Hello.
Good?
I'd like to welcome you
all to Case Western Reserve
University.
My name is Patricia
Princehouse, and this event
has evolved on its own.
It was originally
going to be a debate,
but that hasn't
worked out, so we
are very happy to present a
talk by Ken Miller, entitled
The Collapse of
Intelligent Design,
Will the Next Monkey
Trial be in Ohio?
And before we get
under way here,
I'd like to introduce
Reverend George
Murphy, if he could come up.
He's just going to give
us a little blessing here.
Dr. Murphy has a PhD
In Physics and is also
a Lutheran minister.
And he is a Pastoral Associate
at St. Paul's in Akron.
Let us pray.
God, we're gathered here to
consider some very important
issues about life,
about our society,
about your role in the world.
We pray that we would
be guided to have
your wisdom and your
insight, so that we
can consider these issues
with humility, but also
with the knowledge that you
want us to seek the truth.
Amen.
Thank you.
I guess I'm next.
[LAUGHTER]
I want to thank Patricia
for inviting me here.
I want to thank
especially Reverend Murphy
for that wonderful prayer, which
I was very pleased to join in,
and I want to thank
all of you for coming.
We live in interesting
times, which
will be repeated theme of what
I will talk about tonight.
I figured many of
you in the audience
are people who know me or
have heard me speak before.
It's nice to see you again.
For those of you
who don't know me,
I thought I would
introduce myself.
I'm a cell biologist.
I work at Brown University which
is in Providence, Rhode Island.
I work on the
structure and function
of biological membranes.
A lot of my work is with
the electron microscope,
and we try to work on
assemblies and channels
in biological membranes.
In a sense, as a researcher,
that's one of my jobs.
Another of my jobs
is that of a teacher.
I'm able to be here
today because we're
between semesters.
My spring classes
start on January 26.
And in the fall, I teach
an upper level course
in cell and molecular biology.
In the spring, I teach a
freshman biology course
which is the largest single
class at my university.
How big is the class?
That's not my class.
Those are my
teaching assistants.
[LAUGHTER]
That'll give you some idea
as to how big the class is.
I'm very happy to see a
large number of young people
in the room.
And I want to let
all of you know,
all of the young
people especially,
that you may already know
me and you may not like me.
And the reason for that is, if
when you were in high school
you used any of these books
for high school biology,
I wrote them.
So I apologize in advance
for your experiences
or for the back-breaking strain
of carrying these guys around
in your backpack.
A couple of years ago, I wrote
a book on evolution and religion
called Finding
Darwin's God, which
I expected to be a nice little
book that would be tucked away
on library shelves and
pretty much forgotten,
although I was sure it would
make my mother very proud.
To my absolute
astonishment, this book
is now in its 23rd
printing in paperback
and has proven, in the words
of my editor at Harper Collins,
to be a bit of a
classic on the issue.
And if you are interested
in issues of evolution
and religion, I'd
very humbly suggest
that you might find
the book interesting.
The subtitle is A Scientist's
Search for Common Ground
Between God and Evolution.
Very often when I go out
and talk on this issue,
I focus on religious aspects.
I'd be very happy to answer
questions along those lines,
but tonight I'm going
to focus on the issue
of intelligent design,
especially as it relates
or might relate to Ohio.
As I said in the beginning,
we live in interesting times.
I think one way to
think about that
is to go back into what
is now ancient history.
In 1999, the Board of Education
of the State of Kansas
deleted all mention of evolution
from the State's science
standards.
They did that because
they regarded evolution
either as shaky science
or as threatening
to the personal beliefs of
students and their parents.
What happened afterwards,
I think, is remarkable.
The voters of Kansas had about
a year to think about this.
And in the summer
of 2000, they voted
most of that board out
of office and elected
a new pro-science
majority to the board.
[APPLAUSE]
Well, responsibility.
If you're applauding for
that, then you should probably
boo for the elections in 2004.
And what happened
that summer was
that an anti-science or
anti-evolution majority of 6
to 4 gained control
of the Kansas board,
and in a little
bit I will show you
what they have been
doing in the past year
to science standards in Kansas.
I spent almost a week
that summer in Kansas,
actually campaigning for
pro-science candidates.
I actually expect to do
that this summer in Kansas.
And the New York Times,
when they wrote up
this on the front page
of the Week in Review,
were kind enough to mention
me, take a couple of quotes
from what I talked
about, and also mentioned
the title of my book.
What happened the next
day was remarkable.
Whatever you think about people
who read the New York Times,
they buy books.
On Monday morning, a friend
of mine called me up and said,
have you looked at the
best seller list on Amazon?
I said no.
Why?
He said just look at it.
My book was number
21 on the best seller
list, sandwiched directly
between Clancy and Grisham.
It was very exciting.
[LAUGHTER]
It only lasted 11 or 12 hours,
but I enjoyed it very much.
And of course, for those
of you who are interested,
I very helpfully placed the ISBN
number up there on the slide.
[LAUGHTER]
One of the things
that I have found,
not always but from time to
time going around and debating
people on the issue
of evolution, which
is after all what I expected
might take place tonight,
is that debaters
on this issue claim
to lead a purely
scientific movement.
And the pictures
you see up here are
from a debate in
which I participated
about three years ago
in Columbus in front
of the Ohio Board of Education.
And the topic at that time
was whether intelligent design
should be included in the
curriculum of Ohio Public
Schools.
Now one of the things
that's striking
about this is this purely
scientific movement
attracts an awful
lot of support which
is not necessarily scientific.
And I want to show
you a picture that
was taken outside the auditorium
in Columbus on the way in.
And this gentleman here was
in the business of telling me
and other people exactly
where we would spend eternity
if we were foolish
enough to take
the side of Charles Darwin.
It's very clear that this is an
issue that arouses very strong
and very strongly felt
religious feelings.
And you might ask
yourself, why is that?
Why, for example, is
evolution under attack?
Biology is a field that
has many disciplines.
And if you were going to take
one thing out of the biology
curriculum, why would
you take out evolution?
What's special about that?
I mean, why not take out
cell biology or physiology,
or for God sakes, why
not organic chemistry?
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
I can see we have the makings
of a popular movement.
And I apologize in
advance for any chemists
who might be in the audience.
It's a cheap shot.
I realize that.
But what's the reason?
The reason opponents
of evolution
will often say is
because evolution
is very shaky science, and we
want to get the science right.
But if you go to a website, such
as Answers in Genesis, which
is the leading anti-evolution
organization in the United
States, you'll find a very
different set of reasons.
And I invite you to take
a look at this graphic.
Evolution is depicted
as the foundation
of lawlessness, homosexuality,
pornography, and abortion.
Not just that it's wrong,
but it is the source
of all of these bad things.
Whereas creationism is the
source of a lot of good things.
Now if this is not
graphic enough for you,
I've got another one
that I think will help.
And this is also from
Answers in Genesis.
And I show this, not because
I want to make fun of it,
but because I want to make
a deadly serious point.
And I like to show this
to academic audiences
because academic audiences
often think this really
is an argument about science.
And they say, how about
if we did this experiment?
How about if we showed
them this fossil?
How about if we did
this in the laboratory?
Would that convince them?
Well, take a look at this.
If you regard evolution as
the foundation of divorce,
pornography, abortion, racism,
and all this other bad stuff,
whether it's right or not
in the scientific sense
doesn't matter, because it is
the source of everything that
is wrong and evil in society.
And what I love about this
is the founder of evolution,
I can't read that name
here, I'm sure you cannot.
But it's not Darwin.
It's somebody else.
And if you portray, if you
view evolution in this respect,
of course you're
going to oppose it.
You're going to
oppose it deeply.
So how do you answer?
How does science respond?
I think there are a
lot of ways to respond.
And one way is to develop
a proper understanding
of science.
Some of you may know that
about four years ago a county
in Georgia thought that the new
biology books they had bought
for their students were
so dangerous, in terms
of their treatment of evolution,
that they needed warning
stickers on them.
And I thought you
might be interested.
What textbook was so
dangerous and so outrageous
that it needed a
warning sticker?
So I figured I'd
bring you a picture.
There it is.
[LAUGHTER]
And this is the warning sticker.
And the warning
sticker basically
told students the book
has material on evolution.
Evolution is a
theory, not a fact,
on the origin of living things.
This material
should be approached
with an open mind,
studied carefully,
and critically considered.
And when this sticker
went on the book,
I was called up by a reporter
for the Atlanta Journal
Constitution, and
she said, what do
you think of the
sticker on your books?
And I had talked
to enough reporters
to realize that she was
trolling for a quote.
She wanted to write
an article that
said author outraged
or author slams
board or something like that.
So they could say that a
Northeastern liberal Ivy League
author was outraged at what Cobb
County was doing with books.
And I decided I'd
have a little fun.
And I said, no.
I like the sticker.
She said, you do?
I said, I think the
stickers are great.
They just don't go far enough.
And in just a second, I'll
show you exactly what I mean.
Now as it turns
out, our president
has tried to be helpful
on this particular point.
[LAUGHTER]
And many of you may know
that President Bush was asked
about this, and he
said, I think students
should be exposed to both sides
of the issues, by which he
meant evolution and
also intelligent design.
And Time Magazine, when
they wrote this up,
absolutely incredibly,
my co-author, Joe Levine
found this.
They superimposed
President Bush's face
on our biology textbook
which has caused us
absolutely no end of delight.
[LAUGHTER]
And I keep suggesting
to the publisher,
maybe in the next edition,
that's what we could use.
[LAUGHTER]
But I have been asked about what
I think about President Bush's
opinion on this issue.
And I think my response
probably should
be that I, like all other
scientists and educators,
are delighted that
the president has
taken an interest in
science education.
We hope he continues
to be interested in it.
And we also hope very much
that President Bush will listen
to his Science Adviser,
John Marburger, who's
a fine scientist and was
picked by President Bush
to give him advice on science.
He was asked by Russell Durban
from Ohio State University what
he thought about evolution?
And Dr. Marburger said,
"Evolution is the cornerstone
of modern biology. " And
he pointed out an awful lot
of work that we do at NIH
depends upon evolution,
and then he was very quick to
say that President Bush has
supportive large
increases for NIH funding.
And he was also asked at the
National Association of Science
Writers, he said, "Look,
intelligent design
is not a scientific theory."
And as if to ram the
point home, he continued,
"I don't regard intelligent
design as a scientific topic."
And again, I think if
the president listens
to his science adviser,
he'll be in very good shape.
What about those warning
stickers, the ones
that I liked so much?
One of my former students,
Colin Purrington,
who's now at Swarthmore
College, was so
taken by this wonderful
idea of warning stickers,
the Colin figured why
stop with biology books?
We could go a little
bit further than that.
Here, for example,
is one that we
might use on an
earth science book,
pointing out that
a lot of people
think that the earth
couldn't possibly
be four billion years old.
You ought to be
careful about that.
And why stop with earth science?
We could go on to geography,
how the earth is round.
And then finally, my
favorite, because I've always
been suspicious of physics.
With all due
respect to Dr. Kraus
who is in the audience tonight.
You physicists have
some very strange ideas.
[LAUGHTER
For example, physics
material on gravity.
It's worth pointing out that
gravity is a theory, not
a fact, regarding a force
that no one has ever seen.
Think about that when you think
about the approach of gravity.
But what happened in Georgia,
was that a group of six parents
recognize that these stickers
were, in fact, an attempt
to promote a particular
religious point of view.
And they filed a lawsuit
in federal court.
The lead plaintiff was
a guy named Jeff Selman.
Jeff is the little
guy here, being
lectured by a board of education
member in this picture.
Jeff was able to prevail
in federal court.
And the court basically asked
that these stickers, ordered
that these stickers,
be taken out.
This is Jeff and his attorney
very happy afterwards.
Because I had
testified in the trial,
the Associated Press asked
me for comments afterwards.
And like a fool, I
answered my phone,
and I gave them some comments.
And as a result, my name was in
the first sentence of the story
on this that appeared in
about 1,100 newspapers.
The next morning
I got more you're
going to burn in hell email
than you can possibly imagine
from all over the country.
But I have to say
that it was far
outweighed by a lot of
congratulatory email as well.
So let me get back to this
case and to the sticker
in particular.
I said I like this sticker,
and I do in a sense.
It just doesn't go far enough.
Now what do I mean by that?
Well, yes, the book does
have material on evolution,
but a biology book has
material on a lot of topics.
Why single out evolution?
Evolution is a theory?
It certainly is.
We actually have a chapter
entitled Evolutionary Theory,
so I agree it's a theory.
But when you say it's
a theory, not a fact,
it makes it sounds like theories
and facts are opposite things.
As if we're really
sure of facts,
and we're not so
sure of theories.
In fact, theory in
science is a higher level
of understanding than facts.
Because what theories do
is they explain facts.
They unite them.
And I pointed out
to this reporter,
if you went to the
University of Georgia
and you studied
atomic physics, you
would take a course
in atomic theory.
There's no time in the future
when the professor's going
to change the name of that
course to atomic fact,
because that's not what
atomic theory is about.
Atomic theory is a
system of explanations
that explains tens
of thousands of facts
about the nature of matter.
And that's what evolutionary
theory is like, too.
But when you get
right down to it,
the sentence that
bothered me the most
is actually the third one.
And the reporter said,
what do you mean?
You don't like open
mindedness or critical?
I said, no, that's
not it at all.
Do you know what that third
sentence says to a 14-year-old?
That third sentence says we are
certain of every single thing
in this book, except evolution.
So apparently you
don't need an open mind
to study biochemistry.
We don't have to critically
consider ecology or cell
biology or human physiology.
And in reality, if I got a
chance to rewrite the sticker,
I'd rewrite it like this.
This textbook has
material on science.
Science is built around
theories which are strongly
supported by factual evidence.
Everything in science
should be approached
with an open mind,
studied carefully,
and critically considered.
That's the appropriate
emphasis, and that's the sticker
that I'd like to see.
[APPLAUSE]
Bottom line.
Singling out evolution, or any
subject, for special treatment
is a very bad science education
and also is legally dangerous.
And the reason it's
legally dangerous
is because it naturally
leads one to say, why, why
are you singling out one topic
for special consideration?
And if that reason turns out to
be constitutionally prohibited,
you might be in
difficult straits.
We'll talk more about
that in a second.
Now you all know that this
didn't end down in Georgia.
The next migration
of this controversy
was to Dover,
Pennsylvania, where
the Board of Education a
little more than a year ago,
decided that they would
like to teach something
called intelligent design.
They ordered their
biology teachers
to prepare an intelligent
design curriculum.
The teachers refused, and
they cited a provision
of the Pennsylvania
Teacher Code of Ethics
in which the teachers had
to promise in that state
that they would never knowingly
present false information
to a student.
And they told their
superintendent,
this is false information.
We can't violate our oaths.
What the board then did was
to order it superintendent
and assistant superintendent
to go into classes
and to read a one
minute statement
about intelligent
design to students.
That led a number of parents
to complain about this,
and before long there
was a federal lawsuit.
That lawsuit was tried this fall
from September to late October.
There were a number of people
on both sides of the issue.
This is Robert Pennock, who's
a Philosopher of Science
from Michigan State,
and I was honored
by being the lead witness for
the plaintiffs in the case.
I spent about a day and
a half on the stand.
I had a very good time.
Then, as you all know, the
trial eventually was decided.
Now there's a couple
of funny things
I have to tell you about this.
I didn't expect my
cross examination
to go on for two days.
And I expected to be
back at Brown on Tuesday
to teach a class.
When I realized
I couldn't, I had
to do something I've never
done in 26 years of college
teaching, and that was to
cancel a lecture class.
So I got in touch with
my TAs, and I said,
I've got to cancel class
on Tuesday, here's why.
They said OK.
And then I put a link to
the article in Science
about the trial on
my course's website,
so students would know I was
not off skiing or something
like that, and they
thought that was OK.
Then I put a link into
the New York Times,
and I guess they
thought that OK.
They weren't
particularly impressed.
What impressed the
kids in my class
was that week there was a
report on the trial in what
is for college students
in the United States
the ultimate new source.
And I'm sure all the college
students in this room
know exactly what
I'm talking about.
[LAUGHTER]
And that was The Daily
Show by Jon Stewart.
And when Jon Stewart talked
about the trial in Dover,
that was the point
at which the students
had decided I was really
doing something useful.
[LAUGHTER]
Because if The Daily
Show is talking about it,
then it's happening.
I'm sure many of you
may know that the Dover
voters, in one sense or another,
took care of this themselves.
Democracy works.
And before the court
case was decided,
they voted the entire
board of education,
all eight members
up for reelection
were voted out of office.
And I think that's a marvelous
testament to the fact
that people can
understand the issues,
and when they
understand the issues,
they go out and make
intelligent choices.
And I should also
point out that this
was actually, in
many respects, was
difficult for voters
in Dover to do.
This is a town that typically
votes 75% Republican.
The school board
was all Republican.
Almost all of the
insurgent candidates
were registered Republicans.
To be sure they got on
the ballot in November,
they had to switch parties
to the Democratic side,
so they could file
as a single slate.
And then they had
to convince people.
Yes, we know that
you're Republican.
We are Republican.
We are conservatives,
too, but we
want you to go to the Democratic
side and pull the lever for us.
And Lo and behold, they did,
so it was remarkable stuff.
While this was going on, the
legal system worked as well.
And at the end of the
trial, the federal judge
who rendered this
verdict, John Jones,
basically ruled that intelligent
design was unconstitutional.
His verdict was sweeping.
And that is, he not only
ruled on the narrow issue,
whether this was appropriate,
he ruled on the broader issue
of whether intelligent
design was actually
a legitimate scientific idea
that belonged in the classroom
at all.
There are some pictures that
were taken from the ruling.
These are some of the
winning plaintiffs.
The case has the
name Kitzmiller,
et al, based on Tammy
Kitzmiller here,
who was the first
lead plaintiff.
And I would invite
any of you who
are interested in this
decision to read it.
It's very readable.
In fact, parts of it as I
will show you are very funny.
And if you just do Kitz,
K-I-T-Z Miller on Google,
you'll find it right
away on the web.
And it's floating around.
This is Judge Jones.
One of the things
I got a kick out of
was the insistence,
by some people
who didn't like the verdict,
that Judge Jones was
another one of those darn
liberal activist judges.
This is a cartoon talking
about this exact point.
I'll blow this up a little bit,
and this is the sort of thing
we have to appoint more church
going Republican judges.
And this person, who
presumably knows Judge Jones,
says by the way, he
is a Bush appointed,
church going Republican judge.
Judge Jones is a political
protege of former Governor Tom
Ridge of the State
of Pennsylvania
and Judge Jones was recommended
for the federal bench
by Senator Rick Santorum
in Pennsylvania.
[LAUGHTER]
So any notion that Judge Jones
is a liberal activist judge
is belied by who his
sponsors were and also
by his judicial record.
His is simply, I am
convinced, someone
who is bright, who
is intelligent,
and who understands the
meaning of the Constitution.
And just like a good umpire who
calls them like he sees them,
and that's exactly what
happened in this case.
This is a nationwide issue.
I have talked about trials
in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
I'm sure all of you are
familiar that this has been
an issue in the state of Ohio.
It is also a continuing
issue, as we shall
see, in the state of Kansas.
And I just very quickly colored
in a few more states in which
there are either boards
of education that
are trying to de-emphasize
evolution or bills
filed in state legislature
to give equal time
to intelligent design theory,
criticisms of evolution,
or even creation science.
Many of my friends up in
the Northeast tend to say,
oh this is just a problem
in flyover country.
Who cares about this?
I actually spoke at Harvard
a couple of months ago.
You aren't going
to believe this.
And somebody put their
hand up and said,
who cares what they teach kids
in Alabama and Mississippi?
And I thought, wow.
You realize how that sounds.
And then I realized
I was at Harvard.
And I pointed out
that EO Wilson,
the great evolutionary biologist
at Harvard, grew up in Alabama.
And the point is, does it
matter what we teach kids
in Alabama and Mississippi?
For all we know, the next
Stephen Jay Gould or EO Wilson
is down there in
Alabama and Mississippi.
And your damn
straight, it matters
what we teach people in every
classroom in this country.
Let's go to Kansas.
Advocates of so-called
intelligent design
scored, no question
about it, a major victory
in Kansas this year by attacking
what they called naturalism
in state standards.
This may happen in Ohio, too.
So I would urge you to
be on guard about this.
Now what do I mean
by naturalism?
The Board of
Education in Kansas,
which is now governed by a 6
to 4 anti-evolution majority,
held a series of
hearings, to which
many scientists including
myself were invited,
and to which we did not go.
And the reason for that
was because the three board
members who presided
over the hearings
had already announced
in advance that they
were against evolution.
And the hearings
were, in our opinion,
simply a political sham.
Well, what happened afterwards
is the board decided, first
of all that they would
be emphasize evolution.
Secondly, that they would
introduce so-called criticisms
of evolution of the sort
that you've seen in Ohio.
But if you really
want to know what
is at risk from the
anti-evolution movement,
look at Kansas.
And the reason for that is when
the anti-evolution movement
got control of the State Board
of Education, what did they do?
They rewrote the definition
of science itself.
Not just biology, not
just evolution, science.
All of a sudden, they're
getting the chemists upset.
They're getting the
physicists upset.
They're even get
the geologists, who
paid no attention to anybody--
[LAUGHTER]
Upset on this issue.
Now what do I mean by rewriting
the definition of science?
This was the definition of
science in the Kansas school
standards.
Science is the human
activity of seeking
natural explanations for what we
observe in the world around us.
It seems to me like a
straightforward, commonsense
easy to understand
definition of science.
Did the new board like that?
Uh-uh.
They deleted that.
And they decided we
want to put this up.
Science is a method of
systematic continuing
investigation, uses
all this good stuff,
to lead to more
adequate explanations
of natural phenomena.
That doesn't sound too bad.
But wait a minute.
What do they mean by more
adequate as opposed to natural
explanations?
Remember the
standards once said,
"We seek natural
explanations from science,"
and they now say we want
more adequate explanations.
Well, the board majority
explained this to everybody,
and they said here's
what we want to do.
We want to get
rid of the concept
of methodological
naturalism that
is used in physics
and chemistry,
and basically we think
that what naturalism does
is it limits inquiry and
permissible explanations,
and promotes the
philosophy of naturalism.
In short, we want
to open science up
to non-naturalistic
explanations.
Now I want you to think
about that for a second.
What is a non-naturalistic
explanation?
I can't think of anything except
the supernatural explanation.
Supernatural explanations
may be correct.
Remember, I live in New England.
A lot of people who looked at
the baseball playoffs in 2004
could see the hand of God in
the success of the Red Sox.
And do you know what?
I think that might be true.
I think God might have had his
fill of George Steinbrenner
that year.
[LAUGHTER]
And that was it.
But that explanation,
even if correct,
is not science, because
it's not testable.
And that's the
point that is made.
And the notion of promoting
non-naturalistic explanations
is exactly what's
happened in Kansas.
Now you might say, but come on,
shouldn't you teach both sides?
Well, sure you should.
But you have to realize that
with many scientific ideas,
when you talk about
teaching both sides,
what are we talking
about when we
talk about both sides of
chemistry, neurobiology,
physics, or astronomy?
When you look at
the other side, you
might be disturbed as to
what the other side is.
It could be alchemy, phrenology,
outright magic, or astrology.
Now I think most
of you will agree,
even if you don't like what I'm
saying right now, most of you
will agree that's a
pretty funny cartoon.
I mean, come on.
This is an editorial
cartoon as he's
taking license with the facts.
Nobody really wants these
things in the science classroom.
And you know what?
Until the Dover trial, I
would've thought that, too.
But a funny thing happened
at the Dover trial.
Pay attention to
this one down here.
And that is, where
would intelligent design
take the science classrooms?
Michael Behe was
placed on the stand
under oath in the Dover trial.
Michael is a Professor
of Biochemistry
at Lehigh University.
He's probably the
country's leading advocate
of what he calls the biochemical
challenge to evolution.
He is very much in favor
of intelligent design.
He's a member of the
Discovery Institute.
He's been here in Ohio.
On cross examination,
Dr. Behe admitted
that his definition of
theory was so broad,
it would also include astrology.
And here's another thing
from the same article.
The lawyer pointed out
that astrology would
come under this definition.
Behe agreed with that, and
the exchange prompted laughter
from the court.
Now I wasn't in the
courtroom that day,
but I'm sure it was
pretty funny to see
an advocate for
intelligent design say,
yes, if you stretch the
definition of science
to include intelligent
design, you
know what else fits
in that strike zone?
Astrology.
And I would add so does
mysticism, pyramid power,
new age spiritualism, and
Wiccan teaching or witchcraft.
And I'm sure this is
all really fine stuff,
but one of the things
that it's not is science.
And that's the point.
And I think the
relevant question
that anyone who advocates
intelligent design has
to answer is you want to
open the science classroom up
to intelligent
design, you will also
open it to astrology
and a whole host
of pseudo scientific beliefs.
Is this really what
you want to do in terms
of reforming science teaching?
And I should point out, this
was not an accidental statement
by Dr. Behe.
He said it in his deposition.
Then he said it in trial.
The attorney asked him
again, are you sure,
do you really mean that?
And he went on, and
he said yes, and he
thought astrology had made some
very fundamental contributions
to science.
So in any event, that's
where we are with this.
Now one of the
questions that I wanted
to ask in front of
this audience tonight,
is whether or not we can learn
anything from the Dover trial?
I've only been in two
trials in my life.
Actually, I guess I've been
in three, because I served
in a jury for another trial.
But it's really different
being on the witness stand
and being cross examined and
seeing all these people there.
And I have to say, it was a
very exhilarating experience.
It was not unlike
a graduate seminar,
when you're surrounded by
really sharp grad students who
are going to push you
up against the wall,
and see if you really
know the stuff.
So what I want to tell
you, basically in a sense,
is what I learned at the trial,
and I think what most of it
can take away from it.
Here's the first thing
that I saw at the trial.
It's the reason for the
title of my talk tonight.
What we saw was the literal
collapse of intelligent design
as a scientific theory.
Now let me try to explain
to you what I mean by that.
One of the first things that
intelligent design argues
is that it is
necessary to explain
what we see in
the fossil record,
that the fossil record
is a problem of one
sort for evolution.
You might hear people say
that the fossil record doesn't
support evolution.
Well, the National Academy of
Sciences only a few years ago
basically said, look, there's
so many intermediate forms
between all these
species that it's often
difficult to identify
categorically
where the transition occurs
from one species to another.
In other words, there's so
many transitional forms,
we actually argue about this.
Christine Janis, a
friend of mine at Brown
who's a paleontologist,
I once asked Christine,
what about this business
of no transitional forms?
And she said, are you kidding?
I just came back
from a meeting where
there were 11 or 12 new fossils
from the Powder River Basin
in Wyoming were
being introduced,
and almost fist fights broke
out among the scientists arguing
as to whether or not
these fossils should
be called mammal-like reptiles
or reptile-like mammals.
[LAUGHTER]
If paleontologists are
willing to argue about that,
it tells you two things.
One is, paleontologists
will argue about anything.
[LAUGHTER]
And the second thing
that it will tell you
is that there are innumerable
intermediate and transitional
forms that we see in
the fossil record.
But I want to go a little
bit further than this.
One of the arguments
that has often
been made against evolution
is that the fossil record
doesn't have the intermediates
that it ought to.
For example, we've
known for a long time
that whales and dolphins evolved
from terrestrial mammals.
There are unmistakable
marks in their genetics
and in their skeleton of this.
But critics of evolution
have said, oh yeah.
Well, if they did, where
are the intermediate forms?
Put up or shut up.
And in fact, I've
even seen cartoons
that looked a bit like
this, ridiculing the notion
that an intermediate could
even exist between a land
mammal and a swimming mammal.
And the argument is
that such animals
would be so awkward on
the land, and so poor
at swimming in the
water, that they really
wouldn't be survivable.
Well, the cartoons
and the argument
started to disappear
about 10 or 12 years ago
when the very first skeletons
of exactly such creatures
were dug up.
This is the skeleton of
an organism which is now
called ambulocetus natans.
And if your Latin
is good, you'll
know that ambulocetus
means the walking whale,
and natans means who swims.
This is the walking
whale who swims.
It is a perfect
intermediate form
to plug right in the middle.
So you might say, do we now
have a true intermediate form?
Not really.
As it turns out, we have
five intermediate forms
that fill this gap, all
discovered within the last two
decades.
Precisely because,
paleontologists
when they found this
guy, they figured out
we know where to look.
And where to look is in
the Indus River Valley
between India and Pakistan.
That's where these
creatures evolved,
and that's where more
intermediate fossils
are found all the time.
So do evolutionists say, yay,
we've solved the problem.
Evolution is true.
Darwin was right.
No.
Science is enormously
self critical.
If this really
happened, if this is
a genuine evolutionary
series, do you
know what has to have
happened along with it?
The middle ear has to have
been completely changed.
The reason for that
is the middle ear
that a land mammal
like us has is very
good for hearing in the air.
If any of you have scuba
dived or snorkeled,
you know that you're
hearing stinks underwater.
Your hearing is lousy.
But the underwater hearing
of these guys is sensational.
It's so good they can use
it as a form of sonar.
That's because their
middle ear structure
is entirely different.
So if this is real, we should be
able to look at the middle ear
structure of these fossils
and see intermediate forms
in which they're reshaped.
And you know what?
That's exactly what we see.
This is a paper, a year
and a half ago from Nature,
dissecting a series
of fossil skulls
and showing exactly how the
apparatus in the middle ear
was remodeled, through a whole
series of intermediate forms,
to change from an apparatus that
was good for hearing in the air
to an apparatus that
was intermediate,
to an apparatus
that was terrific
for hearing under the water.
So the fossil
record, the more we
fill it in, the more complete it
becomes, and the more powerful
it becomes as evidence
for evolution.
The second thing that
you saw at the trial
was that when data was
introduced at the trial, which
I and another witness introduced
from a whole genome sequencing,
the intelligent design
advocates just literally
had nothing to say.
We weren't asked questions
in cross examination.
The other side
never brought it up.
They never argued against it.
They just left it.
Here's an example.
Many of you may know that a
few months ago the genetic code
of the chimpanzee was published.
Therefore, we can
compare our genome
to these primate relatives.
What do we find?
I want to show you
one striking finding
that dates to about a year ago.
You all know that
evolution argues
that we share a common
ancestor with the great apes,
the chimpanzee, the
gorilla, and the orangutan.
Well, if that's true, there
should be genetic similarities.
And in fact, there are.
But there's something
that's really interesting
and has the potential,
if it were true,
to contradict evolutionary
common ancestry.
And that is we have
two fewer chromosomes
than the other great apes.
We have 46.
They all have 48.
That's very interesting.
Now what does that
actually mean?
Well, first of all, the 46
chromosomes that we have,
you got 23 from mom
and 23 from dad.
So it's actually 23 pairs.
These guys have 24
from each parent.
So they have 24 pairs.
So everybody in this room is
missing a pair of chromosomes.
Now where'd it go?
Could it have gotten
lost in our lineage?
Uh-uh.
If it got lost, if a whole
primate chromosome was lost,
that would be lethal.
So there's only
two possibilities.
And that is, if these guys
really share a common ancestor,
that ancestor either had
48 chromosomes or 46.
Now if it had 48, 24 pairs,
which is probably true,
because three out of four
have 48 chromosomes, what
must have happened is that
one pair of chromosomes
must have gotten fused.
So we should be able
to look at our genome
and discover that one
of our chromosomes
resulted from the fusion
of two primate chromosomes.
So we should be able to
look around our genome.
And if we don't find
it, evolution is wrong,
we don't share a
common ancestor.
So how would we find it?
Well, biologists
in the room will
know that chromosomes
have nifty little markers.
They have markers
called centromeres,
which are DNA sequences that
are used to separate them
during mitosis, and they have
cool little DNA sequences
on the end called telemeres.
What would happen if a pair
of chromosomes got fused?
Well, what would
happen is the fusion
would put telemeres
where they don't belong,
in the center of the
chromosome, and the resulting
fused chromosome should
actually have two centromeres.
One of them might
become inactivated,
but nonetheless, it
should still be there.
So we can scan our genome.
And do you know what?
If we don't find
that chromosome,
evolution's in trouble.
Well, guess what?
It's chromosome number two.
Our chromosome number two
was formed by the fusion
of two primate chromosomes.
This is the paper from Nature
a little more than a year ago.
And I put up a
little of the paper.
I'm sorry, it's technical.
But look at what it says.
Chromosome two is
unique to our lineage.
It emerged as a result of
the head-to-head fusion
of two chromosomes that remain
separate in other primates.
Those of you who
have not kept up
with how much we
know about the genome
should pay attention
to this because you'll
be amazed at how precisely
we can look at things.
The precise fusion site has
been located at base number
114, 455,823, 214,455,838.
In other words, within 15 basis.
And you'll notice multiple
sub telemere duplications,
the telemeres that don't belong.
And Lo and behold, the
centromere that is inactivated
corresponds to
chimp chromosome 13.
It's there.
It's testable.
It confirms the
prediction of evolution.
How would intelligent
design explain this?
Only one way.
By shrugging and saying, that's
the way the designer made it.
No reason, no rhyme.
Presumably there's a designer
who designed human chromosome
number two to make
it look as if it
was formed by the fusion
from a private ancestor.
I'm a Roman Catholic.
I'm a theist.
In the broadest sense,
I would say I believe
in a designer, but you what?
I don't believe in
a deceptive one.
I don't believe in one who
would do this to try to fool us.
And therefore, I think
this is authentic,
and it tells us something
about our ancestry.
Third thing that
was abundantly clear
at the trial, these great
icons of intelligent design,
the things that are
supposedly unevolvable.
They've fallen apart.
Example, specifically
taken apart
the trial, the notion that the
bacterial flagellum couldn't
have been produced by evolution,
or the blood clotting cascade,
or the generation of
biological information.
I don't have time to
talk about all three,
but I'm going to
show you two of them.
The notion that these
complicated biochemical
structures couldn't have
been produced by evolution
has been championed
by Michael Behe.
And Behe has an idea that he
calls irreducible complexity.
And he says, you can't
evolve these things
because they're
irreducibly complex.
Notice what he says.
"An irreducibly complex system
can't be produced the way
that evolution works, by
numerous successive slight
modifications of a
precursor system,
because any precursor to an
irreducibly complex system that
is missing a part is by
definition nonfuctional."
These are multipart systems.
And he's basically telling you
that the 30 or 40 proteins that
are in here, they all
have to be together,
or there's no function.
And since natural selection
does have to work gradually,
I agree on that point,
it can't produce 20, 25,
26 proteins knowing what
will eventually happen,
because natural
selection is blind,
which is indeed absolutely true.
So the poster child
for intelligent design
by any standard, it shows
up so often it really
could be called
the poster child,
is in fact the
bacterial flagellum.
This was mentioned
so often in the trial
that the judge,
probably from fatigue,
got a little sarcastic about it.
One of the attorney's said,
your honor, when we reconvene,
we're going to talk again
about the bacterial flagellum.
And the judge at one
point said, oh goody.
[LAUGHTER]
The last expert witness
for the Board of Education,
a Biochemist named Scott Minnich
from the University of Idaho,
was called up to the
stands to talk about this.
And since Behe had talked
about, and the lawyers
had talked about it, and
they had argued about it,
and I had talked about it as
I'm going to show you here.
For a second,
Minnich got up there,
and he said he was going to talk
about the bacterial flagellum,
and the judge deadpanned,
well, we've heard that before.
And Minnich turned to him.
This is the best
line of the trial.
Minnich turned to him and
said, you know your honor,
I sort of feel like Zsa
Zsa Gabor's fifth husband.
[LAUGHTER]
I know what to do.
I just don't know how
to make it exciting.
[LAUGHTER]
And so I take my
hat off to Scott.
That was good.
I like that.
So what is this argument about?
Here's the argument in
very simplified form.
If you have a complex multipart
biochemical machine composed
of many parts, its
function, everyone agrees,
can be favored by
natural selection.
But the argument is that
evolution can't produce them
because the individual parts
have no function of their own.
That's what irreducible
complexity means.
So natural selection
can't make this.
It doesn't have any function.
Can't make that.
Can't make that.
Therefore, you can't evolve
a structure like this.
Now how does evolution
explain something like that?
Well, ever since Darwin, we've
had a very good explanation.
And that is these
complicated machines,
they don't arise from scratch.
They arise from
combinations of components
that have different functions,
functions of their own,
and the components originate
with functions of their own
as well.
Therefore, natural
selection will
work every step of the way.
Now that's not evidence.
That's just an argument.
But the beauty of this is we
can now hold these two ideas up
against each other, and
we could say, who's right?
If irreducible
complexity is right,
then the parts of these machines
should be absolutely useless.
But if evolution
is right, we should
be able to take these
machines, look at their parts,
and discover wow,
they do other jobs.
So let's go ahead and do that.
Let's take the
bacterial flagellum.
So if we start
with the flagellum,
here it is, and these
drawings name the genes
in the proteins
in the flagellum.
And we say, let's take away
a whole bunch of the parts.
How many?
Not one.
Not five.
Not 10.
Let's take 40 of
its 50 parts away.
Now watch very
carefully, because I'm
going to do that
experiment right there.
There it goes.
The parts are all gone,
and I have left 10 parts
that span the membrane.
What are left behind
are 10 proteins
in the base of the flagellum.
Now if irreducible
complexity is right,
this should be
absolutely functionless.
It should have no function.
But if you'll pardon the double
negative, what is left behind
is not nonfunctional.
What is left behind is the
type three secretory system,
and it is fully functional.
I know most of you in the room
are going, of course, the type
three secretory system.
[LAUGHTER]
The type three secretory
system is a molecular syringe
in which some of the nastiest
bacteria on this planet
produce toxic proteins,
grab onto one of our cells,
and inject those
proteins into our cells.
The bacterium that causes
bubonic plague works this way.
It's really nasty stuff.
Well, guess what?
The 10 proteins that make up
the type three secretory system
are directly homologous to
the 10 proteins in the base
of the bacterial flagellum.
They don't produce movement.
There not a flagellum.
But are they functional?
They are fully functional.
So remember that claim.
Any precursor to an
irreducibly complex system
that is missing a part is
by definition nonfunctional.
This guy is missing 40 parts,
and it is perfectly functional.
What that means, there's
no other word for it,
is that that statement is wrong.
Now that's not an
incidental statement.
That is the heart and soul
of the intelligent design
argument.
And in this case, it
turns out to be wrong.
Now it's even wronger than
that, because it turns out
that not only do these
proteins make up the type three
secretory apparatus,
but almost every protein
in the bacterial
flagellum is strongly
homologous to proteins that
have other functions elsewhere
in the cell.
And what that means
is when we look
at this wonderful icon
of intelligent design,
a careful analysis
of the flagellum
actually matches
evolutionary theory.
Namely, the parts should
have functions of their own
and not the intelligent
design prediction.
And that's simply a fact.
Now intelligent
design does no better
when it talks about
blood clotting.
I'm sure you all know
that blood can clot.
And many of you who have had the
misfortune to take biochemistry
as a college course
also know that there
is a complicated pathway
of proteins that is
responsible for blood clotting.
Dr. Behe argues, and
intelligent design
argues, that pathway
is irreducibly complex.
And again, what does he mean?
None of these proteins
do anything, except clot.
In the absence of any of
them, blood does not clot,
and the system fails.
So the argument is
the reason we know
a creator had to create
it, or design it,
is because all the parts
have to be present together.
And the reason we know that
is in the absence of any
of the components, blood doesn't
clot, and the system fails.
Now this is an argument
made by Michael Behe.
But it's also an argument that
the Dover Board of Education
wanted to present
to their students.
They got 60 copies,
two classroom sets,
of this intelligent design
textbook, Pandas and People.
Pandas and People makes
the exact same claim.
Only when all the
components are present,
does the system
function properly.
Even though, and us nasty
evolutionary biologists
point out, that all of
these proteins, almost all
of them searing proteases,
which means they
were probably formed by
successive rounds of gene
duplication.
But once again, they say all
the proteins, nothing equivocal
here, all the proteins
have to be present
simultaneously for the
clotting system to function.
That's very interesting.
Being an empirical scientist,
I always want to say,
is that right?
Well, how could we test it?
We could test it by taking this
wonderfully complicated system,
and let's take a component away.
Let's knock one out, and
see if they're right.
Well, the first one
that we can knock out,
because nature's done
the experiment for us,
is Factor XII.
What happens if we
knock out Factor XII?
Another PowerPoint experiment.
There it goes.
Factor XII is gone.
Will blood still clot?
Well, not in us,
but it turns out
that whales and dolphins
lack Factor XII.
It's actually an evolutionary
adaptation to deep sea diving,
and their blood clots just fine.
That means that proposition
that they all have to be present
is wrong.
Now taking one away,
that's chintzy.
Take a few more than one away.
Fair enough.
How about we take three
of these factors away?
Well, it turns out the
puffer fish, a genome that
was sequenced just a
couple of years ago,
is missing the entire three part
contact phase system up there.
The puffer fish has blood
that clots just fine.
So this argument
about unevolvability,
which is based basically
on the argument
that all the parts
have to be present,
it just turns out to be wrong.
It falls apart.
And this was something else
that showed up in the trial.
This is technical
information, but it basically
shows that Doolittle
has worked out
an evolutionary scheme
for how all of the factors
evolved from a single
set of components
that existed before, blood
clotting was evolved.
And that leads to an
evolutionary prediction.
And the evolutionary
prediction is shown over here.
And over here in another paper.
And that is that the protein
should have very specific
relationships to each other.
The different factors.
And Lo and behold,
you can search
the genomes of a
host of organisms,
and it does exactly that.
The relationships match.
So what this means with respect
to blood clotting, is claims
that you need every
component to be
present for biological
function, that's the claim,
those claims are false.
The second thing is a testable
pathway has been proposed.
I showed it on the
previous slide.
Careful analysis of
that pathway shows
it fits the
evolutionary prediction,
and there is absolutely
no scientific support
at all for any suggestion
that the pathway
was produced in a single
step of creation or design.
And that's what I mean by the
collapse of intelligent design
as a scientific theory.
Now the one thing that
I haven't shown you,
because here I'm just going to
read you part of the judge's
decision, was a
similar demonstration
on the evolution of
the immune system.
And Behe has written, and
it's part of in Pandas,
"That Darwinian explanations
of the evolution of the immune
system are hopeless and
doomed to failure. " Well,
he wrote that
about 10 years ago.
And it turns out, as I
described in my testimony,
a flurry of research has shown
exactly how the gene shuffling
system in the immune
system did evolve.
And the judge captured
this perfectly,
in terms of what
happened at trial.
On cross examination,
Professor Behe
was questioned about this
claim that science would never
find an evolutionary explanation
for the immune system.
He was presented with 58
peer reviewed publications,
nine books, and several
immunology textbook chapters
about the evolution
of the immune system.
However, he ignored all
this and simply assisted
that it still wasn't sufficient
evidence of evolution,
and that it was simply
not good enough.
If you want theater in the
courtroom, what the lawyer did
was held up the first
paper, have you read it?
He said no.
This is a paper on the
evolution of the immune system.
Here's the second paper.
Have you read that?
Yeah, read that one,
and so forth and so on,
and gradually all 56
papers were piled up
in front of the witness.
All nine books and all of
these textbooks, and he
simply said, it's evidence
that is not good enough for me.
I think that made a
very strong impression
on the judge that here was
someone who, regardless
of scientific credentials,
was determined
to ignore the empirical evidence
rather than to go by it.
The fourth thing that
really happened at the trial
was that evolution was exposed
as a religious doctrine
masquerading as science.
And I bring this
up because I think
it is particularly
relevant to Ohio.
And many of you may
think, wait a minute,
this doesn't mention religion,
it's not really that way.
But I want to bring
to your attention
the federal court test for the
actions of a government that
might or might not infringe
on the First Amendment
to the Constitution, the
Establishment Clause.
And the established precedent
is something known as the Lemon
test, and it's a court case
of Lemon versus somebody else.
And it basically says whatever
the government body does,
the action has to have a
legitimate secular purpose.
It can't have the primary
effective of either advancing
or inhibiting religion.
And then finally, even
if all this is OK,
it still must not result in
the excessive entanglement
of government and religion.
So what the judge did was
to apply the Lemon test.
This is the strictest test.
This is the most lenient test.
And it turns out, he found that
the actions of the Dover board
failed all three prongs
of the Lemon test.
They showed, for example, that
there was no legitimate secular
purpose in promoting the
teaching of intelligent design.
And why is this the case?
Well, one of the
things you might ask
is, if intelligent design is
a religious idea, so what?
What's wrong with introducing
it in the science classroom?
And this is part of
the judge's decision
that I think really
bears make note of.
Introducing this as an idea
into a science classroom,
as he points out, "it sets
up what will be perceived
by students as a
god-friendly science,
and that's intelligent design,
one that explicitly mentions
an intelligent designer, and
the other science, evolution,
that has no position. "
What I told the judge is
I thought a false duality
would be produced.
It would tell students
quite explicitly, choose god
on the side of
intelligent design,
or choose science on the side
of evolution and reject god.
And introducing such religious
conflict into the classroom,
the judge wrote,
"is very dangerous,
because it forces
students to choose
between God and
science, not a choice
that schools should
be forcing on them."
The last question that I was
asked was related to this.
And I pointed out to the court
that the Lord has blessed me
with two daughters.
I brought both of my
daughter's up in my faith,
and I also brought both of
them up to love science.
And one of them has
actually become a biologist.
The other one has
become a teacher.
Alas a history teacher,
but we don't speak of her.
[LAUGHTER]
But the point that I
wanted to make to the judge
is that when my daughters
were being educated,
I not only wanted them
to understand and adhere
to our faith, but I also wanted
them to love and understand
science.
And if there were ever placed
in a classroom, where they were
told explicitly or implicitly,
choose the religious theory
on this side or the anti
religious theory on this side,
choose between God and
science, I as a parent,
as a taxpayer, as
a citizen, would
have been outraged at this
false choice between religion
and science being
foisted upon them.
And that, as far
as I was concerned,
was exactly the problem
with the Dover policy,
in terms of introducing
this idea into the science
classroom.
Now the Dover board, of course,
argued that their statement
was not religious.
And this is the four
paragraph statement
that was read to students.
And if you look at
it quickly, I like
to paraphrase the statement
by saying, basically, kids,
we've got to teach you
evolution because the State says
we have to.
Then it says, evolution,
we're going to teach you that,
but it's pretty shaky.
And there's a lot of
problems and gaps.
There is this other
really cool theory,
called intelligent design.
You will notice that there
are no mention of any problems
or any gaps in
intelligent design.
And by the way, we've got this
really good textbook in there.
And then keep an open mind.
Talk about this
with your families.
And by the way, we
have to give you
a test at the end
of the semester,
and evolution will
be on the test.
And what that essentially does,
and the judge certainly agreed,
is to undermine evolution,
and to undermine it
for the purpose of promoting
intelligent design.
Now you might say,
well, intelligent design
is not religious.
I think it is.
But you know what?
You don't have to listen to me.
And you don't have to listen
to the expert witnesses
for our side of the case.
As the judge
pointed out, you can
listen to the expert witnesses
on the other side of the case.
Because it turns
out, Dr. Behe said
that it is implausible that the
designer is a natural entity.
So he must be supernatural.
Dr. Minnich said that
intelligent design requires
the ground rules
of science to be
broadened so that supernatural
forces can be considered.
And Professor Stephen Fuller
said that the project of ID
is to change the
ground rules of science
to include the supernatural.
Once again, don't take it
from our side of the case,
take it from the other
side of the case.
ID is, in fact,
inherently religious.
Now what does this
have to do with Ohio,
you might say, because after
all, we're not teaching
intelligent design in Ohio.
The lesson plans adopted by
the Ohio Board of Education,
they don't mention
intelligent design.
And Stephen Meyer from the
Discovery Institute, and this
is a posting that Steve has
on a website, Stephen Meyer
even came in front of the
Ohio Board of Education,
and he promoted not
intelligent design,
but a teach the
controversy promotion.
Now this sounds very good.
It sounds very neutral.
It seems to have nothing
to do with creationism.
So you might ask
yourself, what does this
have to do with
creation or creationism?
Well, look at the whole website.
And look where Meyer
actually posted this work.
He posted it on
www.creationdigest.com,
and he clearly intended
this as a friendly audience
to review the news as to what
he thinks is happening in Ohio.
This is clearly a
backdoor way to sneak this
into the classroom.
Consider, for example, that
textbook, Pandas and People,
which was purchased for
the Dover School District.
When you read Pandas
and People, it
doesn't sound like it
is religious at all.
Darwin is subject to
intelligent design,
doesn't give a natural thing.
Intelligent design means
that various forms of life
began abruptly through
an intelligent agency.
It sounds pretty scientific.
It turns out this is
only the latest version,
and Pandas and People
existed as an earlier draft.
We didn't know this until
the lawyers subpoenaed
the publisher and asked
for copies of the earlier
versions of this book.
And when we saw these
earlier versions,
we just about fell over.
The earlier versions talk
about the creation view.
Creation means the
various forms of life
began abruptly through
an intelligent creator.
And in fact, when
you hold these two
up next to each other, what
you discover is incredible.
There is paragraph after
paragraph in the early
and the later
versions of the book
that read essentially
identical, except a global word
processor has changed
creator to designer,
has changed creation
to intelligent design.
How do you make an
intelligent design textbook?
You take a creation
textbook and change the word
create to the word design.
And this was abundantly clear.
Now Barbara Forrest, an expert
in the history of this idea,
got all of the earlier
versions, and what she did
was she graphed--
[LAUGHTER]
The number of mentions of
creationism and the number of
mentions intelligent design
in the earlier versions,
and you will notice that
something remarkable
happened in 1987.
Which is the mention of
creation dropped to almost zero,
and the mention of
intelligent design
moved up to take its place.
Now I don't know what
you'd conclude about this.
We'll get to 1987
in just a second.
But my first reaction when I
saw all these older versions
is my god, didn't these
people learn anything
from the Nixon administration?
Burn this stuff!
[LAUGHTER]
But it wasn't burned,
and it's still around,
and we know what's going on.
Now some of you may know what
it was that happened in 1987.
But for those of
you who don't know,
this is a timeline
showing, you might say,
a legal history of
litigation regarding
evolution in various courts.
And what happened in 1987,
is a Supreme Court decision
known as Edwards
versus Aguillard that
identified creationism
as a religious doctrine.
Literally within a
month of that decision,
the drafts changed from
creation and creationism
to intelligent
design and designer.
Basically, there's no
question that this was simply
relabeling the old
product with new packaging
to make it palatable.
And again, this
is something else
that came out remarkably
so at the trial.
And what the judge wrote
is, "The plaintiff's
meticulously presented."
You had to be there to see this.
"Several drafts,
several of which
were completed prior to and
after the comport decisions,
and three astonishing
points emerge.
One, definition of
creation science
is identical to the definition
of intelligent design.
Cognates of the word creation
appeared about 150 times,
were deliberately and
systematically replaced with
ID, and the changes occurred
right after the Supreme Court
said that creation
science is religious. "
So the history of this
was very straightforward.
The judge also wrote, and this
was an extraordinary thing
to hear.
I'm going to move my lapel
pin down by my microphone,
so you can hear the audio
clip in just a second.
The judge says, you know
the citizens of the Dover
board of Dover "were
very poorly served
by members of the board who
voted for the ID policy."
Here are two of them up here,
former members of the board,
now voted out of office.
To me, it's remarkable to hear
a federal judge talk this way.
It is ironic that several
of these individuals,
who so staunch
and proudly touted
the religious
convictions in public,
would time and time again
lie to cover their tracks
and disguise the real
purpose behind the ID policy.
I don't know about you, but
I didn't know federal judges
talked like that.
[LAUGHTER]
And I found that
absolutely astonishing.
There is at least one
person who understood
what the policy was all about.
All of you know
who that person is,
and he called it exactly right.
Here he is.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
-Last month, the people
of Dover, Pennsylvania
voted to dismiss school
board members who
supported the theory
of intelligent design.
But according to some people,
that's not all they voted out.
-I'd like to say to the
good citizens of Dover,
if there is a disaster in
your area, don't turn to God.
You just voted God
out of your city.
[END PLAYBACK]
[LAUGHTER]
Pat got it right.
[LAUGHTER]
This really is a religious idea.
And what's astonishing is
to see Robertson saying
exactly what this is all back.
And once again, I
think, regardless
of what you think of
the Reverend Robertson,
I think he was exactly
right from his point of view
that this was a
religious question.
Now the question, I think,
that all of you in Ohio
have to consider is, is this
critical analysis lesson plan
that you now have
in Ohio, is this
really different from
the Dover approach?
And I've read opinion columns
saying immediately, oh no, it's
got nothing to do with it.
It's entirely different.
The Dover decision
is not precedent.
That's true.
It's just a district
court decision,
but all the information that
I have talked about tonight
was unearthed at the Dover
trial, and it's all available.
After all, the
Discovery Institute
came here and told you.
Didn't they?
That they do not want to
teach intelligent design
in public schools.
That's just not their policy.
Yeah?
That's Stephen Meyer.
He's the guy who said that.
Stephen Meyer is the
author of a book called,
How to Get Intelligent Design
Into Public School Curriculum.
So if you hear him saying
momentarily, no, we
don't want to teach intelligent
design in Ohio schools,
I think the proper
way to understand
that is we don't want to teach
intelligent design in Ohio
schools yet.
We'll figure out
a way to do that.
And the lesson plans, of
course, don't have anything
to do with creationism or
intelligent design, do they?
Well, guess what?
If you look very
closely at those lesson
plans, what you will discover is
the topics for the five lesson
plans.
Of those five lesson
plans, four of them
come directly out of
the Pandas and People
book, the creationist
book that was
relabeled as an intelligent
design textbook.
And the fifth one comes directly
from Michael Behe's book,
Darwin's Black Box.
These are also found
in a whole series
of other intelligent
design textbooks,
including Icons of
Evolution by Jonathan Wells.
And you might ask
yourself, well,
are any of these really
intelligent design books?
Go to the Discovery
Institute website,
and you will find that these
are touted as the source
books of intelligent design.
And the judge realized
that correctly,
and he wrote something that I
think applies directly to Ohio,
and is I think worth
thinking about.
And that is, "Intelligent
designs backers have sought
to avoid the
scientific scrutiny,
which we have now determined
that it cannot withstand,
by advocating that the
controversy, but not ID itself,
should be taught."
And what Judge Jones
wrote was, "This tactic
is at best disingenuous,
and at worst, a canard.
The goal of the
intelligent design movement
isn't to encourage
critical thought,
but to foment a revolution
which would supplant
evolutionary theory with ID."
And that is part and parcel of
the lesson plans now adopted
in the state of Ohio.
People might say,
well, let's be fair.
Isn't the scientific
community biased
against intelligent design?
Isn't it prejudiced?
Doesn't it suppress it?
I think that idea overlooks
how often science deals
with novel scientific claims.
But what we expect
people to do is
to do real research to
back up those claims,
to submit them to peer review,
to engage in the give and take
of scientific argument, to
win a scientific consensus.
And eventually, if the evidence
is on the side of these ideas,
no matter how goofy they
sound at first and no matter
how much the scientific
community opposes them,
they will eventually
find their way
into classroom and textbook.
Now intelligent
design advocates like
to say they've got a new
scientific idea, too.
And you know what?
If they wanted to do
this, I'd be thrilled.
I'd say, see you at the
cell biology meetings.
See you at biochemistry.
See you at the earth
science meetings.
We'll have fun.
We'll argue about
this, and I'll show you
that you're full of it.
But you know what?
Maybe you'll do the
same thing to me.
Maybe you'll come up with the
experiments, with the evidence,
with the analysis, that
will show you're right.
And if you are right,
in 10, 15, 20 years,
we won't have to go to the
school board and argue,
you'll automatically be
in classroom and textbook.
But their idea of how the
scientific process should work
is not exactly like this,
it is rather like this.
And that is they would
like a direct injection
into classroom and textbook.
And they'd like that
injection with the aid
of the political process,
which is exactly why they've
concentrated not on research,
they don't produce any,
not on peer reviewed
publications,
and not on winning
scientific consensus.
What they have concentrated
on is public relations
and political pressure.
You might also ask
yourself how many
scientific organizations
around the country
have criticized these
Ohio lesson plans.
And a few of them
are shown up here,
including my own scientific
society, the American Society
for Cell Biology, a society that
is resident to many, many Nobel
laureates and one of the
largest experimental societies
in the United States.
The source for all of this
information by the way,
is a great organization called
Americans United for Separation
of Church and State.
If any of you are interested
in their activities,
they have a very simple web
address, A-U, for Americans
United, www.au.org.
These are the
organizations lined up
against the Ohio lesson plans
for fairness, for balance,
for equal time.
I also have to show you the
organizations that have lined
up in favor of the lesson plan.
Here they are.
[LAUGHTER]
And you can make your own
decision as to whether or not
this is a lesson
plan in which you,
as the people of the state
of Ohio, should be proud.
What is at stake in this?
And quite frankly, this
is where I want to close.
I think what is at stake,
literally, is everything.
This is a cartoon, last
panel of a cartoon,
that a friend of mine sent me.
And you can see there's
a young man here.
I assume he's
Hindu or Pakistani.
He's in a science
laboratory studying science.
And you can see this
as the creationist
found unlikely support among
students in China and India.
And this young man is
saying, oh, "Yes, America, we
would like it very
much if you would
teach your children religious
dogma instead of science.
We'd like their jobs."
And I think, to pull
absolutely no punches, what
is at stake in this
argument, in this debate,
in this political struggle,
isn't whether students
will learn evolution.
I think that's small potatoes.
I don't think a
generation of citizens
will be harmed if
they don't quite
understand the difference
between allopatric and
sympatric speciation.
I think what is difficult
is to contemplate
a generation of
Americans growing up
with the wedge driven
between them and science.
And the intelligent
design movement
proposes to drive
exactly that wedge, which
is aimed to produce what
they call atheistic science.
If that happens, then something
that all of us in this room
have taken for granted
during our lifetimes
is going to change.
And that something is
that the United States
is the worldwide leader
in scientific research
and technology.
If we put that
mantle down, and I
think this movement
has the potential
to cause that to
actually happen,
a dozen nations around this
world will eagerly pick it up,
will take scientific
leadership from us,
and will never give it back.
And that is what
is at stake in Ohio
and every one of
the American states.
Thank you very much
for coming today.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank Professor Miller
very much for his talk.
He is open to questions.
How much time, roughly?
Oh, you've got as much as
more than half an hour.
OK.
Whatever he wants to--
Fine.
We've got the
webcast through 9:00.
OK.
We'll figure that's
probably a reasonable time.
I'm going to moderate
this, which mean simply
that I will point to people
to stand up and ask questions.
And Patricia has suggested that
I might contribute any comments
that I would find
helpful, but I will
try to be very
restrained in doing that.
So who has questions?
Yes?
Dr. Miller, how do
you explain these
quote "legitimate
scientists" supporting this?
I am embarrassed to confess
that Dr. Behe is a biophysicist.
I am as well.
And I was shocked to see
that he was doing this.
I've known him for many years.
How do they get into this?
And what's going on,
and what's their agenda?
Well, I'm not going to
pretend for a minute
to be able to psychoanalyze
the people who
stand on the other
side of this debate.
But I will point out
that almost to a person,
they regard evolution
as the foundation
of a dangerous
scientific materialism.
And I'm going to
point to somebody
who I think really summed up the
reason for the opposition best.
And I think this
reason applies even
to a trained scientist, like
Michael Behe Jonathan Wells who
has two PhDs, or Stephen Meyer
who's trained in philosophy.
This summer in August,
I was listening
to an interview on
National Public Radio,
and it was an interview
with Senator Rick
Santorum from
Pennsylvania who's just
published a new book
called, It Takes a Family.
It was a 10 minute
interview, and it was just
to let him promote his book
and say what it was about.
But in the middle of
it, the interviewer
asked him, Senator
Santorum, I found it strange
that in the middle
of your book you
took a shot at part of
the science curriculum.
Now you're a senator,
a politician,
with no training in
science, but nonetheless you
decided to take a
shot at evolution.
Then he said, why evolution?
And it's almost an exact
quote, that I almost
have it memorized.
And Senator Santorum says,
because it really matters.
It's where we come from.
And he said, if we're
just an accident,
if we're a mistake of
nature, then that puts
a different moral demand on us.
And he thought for
second and said,
in fact, it doesn't put
a moral demand on us,
then if we are the intentional
creation of a supreme being who
does make moral demands.
Now think about that.
Because what he said is
that if evolution is right,
morality is an illusion.
And morality isn't just don't do
sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Morality is what's
right in the world,
how do you treat the poor,
issues of war and peace,
economic justice, fairness,
personal integrity.
Morality matters.
And I think it
matters to all of us.
It certainly matters to me.
If you actually come to
believe that evolution
as a doctrine invalidates
any sense of morality,
you're going to
oppose it, whether you
think it's scientifically
justified or not.
Now I'm not going to pretend
to look inside Dr. Behe's head
and see if that's exactly
what is making him tick.
But I do know, he
has said very clearly
that he thinks evolution
and evolutionary materialism
is a morally
destructive doctrine.
And I would assume that's
the source of the motivation.
Next question.
Got one up on the balcony.
OK.
Up there.
Nice and loud.
You'll have to talk loudly.
Sure.
These folks wouldn't participate
through the political process,
instead of the scientific
process, unless that's
where the fertile ground was.
I spent a lot of time
in the political left
and noticed that
hostility towards science
is just as great there.
That new-age stuff you were
talking about, astrology, et
cetera.
You betcha.
So what is it that we
ought to be doing better?
Well, that's a
really good question.
As an ex Barry
Goldwater Republican,
I appreciate you saying that
large elements of the left
are anti science.
And it certainly is true.
I think you see this most
clearly in the European left,
where the European left has been
enormously hostile to science
and technology.
I think, and I'll
accuse myself first,
I think that we in science suck
at getting our message across
to the public.
We are terrible popularizers.
And as an example
of that, I would
ask how many people
in the audience
were aware of the
discovery regarding
the fusion of human chromosome
number two, which was worked
out about 18 months ago?
Exactly.
A couple of
well-informed biologists.
But aside from that, that
should have been popularized.
That should have been
on the evening news.
And there should have been
the Carl Sagan types writing
about it and talking about it.
And part of it is because,
quite frankly, we in science,
we have the best
jobs in the world.
I mean, how cool it
is to be able to walk
in your laboratory in
the morning and say, gee,
I wonder what I shall
try to discover today.
And you know what?
That's the job that I have,
and a lot of other people
in this room have, too.
And that's cool.
So why would you
want to get messed up
in the political
process, if that was it?
So that's one reason
is self absorption.
Another reason, I think, is
a terrible and ultimately
self-destructive tendency in
the scientific , community,
to look down our
noses at popularizers.
Example, Carl Sagan,
who I think was
the most effective popularizer
of science in the last 30
or 40 years, in many
circles was looked down
upon by his colleagues in
the astronomical and physical
science community.
Stephen Jay Gould, the great
evolutionary biologist,
this may come as news
to some of you who
don't know this field very
tightly, but Steve was actually
look down upon by many people
who regarded themselves
as more serious
evolutionary scientists,
precisely because Steve
wrote for the general public
and did that brilliantly.
Until we have the
scientific community, A,
do a better job of
popularizing science, and B,
begin to reward
our best messengers
to the public sphere,
I think science
is going to take heat from
both the left and the right.
In front here.
No.
Further back.
In the center there.
Speaking from the left,
I want to just suggest
a slightly different
take on all this.
I think that when you said
that what's at stake here
is everything, you actually
gave a very narrow definition
of everything, because
you only talked
about science and technology.
That's true.
I'll take that.
And I think that
what's at stake here,
and many people
on the left think
that what's at stake here,
is literally everything.
It's not just
theocratic science,
but it's theocracy
in government.
Its many issues that are
defined as moral issues
by this or that different
religious group.
And it's being pushed
by the most restrictive
religious perspective,
and not the broadest
religious perspective about what
morality and what ethics is,
and what politics is
and what democracy is,
and what the political
structure should be.
So I think it really
is about everything
in a much broader sense.
And I'll just finish
by saying that you
asked about theocratic science.
I've seen theocratic science.
When I was teaching
at Rutgers, I
had a student who
was from Pakistan
and provided me a lot
of articles in English
about Muslim science.
They actually didn't
talk so much about god,
but they talked about
principles of good and bad
that could be discovered
and dealt with.
And they were talking
about good and evil
as the subject
matter of science.
I think that's a
worthwhile point.
It's interesting that you
brought up Muslim science.
About three or four years
ago, I have a little web page
with a lot of evolution
stuff up on it,
I started to get emails from
Turkey and Lebanon and even
a couple from Iran,
believe it or not,
of students who wanted me
to answer their questions
about evolution.
And a few of them I asked,
why are you asking me this?
And they connected
me with the writings
that go under the pen name
of our Harun Yahya, who
is an Islamic writer
based in Turkey
who has written a whole series
of anti evolutionism books.
And one of the students
was actually kind enough
to buy me am English
translation of the book
and mail it to me from
Turkey, so I could
see what all this was about.
And it astonished me.
One was, I suppose,
not so astonishing,
and one was downright hilarious.
The not so astonishing part says
that all of the arguments made
in the Islamic world for the
scientific insufficiencies
of evolution are just
recycled versions of the ones
that I've talked
to you about here.
It says nothing new.
But the second part
was genuinely amusing.
And that is Harun Yahya
argued to his young readers
that they should appreciate
the fact that evolution
is a Western Christian
plot to subvert
the morals of Islamic youth.
[LAUGHTER]
And as part of
his prove of this,
he pointed out that
Charles Darwin studied
for the priesthood of
the Church of England,
and that proves to
you that he's just
another crusader,
which I thought
was a rather interesting take.
But the other thing
that's worth pointing out,
and I think that we can
learn a lot from the history
of the Islamic world.
And if you go back to
the 13th or 14th century,
and you look at the great Muslim
caliphate across the Near East
and North Africa, that was the
center of learning and science
and cosmopolitan thought.
The Islamic world was the leader
in mathematics and astronomy
and in many other
branches of science.
Something happened
to the Islamic world
to the point where the amount
of genuinely important science
done in the Islamic world
in the 20th century,
unfortunately, is
very close to zero.
And that something is
exactly the ascendancy
of the kind of theocratic talk
that you are talking about.
And if this were to happen in
the leading nation in the west,
we could see the same
sort of retreat backwards,
and that worries
me a great deal.
I just want to comment on this.
A lot of folks on the left claim
to be supportive of science.
But as we saw with the various
debates at the school board
here in Ohio, our
strongest support
has come from
traditional Republicans,
traditional conservatives.
The Democrats have been very,
very weak in their support
and sometimes have also
opposed the science curriculum.
Yeah, and I should
also point out,
I mean I showed a cartoon at
the beginning to point this out.
I wrote an op ed piece
right after the trial
that was published in the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
And in the first
part of it I said,
if there was ever a place
where the proponents
of intelligent design had
a home field advantage,
it was in the federal
court in Harrisburg.
They had a popularly
elected school board
that was behind them.
They had a citizenry
that was behind them.
They had a federal judge
recommended for the bench
by Rick Santorum, who in
his three years on the bench
had established himself
as a conservative jurist
and a self-described
strict constructionist.
Everything should
have gone their way.
And in fact, the attorneys
on our side of the case
looked at this guy's
record when we drew him,
and they said, boy, let's
just hope he's smart.
Well, as it turns out, he was.
And he paid attention
to the arguments,
and he wrote a very
powerful decision
that I would
recommend to anyone.
And it's particularly
powerful because it came
from a conservative jurist.
And that's a valuable
point to make.
Way in the back.
I want to add to the
gentleman's point before.
You had mentioned
about the Middle East.
And my question is
what happened here?
Back in the '50s, '60s,
'70s, science did everything.
Everybody generally seemed
to be pretty interested.
We put a man on the moon, and
atomic energy, everything else.
Was this always an
underlying theme
throughout the United States?
Or why is it right now in the
last decade, or two decades,
rearing its ugly head now?
Well, my short answer to
that is that there has always
been an active anti-evolution
movement in the United States.
It has ebbed and
flowed, in terms
of the degree to which it has
caught the public imagination.
But if you look at opinion
polls in which you ask people
whether they accept
the evolutionary theory
of human origins, and you
go back in these polls
to the '40s and '50s, you
find quite consistently,
depending on how you
phrase the question,
that only about 35% to 45%
of the people in this country
accept evolution.
That was true even back in
those good old days of the '50s
and '60s that you're
talking about.
In the summer of
1964, to tell you
more about my youth than
you ever wanted to know.
I was a guide at the
Boy Scout pavilion
of the New York World's Fair.
So I spent a whole summer
at the World's Fair
working a few hours a
day in the Boy Scout
pavilion, my little shorts
and neckerchief and everything
else, and the rest of the
time going around the fair,
having just a wonderful time.
There was an exhibit at that
World's Fair, New York World's
Fair, put up by the Moody
Institute of Science.
Because I was already a
science geek at the time,
I saw Institute
of Science, cool.
Went in.
It was an
anti-evolution exhibit.
So this organized
anti-evolution activity
has been with us
for a long time.
I think when you say,
what's happening now?
Two things.
I think one is that the
political climate in the United
States has made it
much easier for people
to take religious ideas
into the mainstream
and to run with them,
to argue essentially
that if science has an
anti religious bias,
we have to correct it
with a pro religious bias.
And then the second
thing is, I think,
that the Edward versus
Aguillard decision in 1987
was a shock wave for
the creationists,
and you saw that dramatic
change in terms of the adoption
of this new idea.
The new label, and that's
all it is, it's a label,
applied to the creation science
movement, intelligent design,
brilliant PR.
If you were working
at an agency,
and you were brainstorming
for a product name,
man, when you came up with that
name, you should get a raise.
And I think, in part,
because it's a phrase that
appeals to all people of faith.
If you are a person of
faith, I think by definition,
you think that there
is an intelligence,
there's a guiding
force to the universe
that your life has meaning
and purpose and value.
And then when you hear the
word intelligent design,
you figure, well, that sounds
like that's something that I
should be on the side off.
So I think it's a combination
of constant anti-evolution
sentiment and brilliant
public relations
on the part of the
intelligent design movement.
And let me just add to that.
I think that that's one
thing that has really
helped strengthen this movement
is the ambiguity of the phrase
intelligent design.
That on one hand, it can
mean we believe that there's
a God who created the universe.
And a lot of people
believe that.
And the other meaning,
however, is the idea
that this concept of
an intelligent creator
ought to be made
part of science,
which is very different thing.
Next question.
Over here we have one.
Right on the aisles.
I'll come down from up here.
Then I'll do it.
Fine.
Somebody over on this side.
And then we'll get you next.
OK, there.
You mentioned you were
upset by scientists
not popularizing or putting
their views out there.
There was an excellent
show, you may have seen
and others may have seen
on Charlie Rose, where
James Watson and EO Wilson
were the people talking.
And both of them had put out
new editions of Darwin's books
with their comments.
And EO Wilson didn't have
much to say about this.
But James Watson unabashedly
comes out with the idea
that he absolutely doesn't
see god fitting in anywhere.
He's an atheist, or
whatever his position is.
And he said, all
his friends also.
He could think of only one
friend who could mix the two.
I'm not sure that
James Watson really
has a large circle of friends.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
Point taken though.
Well, maybe the one friend
who did is [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
But the question I
have here though is,
and the way this meeting
started, too, was with a prayer
is somehow it's seen as
to be a scientist, you're
almost afraid in the United
States, maybe not in England,
to say that you're an atheist.
And you seem to want to
promote the idea that you're
a Roman Catholic.
I guess the question is,
how do those two things jive
and how do they work
with in your mind?
Sure.
I don't intend to promote the
idea that I'm a Roman Catholic.
I mention it.
I am unaware of scientists
in the United States
who tell me that they
are afraid to say
that they are atheist or
agnostic, because they say that
all the time.
There was a very
interesting survey
of the scientific profession
and religious belief, that
was done by Ed
Larson and I forget
who the other author was, but
it was published, I believe,
in Nature or was it in Science?
Either Science or Nature
just a couple years ago.
And one of the things that
they discovered, well,
that there was a
similar survey surveying
the scientific profession in the
United States in 1917 or 1918,
and what it showed is that
in 1917 or 1918 about 40%
of the scientific profession
professed some sort of a belief
in what could be construed
to be a personal god.
And that percentage was
about the same today.
So there is this
consistency of belief
in the scientific community.
It's less than 50%.
I don't think that's
necessarily surprising.
Scientists are skeptical.
I tell my students that
the first virtue of science
is skepticism, so
it's not surprising
that scientists are skeptical
about all sorts of things.
But I do think that most people
within the scientific community
have come to accept
the notion that one
can be a genuinely
religious person
in the traditional
Abrahamic sense
and still be fully accepting
of science as a way
to learn about
the natural world.
And if James Watson
would accept that,
then I'd be very happy with him.
He may see no place for God
in his view of the world.
I do.
That means we differ on matters
of philosophy and theology,
but I don't think it
necessarily means we
differ on matters of science.
Over here.
Yes.
I liked a lot of what you said.
I thought it was good
in terms of relating
this attack on
evolution by the ID
and that section of the
religious fundamentalist right.
What I guess I'd like
you to speak to would be,
and I write for The
Revolution newspaper,
and I also am part
The World Can't Wait
- Drive Out The Bush Regime.
I think we are living in the
time of the rise of fascism
in Germany.
I think that people like
Robertson, the genocide
comments about black people by
Bennett, all these things that
are clustered around
the Bush regime,
and I think you speak to the
dangers in terms of science.
I just wondered how you
saw this whole array
and how science fits
into it, and the battle
in Dover and other places,
including Ohio, Kansas,
are critical to actually beating
back the rise of fascism.
Well, you've invited me to make
a provocative political speech,
and I hope you wouldn't
mind too much if I
decline the invitation.
I personally do not think that
the times in the United States
today are comparable
to Germany in the '30s,
if only because I think
Americans are cognizant of what
happened in Germany in the
'30s, and absolutely determined
not to let it happen.
And I would think that the
court rulings that we've
seen in Georgia
and in Pennsylvania
are a good example of
the fact that we have
an independent
judiciary, and we have
people who are willing to
stand up against this movement.
I think, to be perfectly
honest, I really
don't want to increase the
politicization of science
by arguing that science is
against one political party
or against one
particular point of view.
To me, the great
virtue of science
has always been that
it is apolitical.
And what I see that worries
me right now in this country
is the tendency to
politicize science,
to pretend that science
and scientific rationalism
is an idea that belongs on one
side of the political spectrum.
I think that's
intellectually wrong,
and I think it's enormously
destructive to science,
and my own determination.
I know what I'll do when
I go in the voting booth,
but my own determination,
in a public sense,
is to fight for
scientific rationalism,
and that's what I think this
battle is really all about.
Anybody over here?
So Patricia doesn't have
to run around too much.
Do you think there's
a place for satire,
or do you think it would
be counter productive?
There was a website a little
while ago in which a group--
The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Exactly.
[APPLAUSE]
Although it would energize
a lot us in the States,
probably, and elsewhere,
by the embarrassment that
would show up in what's
happening, but maybe
it would solidify your position.
What do you think?
I'm not going to speculate
on which tactic will work
or solidify the opposition.
The only thing I can tell you is
that I'm a great fan of satire.
I hope we never
abandon humor as a tool
to lubricate our discussions
of difficult issues.
And I think one of the
particular reasons why
I have recommended Judge Jones's
decision, in other words go
and read it, is because
parts of it are really funny.
And I think that's
a saving grace.
In front here.
Here.
The physicist in the front row.
He has been quite.
That's good.
So as this debate
has continued, I've
particularly become
more sensitive
as you know in writing
about the human factor,
to the fact that science and
religion can co exist in peace.
But at the same
time, as it often
is pointed out to me when
I talk on the subject,
it's really a little
bit disingenuous
to argue that there
is no tension.
I wouldn't argue
that for second.
But I think scientists have to
be more sensitive than we are.
The fact that
while a lot of this
is, in fact, a lot the
reaction that you discussed
is based on fear of science
as the basis of morality,
it's also based on a fear which
is not completely displaced
that science is, in fact, a
threat to religious beliefs.
Because if it is, and
as a well-known atheist
and physicist, Steve
Weinberg, has said,
science does not make it
impossible to believe in god,
it just makes it possible
to not believe in god.
Without science,
everything's a miracle.
And I think unless scientists
are sensitized a little bit
to the fact that science
does present at some level
to people, a threat
or a perceived
threat to their
religious beliefs,
then if we overlook that,
then we tend to be blase,
and then sometimes, in
fact, counterproductive.
An example, the best
example I can think of,
is the debate John Calvert,
head of the ID network,
he always brings up his
letter from 40 Nobel Laureates
about evolution,
which says there
is no evidence for design.
And of course, that's not true.
I mean, there's no evidence
for design and purpose
to the universe.
And that's just not a statement.
And if scientists make
those kinds of statements,
it encourages the
fear of science.
And so I think we have to
be particularly sensitive
that science is threatening.
I will just second
your comments.
I think they were
very wisely chosen.
Right here in front.
Behind you there.
And perhaps Dr.
Princehouse or Kraus
could answer this about
Ohio, in particular.
If Dover had its elections and
changed the political spectrum
there, what's the
next step in Ohio?
Do we know when the
standards are being revised?
I know that records have been
requested in preparation,
perhaps for a lawsuit?
But somebody could answer it.
I think that's you.
The situation here
is complicated.
We don't have the easy out that
Kansas and Dover and Darby,
Montana had, because
our board of education
has 11 elected members and
eight appointed members,
appointed by the governor.
If this had been a matter
left to the elected members,
we wouldn't have had the
standards issue, the benchmark
that invites critical
analysis of evolution which
is clearly illegal, based
on the recent case law.
And we wouldn't have
had this lesson plan.
So you can't blame our elected
officials, oddly enough.
We could blame the governor
for not paying more attention.
Basically, the governor,
as was revealed
by the Hicks emails that
were released this summer,
the governor allowed
certain creationist members
of the board to invoke
his name for stuff,
without saying that it was
not what he was promoting.
And so they were
able to manipulate
other members of the
board, and particularly,
the appointed members.
So a lot of folks,
unfortunately,
went to the polls last
fall and tried to vote out
school board members.
And they didn't really vote out
good ones and vote in bad ones,
but nearly.
It was not the approach to take.
Instead, I think that one of the
things that we can do right now
is we have a window
of opportunity.
Because the board is meeting
next Tuesday in Columbus,
at Ohio School for the Deaf.
You can find this
on their website.
Next Tuesday, the
plan is for them
to meet in closed
session with some lawyers
to talk about this.
Now I understand the Columbus
Dispatch is challenging that
at illegal, that because
it's not currently
pending litigation.
I'm not sure how
that's going to go.
But regardless of whether
they talk about it
in the morning or
the afternoon, there
will be an opportunity
for public comment,
starting probably as early as
1:00 o'clock in the afternoon.
Is that right?
Around 1:00 o'clock.
And any citizen, anybody
actually, can come and comment.
And it's called commentary
on non action items.
Yes, non action items.
You come.
You sign up.
You fill out a card.
And if there aren't
a lot of people,
you'll get five minutes.
If there are a lot
of people, you'll
get two and a half or three.
And you can say
whatever you want.
And it's very important
to show up there
and to state your opinion.
And again, folks that are
comfortable with science,
with the Academy,
that sort of thing,
they tend not to go down.
But the board is often very,
very welcoming of people.
They want to hear from citizens.
They especially like
to hear from students,
which I hadn't realized before
I started going down there.
But the issue in a
nutshell is that we
have a benchmark in the
10th grade curriculum that
says students should describe
how scientists continue
to investigate and
critically analyze aspects
of evolutionary theory.
And when that was
sent up, I said well,
I don't have a
problem with that.
That's what scientists do.
But I didn't realize fully
the context at that point.
It's very like the
Georgia sticker,
and it's illegal for
the very same reason.
And we see that it was built
on to produce this lesson plan,
which is full of the same stuff
that's in the Pandas book,
and clearly, clearly illegal.
In addition, and Ken got this
a little bit wrong in his talk,
we already have altered
the definition of science
here in Ohio.
There were two things that
the creationists got through
in 2002.
One was the critically
analyze benchmark.
And the other was that they
took the Ohio Academy of Science
definition of science, and they
cut off the part that refers
to evidence, and just
kept the first part.
Now there are other
places in the document,
in the standards, where
we say that science
has to do with evidence.
So I didn't get all
that excited about that.
But you see, it's
a process, where
little bits chipping away.
And actually, the Kansas
folks used our definition
to build on for that.
So it's already here.
And that's another element
of the standards that
is clearly illegal right now.
They can fix this next
week, next Tuesday,
if they hear that people
are in favor of it.
Did the Dover
School Board not get
re-elected because
the population really
felt that intelligent design
was not proper to the schools,
or did they not get re-elected
because the population felt
it was a waste of their
money for the school board
to have this fight?
Does it matter?
Well, if it was the latter--
Hey, going to answer
this question.
[LAUGHTER]
And it explains why in Kansas
again, in a very short years,
the lessons of 2001
have been forgotten.
The answer to your
question is yes.
I think both of those were true.
I also think there
is another element.
And if you read the
York Daily Record, which
is the paper that covers
Dover almost every day
on the internet, which I've been
doing for the past four or five
months, you can
see this at work.
I think the people of Dover
were profoundly embarrassed
by the actions of
several members
of the board of education.
And I gave a hint of it
when I said the judge said,
they came in front
of me and lied.
And there one
point in this trial
was just absolutely hilarious.
The purchase of these 60
copies, or thereabouts,
Of Pandas and People, cost
a certain amount, like $692.
Something like that.
I don't know what it was.
And they asked Alan Bonsell,
who was a member of the board,
where did that money come from?
This in depositions,
said, I have no idea.
It came from an anonymous donor.
So you do the discovery process.
You subpoena everybody, put
them on the stand in the trial.
And said, where did
the money come from?
He said I have
absolutely no idea.
I heard it came from
an anonymous donor.
What is this Mr. Bonsell?
Canceled check.
How much is it made out to?
$692.
Whose name is that?
It's my name.
So would you like to
reconsider what you just said?
[LAUGHTER]
And he said, well, what I
meant was I went to my church.
I told the congregation
we needed money for this.
I passed the hat.
I collected the money.
I put it into my bank account.
I wrote the board of
education a check,
but I didn't notice who put in
a five and who put in the ten,
and who put in the 20.
So when I said I had no idea
where the money came from,
that's what I meant.
And at that point, the judge
cut up the other lawyer
and said, excuse me, don't
insult the intelligence
of this court by pretending that
an answer that you have no idea
is equivalent to saying
you solicited it,
you collected it, you bundled
it, and transmitted it.
[LAUGHTER]
And there was another case
where a member of the board, who
was one of the
instigators named William
Buckingham, on the
deposition at the trial
said that he never said he never
wanted to teach creationism.
he never mentioned
creation science.
This is a figment in the
imagination of the plaintiffs.
He just wanted to teach
intelligent design.
Then they play a videotape
from the local news TV station
that had preserved the tape.
Reporter shoves a microphone
in his face, and he said,
I think as long as we're
teaching evolution,
we have to balance it by
teaching creation science.
This sort of
disingenuous testimony,
I think, profoundly
embarrassed people in Dover.
I don't know if
there'd be anything
like that, the equivalent
of that, in Kansas or Ohio.
I think it's fair to say that
the Dover elections were pretty
close.
The electorate voted for the
new board, like 53% to 47%.
Even though they won every seat,
it wasn't a complete landslide.
Has science won the
hearts and minds
of the people of
Dover, Pennsylvania?
I don't think so.
I think it won the hearts and
minds of a fair number of them.
And a lot of them
just got fed up
and disgusted with
what they regarded
as the antics of the
board of education.
So that's my
analysis from outside
of what happened in Dover.
In the front here.
It's already on.
He'll switch, too.
Congratulations to yourself,
the plaintiff's, the lawyers,
and the entire team that
put together the case.
Were there any difficult moments
during your cross examination?
Was there something
that you did not expect?
Any line of questioning?
Yeah, there was something
that I did not expect,
but it wasn't a
difficult moment.
And that is that
during the trial,
I talked about the
blood clotting,
showed some of the
slides I showed you.
I talked about the flagellum.
I showed some of the
slides I showed you.
And I talked about human
chromosome number two.
During my cross examination, I
wasn't asked about any of them.
In other words, I expected
them to fight on the sides.
Not a single challenge on the
scientific issue, because I
was really prepared for that.
And that came as a surprise.
And instead, they combed
old editions of my textbooks
to look for phrases that
they could get me to say
were equivalent to
intelligent design.
Or they looked for the
website that I maintain
for my university course, where
I have some links, if people
want to see what the intelligent
design controversy is about.
They can go to this link.
Isn't that the same thing,
Dr. Miller, as the statement
that the Dover Board
of Education penned?
And I didn't think so,
and I explained why.
But it was actually a pretty
easy cross examination
from my point of view.
Here.
I was very heartened by the
Dover decision by Judge Jones.
It was one of those positive
moments of the year.
But I have to think that the
creationist movement is going
to come up with something else.
That there's going to be--
They already have.
A sudden emergence
theory, is that it?
What do you think is
the next assault going
to be from creationists?
Because I think intelligent
design is dead, so what's next?
You've got it right
here, and the next thing
is we don't want to
teach intelligent design.
We want to teach critical
analysis of evolution.
That is the thing,
and that is what
is being pushed in a
whole variety of states.
In Kansas, for example, they
may have changed the definition
of science, but the
Kansas board is adamant
saying, comb the standards.
We don't mention
intelligent design.
All we do is critically
analyze evolution.
So I think critical analysis
of evolution is the next step,
and you've got it right here.
If I may add one thing.
We've been talking
about the science,
and that's quite appropriate.
But I would maintain that until
the theological presuppositions
that underlie the attacks
on evolution are addressed,
and they need to be addressed
by churches, by clergy,
that this anti-evolution
movement simply
is not going to go away.
and there will keep
on being new avatars
of intelligent
design, creationism,
or whatever it's called.
Yeah, I mean critical analysis
is nearly as brilliant
a moniker as intelligent
design, because they say, well,
how come the scientists are
against critical analysis?
How could that be?
And of course, if you look at
the content of the lesson plan,
it's not critical,
and it's not analysis.
It's an attempt to convince
students to uncritically
swallow wholesale outright lies
about the content of science.
And you don't have to
take my word for it,
and indeed, the board
didn't two years ago.
But we now have the records.
And their own science
experts at the Department
of Education in Ohio told them.
We have the sheets
where they said it.
They said, the underlying
sentence is a lie.
This is wrong.
This is inaccurate.
This is crackpot.
This is religion.
This is creationism.
It's all in there.
It's very, very similar
to the Dover case,
although they weren't
quite as dramatic
in their public statements.
That's the only difference.
There's another in front here.
You talked about
the false dichotomy
between religious
belief and science.
And presumably, the
fear of evolution
is based on the belief that
if you believe in evolution,
then the Bible must be wrong.
That's one aspect,
but there are others.
There are other
concerns as well.
So is, as you
alluded to, perhaps
part of the social
and public issue here,
a better understanding of
the Bible and what it means.
After all, there are
two stories of creation
in the Book of Genesis,
which is up front, which
is why, which is
perhaps as far as people
get in reading the Bible.
[LAUGHTER]
Do you think that modern
reading, modern study
and scholarly interpretation
of how the Bible evolved
and how religious
belief evolved,
is the other side
of this equation?
I'm tempted to defer to
Reverend Murphy on this.
But I certainly would agree,
although I would look back
at the history of perhaps the
past 500 years of Christendom,
and I would suggest that
perhaps expecting Christians
to come to consensus about
the meaning of the Bible
is a hopeless quest.
Well, but I would agree
that is and that's really
one of the things that I
was referring to earlier.
That basically, more
theological literacy,
critical reading of scripture,
is a very important component
of what I was talking about.
I think we probably have time
for about two more questions.
One back here.
It's a technical question.
Do biologists, when
considering evolution,
consider the time
for these complex
smaller systems to combine?
Do you consider the
time interrelate?
Does it happen fast
in certain cases,
or does it happen slow
in certain organisms?
I didn't quite understand
everything you said.
Your talking about viruses?
He's talking about
the time required.
You were talking
about complex systems.
I mean I was just curious.
So if there is an
intelligent designer,
did he take time for some
cases to combine and come up
with a complex system?
Yeah, well, it's
a good question.
I can answer this very
directly in a couple of ways.
We don't know how long it
took for the blood clotting
system or the bacterial
flagellum to evolve.
But we can look, for
example, at how long
it has taken entirely
new genes to evolve.
And one of my examples
that I always love.
I didn't show the slide tonight.
I can show it to you
afterwards if you like.
Is that in the 1970s, or
group of Japanese scientists
were hanging around
a chemical factory,
and there was a big waste
dump of plastic waste.
And they noticed
there was growing
on the surface of it what
looked like a lawn of bacteria.
But this made no sense
to them, because what
was being dumped in here
was nylon polymer waste,
and that's synthetic, and
bacteria can't grow on it.
Nonetheless, there they were.
And they took the bacteria.
They cultured them
in the laboratory.
And they discovered that these
were pseudomonas bacteria that
had evolved an entirely new
enzyme, called nylonase.
And it breaks down nylon.
And this enzyme actually
evolved from junk DNA,
from repetitive DNA,
into which there
had been a little flipping
around of the genetic code.
So a promoter popped up,
transcribed it, and then
evolved an enzyme with
more and more activity.
How long did it take for this
entirely new protein to evolve?
And obviously, very great
selective advantage,
because now the bacteria could
grow that couldn't before.
Less than 65 years.
And the reason we can say that
with some degree of certainty
is it was only 65 years
ago that nylon was
synthesized for the first time.
So that's one example.
My other favorite example
is a seven step pathway,
with seven different
enzymes, that breaks down
to 4-dinitrotoluene.
This is one of the
components of TNT.
It's an explosive.
This, too, was first
synthesized in the 1930s.
And two years ago an Air
Force laboratory in Florida
was able to show that there were
soil bacteria in the grounds
of Air Force bases that
had soil contaminated
with this explosive
residue that had evolved,
a seven step pathway,
by co opting enzymes
from other biochemical
pathways that
serve different purposes
to break this down.
And this clearly had also
happened since the 1930s.
So where you have the
proper opportunity,
evolution can work very
quickly, and can produce
some remarkable changes.
One final question.
I'm curious, and
maybe Patricia's
the one who can answer this.
It was a group of
parents in Dover
who brought the legal suit
against the school board.
Is there a similar
action here in Ohio ?
You're saying what Ohio
has done is illegal.
Are parents or citizens out
there challenging it legally?
I'll let Patricia
answer in detail,
but I'll answer it quickly from
my amateurish understanding
of the law.
To file a lawsuit, you
have to have standing.
Which is to say, if you
sue a government agency
saying it's actions
are unconstitutional,
you have to first show that you
were injured by that government
action.
So all of the 11
plaintiffs in Dover
were parents with
kids in the classroom,
having that statement
read to them
or about to have
it read to them.
That was their standing.
An ordinary citizen
in Dover, with nobody
in the public schools, could
not have gone to federal court
and filed that lawsuit.
So you need some
degree of standing.
My guess would be that parents
in Ohio whose students were
being made to use that lesson
plan or be testing on it,
would have similar standing,
if they wish to file a lawsuit.
Not all of the
parents in Dover had
kids that were in high school.
Some of them had little kids.
That's right.
So you only have to intend to
send your kids to the school.
That's right.
But the issues of
standing and things
like that, if someone's
interested in being involved
in an action like
this, I can put them
in touch with the folks
that are organizing.
So you can always email me
at www.evolution@case.edu,
and I can put you in touch with
the folks that are doing it.
I don't know all these
issues of standing,
but I know folks who do.
A final comment here, I believe.
I'm going to take advantage
of your experience
with Kitzmiller and Dover and
draw a couple of parallels
with Ohio.
The tactics in
Dover were initially
Buckingham Bonsell arguing for
some sort of 50-50 creationism
evolution.
And then that
transformed into finally
what yielded that one
minute disclaimer read
by administrators
to schoolchildren.
In Ohio, the initiation
was a 2000 motion
before the State Board of
Education for a two model
approach.
Right.
A motion made by
Professor Deborah Owens
Fink of the University of
Akron, a member of the board.
It failed, nine, five.
That then morphed,
and in the course
of your discussion
with Myers and Wells,
the compromise devised by
Bruce Chapman, President
of the Discovery Institute and
Meyer, the Associate Director
of the Center for the Renewal
of Science and Culture
at this time.
They decided the word
renewal was embarrassing.
It's now the Center for
Science and Culture.
Yes, I know.
I haven't changed yet.
[LAUGHTER]
Good for you.
And that ultimately resulted
in the standard calling
for critical analysis.
And then, as Mr. Latimer
has been kind enough
to tell us at a 2003
intelligent design
conference, a packing
of the writing committee
and the consequence lesson
plan that is derived from Wells
Icons of Evolution, Behe's
Darwin's Black Box, Pandas
and People, and in
fact, our librarian
has traced it back to the
1960s creationist literature.
Given that fact
situation, what would
be your view of the likelihood
of finding another Judge Jones
in the federal courts in Ohio?
[LAUGHTER]
I know very well when
I'm asked a question that
is beyond my expertise.
[LAUGHTER]
And that is exactly
such a question.
But I will tell you, since I've
been exactly two appearances
in federal court with judges
who were drawn for cases by lot,
that at the district
level I have to tell you
that I'm impressed with the
intelligence and the integrity
and the dedication to the
constitutional mission
of the federal judiciary.
And I would hope very much
that that impression would
be reinforced if any
case on this issue
ever got into the
federal courts in Ohio.
And I pray that
that would be true.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]
It's great to see you again.
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
