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Intelligent Design January 22, 2006 The Reverend Roger Fritts Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland Read by the Reverend Heather K. Janules “At The Smithville Methodist Church” written by Stephen Dunn It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week, but when she came home with the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art was up, what ancient craft.
She liked her little friends. She liked the songs they sang when they weren’t twisting and folding paper into dolls. What could be so bad?
Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith in good men was what we had to do to stay this side of cynicism, that other sadness.
OK, we said, One week. But when she came home singing “Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,” it was time to talk. Could we say Jesus
doesn’t love you? Could I tell her the Bible is a great book certain people use to make you feel bad? We sent her back without a word.
It had been so long since we believed, so long since we needed Jesus as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson. Soon it became clear to us: you can’t teach disbelief to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn’t a story nearly as good. On parents’ night there were the Arts & Crafts all spread out
like appetizers. Then we took our seats in the church and the children sang a song about the Ark, and Hallelujah
and one in which they had to jump up and down for Jesus. I can’t remember ever feeling so uncertain about what’s comic, what’s serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes. You can’t say to your child “Evolution loves you.” The story stinks of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn’t have a wonderful story for my child and she was beaming. All the way home in the car she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus. There was nothing to do but drive, ride it out, sing along in silence. Sermon by Roger Fritts In November of 2001, Alan Bonsell was elected to the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, about 95 miles north of here. Alan Bonsell had a mission. During the campaign he said: He did not believe in evolution. He wanted creationism taught side by side with evolution in biology class and he wanted prayer in school. The nine member board held its first retreat with Mr. Bonsell in January four years ago. He said that creationism was his number one issue, and school prayer was his number two issue. The following year at the 2003 retreat he announced that he wanted creationism taught in biology class 50-50 with evolution. Two years after he was first elected Mr. Bonsell met with the ninth grade biology teachers. No school board member had ever met with the biology teachers before. Mr. Bonsell questioned them about how they taught evolution. He said he was concerned that the teachers conveyed information to the students about the origin of life opposing what parents presented at home. This was leaving the students with the impression that somebody, the parents or the teachers, were lying. He said the idea of all life having a common ancestry offended his personal religious belief that God created man. The Biology teachers were not happy. However, they wanted to keep their jobs and Alan Bonsell was now the chair of the school board. To try to keep the school board happy, they decided to stop using Discovery Channel evolution videos as teaching aids. The senior biology teacher changed her practice of having the students create an evolution time-line in the hallway, which addressed how various species developed over millions of years. The teachers hoped that with these changes, the school board would leave them alone. Another member of the school board was a man named Bill Buckingham. He was Alan Bonsell’s friend and served as chair of the curriculum committee. Together the two of them worked to change how teachers taught science in the 1,000 student public high school. At school board meetings in June of 2004, Mr. Buckingham spoke in favor of teaching creationism and disparaged the theory of evolution. Mr. Buckingham said the author of the new biology book recommended by the teachers and the administration had laced the book with Darwinism. He spoke in favor of purchasing a textbook that included a balance of creationism and evolution. He said: “It is inexcusable to have a book that says man descended from apes with nothing to counterbalance.” He said: “this country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.” The board held up funding for the purchase of new biology textbooks. At the next school board meeting Bill Buckingham’s wife, Charlotte, gave a speech in which she explained that “evolution teaches nothing but lies.” She quoted from Genesis and asked “how can we allow anything else to be taught in our schools?” She recited Gospel versus telling people to be born again Christians, and stated that evolution violated the teachings of the Bible. Her husband Bill said “nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a separation of church and state.” And he said “I challenge you the audience to trace your roots to the monkey you came from.” He said that while growing up his generation read from the Bible and prayed during school. He said “Liberals in black robes” were “taking away the rights of Christians” and he said “2000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?” During this board meeting in June of 2004, someone told the story of an evolution mural painted by a student. In 2002 the heads of building and grounds took the painting from the classroom and destroyed it. Mr. Buckingham said “I gleefully watched it burn.” He said he disliked the mural because he thought it advocated the theory of evolution, particularly common ancestry. Mr. Buckingham demanded that the teachers agree that there would never again be a mural depicting evolution in any of the classrooms. In exchange, he would agree to support the purchase of the biology textbook in need by the students. Before June 2004, apparently, Mr. Bonsell and Mr. Buckingham were unaware of a 1987 United States Supreme Court Decision. It held that the teaching of creationism violated the Establishment Clause in our constitution because it “restructured the science curriculum to conform with a particular religious view point.” The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Around June of 2004, however, Mr. Bonsell and Mr. Buckingham must have talked to some lawyers about the 1987 supreme court decision. Around that time they stopped using the word creationism and started talking about the “science of intelligent design”. They hoped that by using different words, “Intelligent Design” instead of creationism, they could avoid the restrictions of the 1987 decision. About this time they also became aware of the book Of Pandas and People. The book claims to give scientific evidence that something created all life simultaneously, as it is today, without evolution. The authors of the book wrote a draft before the 1987 Supreme Court ban on the teaching of creationism as science. After that decision, the authors wrote a new draft. Everywhere the phrase “creation science” appeared, they replaced the word with the phrase “Intelligent Design,” hoping to get around the Supreme Court decision. In Dover Mr. Bonsell and Mr. Buckingham opposed the purchase of the standard biology text unless the board also approved Of Pandas and People as a companion text. The board approved both books in August of 2004. The science teachers strongly opposed using Of Pandas and People as a companion text in their science classes. In a compromise with the board, they agreed that the book could be placed in the classroom as a reference text. The teachers were weary from this controversy concerning the teaching of evolution. They were worried about retribution from the board. They hoped if they compromised with the board and allowed the book in the classroom the issue might go away. In the fall of 2004, someone donated sixty copies of the book Of Pandas and People to the school system. Mr. Bonsell and Mr. Buckingham kept the source of the money for the books secret. But they were still not done. On October 18, 2004 the board passed by a six to three vote a resolution that amended the biology curriculum as follows: “students will be made aware of gaps / problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to intelligent design. Note: origins of life is not taught.” The Dover school board became the first public school board in our nation to require in writing and teaching “Intelligent Design.” Two board members who voted against the resolution resigned at the conclusion of the October 18, 2004 board meeting. In resigning, a deeply religious woman named Casey Brown said:
There has been a slow but steady marginalization of some board members. Our opinions are no longer valued or listened to. Our contributions have been minimized or not acknowledged it all. A measure of that is the fact that I myself have been twice asked within the past year if I was “born again.” No one has, nor should have the right, to ask that of a fellow board member. An individual’s religious belief should have no impact on his or her ability to serve as a school board director, nor should a person’s beliefs be used as a yardstick to measure the value of that service. However, it has become increasingly evident that it is the direction the board has now chosen to go, holding a certain religious belief is of paramount importance. At the following meeting board member Noel Wenrich resigned. As he resigned, he said:
What I was referring to is unpatriotic, and my religious beliefs were questioned. I served in the U.S. Army for 11 years and six years on the board. Seventeen years of my life have been devoted to public service, and my religion is personal. It’s between me, God, and my pastor. The remaining board members went ahead preparing a statement they wanted teachers to read to students in ninth-grade biology class. It read, in part:
Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. . . . Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life and differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves. In an act of professional courage, the biology teachers sent a letter to the board on January 6, 2005.
You indicated that students may opt-out of this portion of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to opt-out of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students. This request is based upon our considered opinion that reading the statement violates our responsibilities as professional educators as set forth in the Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators. Next the science teachers wrote three sentences in a separate paragraph putting every letter of every word in capitals to emphasize how strongly they felt. They wrote: INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY. Because the teachers refused to read the board statement, in January 2005 the board had administrators read it to ninth graders in the biology classes. A group of eleven parents, courageous parents, sued the school board to stop the teaching of religion in the public school. Some of their neighbors shunned them, and their children, telling them that they would burn in hell. In August of 2005, President Bush offered his wisdom on the subject, saying that he believes schools should discuss “intelligent design” alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life. Polls taken last summer indicated that adults are evenly divided about whether or not apes and man have a common ancestry. The news last summer was not good for those of us who value the scientific method. But then in November and December there was a shift.
• First, on November 8, the citizens of Dover held their school board election. Eight of the nine seats were up for election. When election officials counted the votes, all eight supporters of intelligent design lost! The candidates for school board who opposed the teaching of intelligent design swept the election.
• Second, on December 20, Judge John Jones, a Lutheran, and a Republican, appointed by President Bush in 2002, issued his ruling. He said that the school board’s intelligent design policy violated the establishment clause of the first amendment of the Constitution! The judge wrote that the school board members “have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious, untruthful testimony.” He wrote that Bonsell and Buckingham “either testified inconsistently, or lied outright under oath on several occasions . . .” The judge said the defendants “flagrant and insulting falsehoods to the court provided sufficient and compelling evidence” that other areas of their testimony were “equally insincere.” He called their claims about intelligent design a sham, a ludicrous pretext for teaching their religion. The Judge concluded with these words: Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of intelligent design make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator. When good things happen, we should celebrate. The vote of the people of Dover last November 8 and the decision of the Judge December 20, were good things. I feel inspired:
• I am inspired by the courage of school board members who resigned rather than go along with bad decisions.
• I am inspired by teachers who stood their ground and refused to read words that they know are untrue.
• I am inspired by the parents who sued the school board when they saw a serious problem.
• I am inspired by voters who had the wisdom to elect a new wiser board to set policy.
• I am inspired by a Lutheran, Republican Judge who spoke clearly and decisively. We who value reason and science, we who value the experimental method, peer review, and objective analysis of evidence, should celebrate. Although there are setbacks, I believe that in the long-run the thrust of history is in this direction, in the direction of reason and science. In spite of setbacks, reason and the scientific method are winning over the desire to cling to old truths. There are many problems in our nation, but there are also many good decent courageous people in our country. They give me hope. Personally, it does not bother me at all to know that I evolved from other primates. Simultaneously I still hold a belief in God. In the words of Judge Jones:
The theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and in no way does it conflict with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator. Primary source: “Memorandum Opinion,” Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, Judge Jones, December 20, 2005, United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. |
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