members accused the two reporters of fabricating the quotes. In later depositions, Bonsell and other defendants suggested that it was only Buckingham, who was in and out of recovery for OxyContin abuse, who had advocated teaching creationism. Buckingham himself said in his deposition that his drug use might have led him to say something about creationism, but it also affected his memory, so he could not be sure.

During the trial, plaintiffs’ attorneys returned to the June board meetings and to the despositions. First up was Buckingham, who once again denied used the word “creationism” during the June meetings. The attorneys then played a TV news interview with Buckingham after one meeting, during which he clearly stated the board wanted a textbook balancing evolution with creationism. Buckingham then fumbled through a lame explanation of his interview, accusing the reporter of “ambushing him.” She hadn’t. (p. 163-4) Asked to explain how the board obtained a set of pro-ID textbooks, Buckingham repeated his statements during deposition that he had no idea who had donated the funds for the books. Attorneys then confronted him (like those legal eagles do so dramatically on Law and Order) with an $850 personal check signed by Buckingham, made out to Donald Bonsell, Alan’s father. It was the elder Bonsell who had purchased the books.

Once again Buckingham backpedaled, with the plaintiffs’ attorney pressing him to admit he lied under oath, until the judge asked the lawyer to proceed with larger matters.

Another board member, Heather Geesey, comes off in Lebo’s book as bit of an airhead. She repeated board members’ insistence that creationism never came up during the June meetings, and that a letter she had written to the local paper clearly encouraged the teaching of intelligent design. Trouble is, the letter, which was produced during the trial, only mentions creationism and not intelligent design. In a scene reminiscent of a Gracie Allen or Lucille Ball sitcom, the judge (played by George Burns or Desi Arnaz) asked the ditzy Geesey to clarify how the letter supported the concept that the board discussed intelligent design while referring only to creationism.

“Right. The part where it says, ‘what we are doing.’ I — since all the meetings run together, I didn’t realize back then that I knew everything that was going on because it’s not my committee,” Geesey said cheerfully. “But by me saying that what we were doing was to choose a book that teaches the most prevalent theories, I mean that — that’s what I was talking about.” (p. 167)

In the old sitcoms, this kind of illogic would either be followed by Burns’ slow, steady gaze at the camera or Arnaz throwing up his arms in exasperation, trying to make sense of it all. Less humorously, Judge Jones instead later submitted the board members’ depositions and testimonies to the US attorney general’s office, recommending it examine them for evidence of perjury. (p. 199)

In the end the ID skirmish in Dover ended with science and the Constitution winning, and ID and religious imperiousness losing. The pro-creationist board members all lost their seats in the next school board election, and the folks in Dover have tried to put the acrimony splitting the community behind.

Were their efforts in Dover “righteous?” Probably they and their fellow-thinkers believe it was, but as Lebo recounts, the road to their crusade was littered with bullying, deceit and outright lies. She does not allege, since there is no evidence, that Bonsell, Buckingham and other board members were working in concert with an organized religious movement to force creationism/ID into the Dover schools. Instead it appears they were taking it upon themselves, as “Christians,” to change local school policy, while being woefully unprepared to see the unfortunate end to their almost successful efforts. Unlike the abolitionists of old, they were not steeped in either theology or the law enough to see that their cause was not righteous but sectarian, and ultimately unconstitutional. To put it another way, these foot soldiers of the Religious Right didn’t have the creds to be righteous.

Another aspect of Lebo’s book bears discussion before I close. The struggle in Dover was not between “Christians” and “atheists.” The majority of the plaintiffs were faithful churchgoers, one of the lawyers said prayers before trial each day, and the science teachers countered their students’ fundamentalist beliefs with nuanced religious sensitivity. The struggle was instead between a small group of believers so blinkered that they did not realize they were still looking through a glass darkly, and less dogmatic, more progressive Christians.

Using the abolitionist movement as a counterpoint, the Dover school board members were the slave-owners, doomed by their devotion to tradition. Kitzmiller and her co-plaintiffs were the abolitionists, and it was they who were the righteous ones.

Too bad the ID crowd’s feeble attempt at subterfuge failed. Some fine detective work at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed the genealogy of the new ID text, Of Pandas and People, as the center prepared briefs for the 2005 Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District legal case.

This YouTube video explains it all.