Is
It Over After Dover?
A review of the PBS anti-ID
documentary Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
By
Mark Looy
The American TV network PBS (Public Broadcasting
Service) has a record of showcasing documentaries that heavily criticize biblical
creation and/or intelligent design (e.g., its famous and ambitious 7-
episode
Evolution program of 2001, which
we rebutted). While most documentary producers today seem to be advocacy oriented
(i.e., they promote a cause or viewpoint of deep interest to them personally,
and to be fair in presenting the other side is not necessarily desired), one
might expect that a tax-supported institution like PBS would be more balanced
in covering a controversial topic such as biological origins. On November
13th we were disappointed once again with PBS, as it aired a two-hour documentary
Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on
Trial.
This program in PBS’ ongoing NOVA series
attempted to summarize and analyze the 2004-2005 controversy in the public
school science classes of Dover, Pennsylvania. In the broadcast, reenactments
of the 2005 trial (taken from court transcripts), as well as post-trial
interviews conducted with some of its main participants, were shown. The film
also featured the comments of other evolutionist observers about a case known
as Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.
Three
years ago, the school board in Dover mandated that high school science teachers
read a four-paragraph statement to biology students that indicated that
intelligent design (which is different in many respects to creationism) is an
alternative to Darwinian evolution—and that evolution was not a fact. The
program did admit (there were many secular media outlets that got this wrong)
that ID was not actually being taught in science classes in Dover. The fuss was
over a mere one-minute statement that pointed students to an optional-reading
book in the school library called Of Pandas and People. The somber PBS
announcer, however, made it sound as if the sky had fallen on Pennsylvania: “Hanging
in the balance was not just the Dover biology curriculum: the future of science
education in America , the separation of church and state, and the very nature
of scientific inquiry were all on trial.” Such hyperbole and hysteria over a
one-minute statement which was mandated by the school board (which Answers in Genesis
‘AiG’ believes, by the way, should not have been forced on the schools in the
first place) is remarkable.
Perhaps the most annoying and unfair aspect
of the whole broadcast was the PBS announcer’s scripted narration. He
discussed, for example, the anti-evolutionists, who as a group, “reject modern
science” (a comment echoed by the trial judge, John Jones, who told PBS that ID
is “bad science”), ignoring the fact that there are thousands of scientists
practicing in our modern world who reject Darwinian evolution and have a great
respect for what science can achieve. In addition, evolution scientists often
made over-the-top comments in the PBS broadcast, such as: “there was an ‘infringement’
of civil liberties occurring in Dover.” And ID and creationism, though similar
in some ways, are wrongly used synonymously in the program. (ID is the concept
that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore was designed
by some intelligent agent though some ID proponents do believe in theistic
evolution).
Furthermore, and despite what was declared
in the early part of the broadcast, the program continually stated that “the
teaching of intelligent design” was going on in Dover. This helped foster the
false notion that indoctrination in ID was happening in Dover’s science
classes. Yet the hysteria was actually over a mere four-paragraph statement
that was to be read to biology students, while no teaching of ID had occurred
in the classes and no ID textbooks were issued.
Some of Dover’s science teachers refused to
read the short statement and a few parents of the students filed a lawsuit,
which accused the school board of violating the so-called “constitutional
separation of church and state” as the program described it. (The U.S.
Constitution does not contain this phrase, though it is often mistakenly
believed by the general populace to be found there.)
In the broadcast, evidence was presented from
paleontology such as the Tiktaalik
example of a supposed transitional form between fish and tetrapods (which
we rebutted) and from genetics to put “Darwin’s theory to the test,” or so
we’re told by the program, in the real world. The program particularly looked
at DNA blueprints, and how mutations can occasionally be beneficial (e.g.,
for certain types of butterflies to taste bad because of a mutation, so they
are less likely to be eaten and thus will survive over other types of butterflies).
Common ancestry of humans and apes was also emphasized, with our 
supposed
ape-like ancestry seen in the genetic markers of human chromosome (even though
humans have one less set of chromosomes than apes) and through the [alleged]
fossil evidence of ‘Lucy’.
The plaintiffs argued that ID was really
just a form of creationism. Judge Jones ultimately decided for the plaintiffs,
writing in his decision that intelligent design “cannot uncouple itself from
its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” As part of his decision,
Judge Jones ordered the Dover school board to pay legal fees and damages, which
were set at $1 million.
The program did not portray the ID advocates
of Dover and some of their science defenders in a good light. Frankly, some of
the local ID advocates were not knowledgeable about the issues and science involved
(e.g., they continually misused the word ‘theory’). More egregious, some of
them came across as mean-spirited. The broadcast even referred to very profane
hate mail received by the judge (even death threats) and others associated with
the evolution side in the trial.
Furthermore, two Dover board members—who
were in favor of the ID statement being read in science classes—were shown to
be inconsistent with what they said in depositions compared to what they stated
in public (Judge Jones thought of having someone bring perjury charges against
one or both), and one of these board members severely ridiculed the judge on
camera. Then there was Dr. Michael Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s
Black Box; as the main ID witness in the trial, he was quoted (from the
trial transcript) as agreeing that even astrology could be a theory. Also, a
clip of televangelist Pat Robertson was shown, who declared that if a disaster
befell the Dover community, the citizens should not be surprised.
In contrast, Philip Johnson, considered the
father of the ID movement, came off as articulate in the program. Johnson not
only defended ID beliefs well on the broadcast, but on the PBS website, he also
did a good job of summarizing what most biblical creationists believe about ID
(even though Johnson is not recognized as a biblical creationist/young-earth
proponent)—though we would tone down his wording somewhat here: “The real
creationist organizations are highly critical of intelligent design, because
they say it doesn’t do the job that is the very essence of creationism. It
doesn’t defend the Bible from the
very first verse. It doesn’t defend the Bible
at all, and it doesn’t even defend Christianity. It’s saying that there’s
an intelligence, but the intelligence could be natural as well as supernatural.
And that if you assume it’s supernatural, what the God is—well, we have nothing
to say about what kind of God it is. It isn’t limited to one particular kind of
religion, to Christianity or to a particular kind of Christianity. If you want,
it can be the Muslim god.” (AiG does not believe it has been ‘highly critical’
of the ID movement, though, but it has pointed out where we differ.)
Conclusion and concerns
Paula Apsell, Senior Executive Producer of
NOVA, claimed that her documentary was a fair representation of the trial. That
may be true, even with her judicious excerpting from the court transcripts
which occasionally showed some stumbling of ID advocates. But the relative
fairness of how PBS portrayed the trial in its courtroom reenactments did not
make up the bulk of the two hours. Most of the program featured commentators
who buttressed Apsell’s opinion that (in her words) “evolution is the
foundation of the biological sciences. As Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the great
biologists of the 20th century, once said, ‘Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution.’ … If the decision had gone the other way, it
could have had dire consequences for science education in this country.”
So
what viewers continually saw in the program was evolution being presented as
incontrovertible fact. The pattern was this: present an evolutionary argument,
have an ID spokesperson attempt to rebut it, but then an evolutionist gets the
final word to rebut the IDer. Hardly a true balance. Furthermore, if you go to
the PBS website, of the several video clips found there, the majority of them
showcase evolutionists.
In the wake of this national broadcast, we
have two main concerns. First, PBS has issued a teacher’s guide in conjunction
with the NOVA program. In other words, the audience for the documentary will
not just be PBS viewers—untold numbers of young people in America’s schools
will be shown a video that presents evolution as fact. Additionally, the
leading ID group, The Discovery Institute, which decided not to get behind the
Dover defendants and did not agree to be interviewed by PBS producers (unless
certain pre-conditions were met), notes that the study guide “unconstitutionally
injects religion into the classroom,” because PBS “is telling public school
teachers how they should talk about religion in relation to evolution.”
More
distressing is the long-term impact this trial will have, and which the
documentary helps forecast. An apparent precedent has been set in a federal
court about the dominance of evolution teaching in public schools. School
boards will now be less inclined to even think about challenging evolution
teaching in their schools. In fact, with the setbacks in Pennsylvania and other
states like Ohio and Georgia (where in the latter the very questioning of
evolution as a fact in a textbook sticker led to a court battle), evolution
will probably be taught with even greater fervor in America’s science classes.
With such court rulings that continue to protect evolution teaching
and also rebuff any questioning of it, the ID movement appears to have lost
a lot of steam. That is largely not the fault of the leading ID advocates,
for they generally do not wish to see ID be mandated in schools; it is those
ID supporters who, at a local level, have taken ID beliefs and, largely ignoring
the advice of ID strategists, have gone their own way with zeal (and who have
probably been spurred on by just-as-zealous attorneys who want to assist in
the cause).
The current academic and judicial climate is
not at all open to free inquiry about the creation/ID/evolution debate. AiG,
which is not directly involved in legislative or litigation efforts to affect
change in science classes, prefers to see concerned citizens employ a grassroots
approach to change science curricula in their area’s schools. That effort,
however, may not be as efficacious as it was once hoped, for schools boards
who might listen to their constituencies about deemphasizing evolution as
fact now know that they will probably be met by a challenge in court. Also,
the academic freedom that science teachers should already possess (in theory
at least) to present the problems with evolution to their students is now
in even greater peril because of the appearance of a federal court virtually
endorsing evolution as the only view of origins to be taught in schools.
Mark Looy is the Chief Communications Officer
and co-founder of Answers in Genesis (AiG). AiG is an apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending)
ministry, dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim
the Gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. They focus particularly on providing
answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis, as it is the most-attacked book of the Bible. They also train others to develop a biblical
worldview, and seek to expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas, and its
bedfellow, a ‘millions of years old’ earth (and even older universe). To learn
more about AiG visit their website at www.answersingenesis.org.
