It was five years ago today that federal Judge John E. Jones handed down his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover, revealing intelligent design as a fraud and marveling at the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover Area School Board.
The decision pretty much destroyed intelligent design as a political force, forcing creationists to shape shift their message into the latest anti-evolution attack. The battle is now back in Louisiana, the site of Dover’s precursor of Edwards v. Aguillard, in which creation science was struck down as religion in 1987. The strategy is now focused on “teaching the controversy.” Instead of actually claiming that they have a scientific claim, they now just try to instill doubt in students’ minds about the validity of evolutionary theory. Earlier this month, creationists led by the Louisiana Family Forum, lost a battle over textbooks. A state board recommended the books with actual science and evolution in it. Now, LFF is focused on sneaking creationism into the classroom via state-approved “supplemental materials.”
So, while the fight continues and KvD didn’t outright kill the creationism movement (it’s unlikely that any court case will ever do that) the victory in Dover was still a beautiful success story. The national coverage taught a lot of people about the significance of evolution and how it got us here today. More importantly, it seems to have engaged the science education community to develop ways to address the teaching of evolution more directly. Today, evolution education has gained prominence with a host of new teaching programs.
Certainly in the case of Dover, teachers in the school district there were timid about teaching the subject, fearing it would offend the Christian fundamentalist values of the community. But just as I learned also from the trial, Dover teachers realized that such timidity only fuels the problem. As Dover plaintiff Fred Callahan said during his testimony, “We’re said to be intolerant of other views. Well, what am I supposed to tolerate? A small encroachment of my First Amendment rights? Well, I’m not going to. I think this is clear what these people have done. And it outrages me.”
Amen.
