Ask Lee... About Intelligent Design

By Lee Strobel
9.27.06

Thanks to everyone who submitted a question! CLICK HERE to pose a question for a future newsletter. Though we can’t answer them all, we’ll select the ones that seem to have the broadest appeal – or are the most intriguing!

Q. It seems that the judge’s decision in the big Dover, Pa., lawsuit really took the wind out of intelligent design by ruling it couldn’t be taught in public schools. True? – Nick

Casey Luskin

A. Well, let’s go to an expert – Casey Luskin, co-author of Traipsing Into Evolution, a book that analyzes the Dover case. I asked Casey, who’s an attorney for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, five questions about what the case means and the future of Intelligent Design. Here are his answers.

1. What was the issue in the Dover case?

The issue at stake in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case was whether a policy passed by the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, which required mentioning intelligent design (ID) in an oral statement read to biology students, was constitutional. From the very beginning, this policy was opposed by Discovery Institute, the leading organization promoting intelligent design, because it does not think intelligent design should be mandated in schools. In December, 2005 federal district court Judge John E. Jones ruled the policy was unconstitutional.

Despite the over-expansive ruling, very little was at stake in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in terms of binding legal precedent. Because the decision was issued by a federal lower trial court, the ruling is not binding upon any other court in the United States. The decision isn't even binding upon anyone outside of the parties in the case.

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2. Where was the judge wrong?

Critics of the ruling, including a leading Darwinist legal scholar, have criticized the judge because he ruled on issues which were unnecessary to deciding whether Dover's ID policy was constitutional. All Judge Jones had to find was that the Dover Area School Board had predominantly religious motives for passing their ID-policy, and that should have ended his constitutional analysis.

Yet Judge Jones went on to reach into unnecessary questions like "What is science?" and "Is ID science?" Judge Jones even violated a cardinal rule of American religious freedom: the government never declares a person's religious belief "false." Yet Judge Jones ruled it is "utterly false" for a person to believe that "evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being."

The judge also predicated the ruling upon a false, straw-man version of intelligent design which misconstrues ID as merely a negative argument against evolution that makes religious appeals to the supernatural. Yet pro-ID expert witnesses testified in court that intelligent design uses positive arguments based upon detecting in nature the encoded complexity that we know results only from intelligence.

Moreover, pro-ID expert witnesses explained that ID does not try to answer religious questions about the identity or nature of the designer. Intelligent design is thus an empirically based argument that respects the limits of scientific inquiry. Yet Judge Jones refused to let the pro-ID experts define their own theory, and merely adopted the false definition promoted by the critics during the trial.

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Finally, the ruling made false claims that there are no peer-reviewed articles in science journals that support ID, and also claimed ID has not been the subject of experimental tests. Judge Jones was given evidence of such peer-reviewed pro-ID articles and experimental research by pro-ID expert biology witnesses during the trial, but he simply ignored this evidence in the legal ruling and adopted the Darwinist party line.

This lower trial court Judge ruled on all of these questions and stated it would be an "obvious waste of judicial and other resources" if a future court were to hold a similar trial and decide whether ID is science. By hoping that his overbroad ruling would have an effect outside of the parties and issues in his case, the Kitzmiller decision is a textbook case of judicial overreach. This judicial overreach diminishes the credibility of the ruling.

In summary, the judge got so many plain and simple facts about the ID-evolution debate wrong that it is safe to say that this ruling will not worry anyone who is informed about the actual nature of intelligent design.

3. Some people claim the Dover decision was a death knell for the intelligent design movement. Was it?

The Dover case is most certainly not the "death knell" for intelligent design. As noted, it didn't strike down the actual theory of intelligent design, but rather critiqued only a false, straw-man version of intelligent design promoted by critics. Thus informed legal scholars will realize that future courts, who do not misconstrue intelligent design, might rule very differently.

Most importantly, scientific evidence is what drives intelligent design. Living cells have contained digital code and microbiological machines that provide compelling scientific evidence for "intelligent design" both before and after this ruling. The scientific evidence for design in nature is not going away, and this debate will be settled by scientists who give design a fair hearing, not by courts.

4. What lasting impact, if any, will the case have on the ID movement?

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Surprisingly, very little has changed in terms of the education policies advocated by ID-proponents in response to this case. Long before the Dover case, the Discovery Institute opposed requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Just as before the lawsuit, pro-ID organizations feel that students should be required to learn about scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution without being required to learn alternative "replacement" theories such as intelligent design.

To be sure, ID-proponents believe that teaching intelligent design is perfectly constitutional when done for the purpose of improving science education. We also believe a teacher has the right to mention the theory at his or her own wise discretion. But the education policy recommendations and the progressing scientific research program of the intelligent design movement remain the same before, and after Dover.

5. What's the current state of the ID movement and where is it heading?

Currently the ID movement is focusing on scientific research into the theory. Thus, we strongly oppose attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design because they only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community.

We are also encouraged that public support for teaching about scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution remains high: a poll earlier this year showed that nearly 7 in 10 Americans feel that biology teachers should teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it. This past June, this South Carolina passed a science standard requiring students to summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.

In the end, the scientific data is what drives the community of scientists and other scholars in the ID movement to dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy and promote the growing theory that life shows unmistakable evidence of intelligent design. This community, and its body of research, is growing at a faster rate than ever in the wake of this ruling. Unless Darwinists can successfully muzzle the voices of pro-ID scientists, history will view the Kitzmiller ruling as a mere bump in the road during a scientific revolution.

For a further critique of the Dover case, read Traipsing Into Evolution or visit the Discovery Institute’s web page.