Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer

Author:Michael Shermer [Shermer, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Times Books
Published: 2010-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Design in Dover

In the legendary debate over evolution at Oxford University in June 1860, Archbishop Samuel Wilberforce (“Soapy Sam”) sardonically inquired of his debate opponent, Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”), whether he was descended from an ape on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side. Accounts vary as to what was said next, but legend has it that Huxley muttered to the person next to him, “The Lord hath delivered him into my hands,” and followed that with his stinging rejoinder to Soapy Sam: “If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.”7

This is precisely how I felt when the judge issued his decision in the Kitzmiller case in late 2005. It was as if the Lord had delivered the creationists into our hands, and the judge’s devastating critique of the creationist defense would make even the staunchest religious conservatives unhesitatingly affirm their preference for evolution. Kitzmiller was an exceptional court case—both for what it revealed about the motives of the Intelligent Design creationists, and the clarity and severity of the conservative judge’s decision against the Intelligent Design proponents.8

In the trial, the Dover Area School District was defended by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), an organization founded by conservative Catholic businessman Tom Monaghan and attorney Richard Thompson, who prosecuted Jack Kevorkian in the very public trial over assisted suicide. From its founding in 1999, the TMLC has been searching for venues in which to take on the ACLU. Calling themselves the “Christian Answer to the ACLU” and the “sword and shield for people of faith,” the TMLC has challenged the ACLU on a range of public controversies, from pornography and gay marriage to nativity scenes and Ten Commandment displays. Starting in early 2000, representatives of the TMLC canvassed school boards around the country, searching for and encouraging the teaching of Intelligent Design in public school science classrooms. The TMLC recommended that biology teachers supplement their standard textbook with the textbook Of Pandas and People. That creationist tract would prove to be a key piece of evidence in the trial. In 2004 the TMLC found a willing accomplice in the school board for the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania, which was dominated by conservative Christians seeking a way to introduce creationism into their children’s science classrooms.

On October 18, 2004, the school board met and voted 6–3 to add the following statement to their biology curriculum: “Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of life is not taught.” The next month the board added a statement to be read to all ninth-grade biology classes at Dover High:

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