Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality

By Nathan Schneider, AlterNet. Posted July 31, 2008.

The great Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once wrote -- or, rather, sighed -- that "creationism is an American institution."

As an institution, creationism has crossed social strata as easily as it crosses decades. Despite all that science and secularism can do to explain it away, the crusade against evolution -- the foundation of modern biology -- is as intransigent, and strangely modern in its anti-modernism, as ever. The actor-author-documentarian-presidential speechwriter Ben Stein, with his movie Expelled, has become only the latest in the long line of its media-savvy critics. Today, around half of all Americans prefer creationism, in some form, to the scientific consensus.

Few know this better than Lauri Lebo, author of The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America. When the trial over intelligent design theory in Dover, Pennsylvania, caught the attention of the world, Lebo was the lead local reporter covering the case. For her, the controversy was personal as well as professional; as the trial unfolded, she struggled to come to terms with the impending death of her Pentacostal father, desperate for assurance that he would see her in the creationist-only hereafter. In The Devil in Dover, Lebo combines the dramas of family and courtroom into an engrossing story, trading illusions of journalistic objectivity for hard-won personal truths.

An American Pastime

The Dover trial followed in the footsteps of its notorious predecessor, the famed Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Like Dover, Dayton was a set-up, orchestrated by money and interests from far away. The ACLU backed Clarence Darrow, the great freethinking lawyer, against the towering populist politician William Jennings Bryan, who fought, literally, to his death -- he died, exhausted and disgraced, a week after the trial ended. All of it was immortalized by H.L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, one of the foremost journalists of his generation. Since then, evolution trials have become a kind of national pastime, with a big one occurring every few decades and smaller ones even more often than that: Arkansas in 1968, the Supreme Court in 1987, and Georgia in 2004, to name a few.

By 2004, members of Dover's school board began working with the Thomas More Law Center, an organization of conservative Christian lawyers ("the sword and shield for people of faith"), to insert alternatives to evolution in the high school biology curriculum. They were joined by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that formed following the 1987 Supreme Court decision against teaching "creation science" in public schools. It has aggressively promoted the theory of "intelligent design," seemingly an even more scientific creationism, which was specifically designed to slip past the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. When word got out about the school board's plans, the ACLU came to Dover looking to stop intelligent design in its tracks.

Dover held its own as courtroom theater. While on the stand, biologist and devout Catholic Ken Miller gave a slideshow that turned Judge John E. Jones III (and Lebo) into transfixed college kids. The defendant school board members bore witness to their Christian faith in the face of humiliation, disgrace, and finally, a lost election. Plaintiff Cyndi Sneath, despite having "no big degrees," pleaded against the indoctrination of her children. Richard Thompson, the lead lawyer from Thomas More, preached a fiery "revolution in evolution" to the press outside the courtroom, while nearly dozing off in court. As in 1925, there were really two trials going on: one carried out in a court of law, and one blasted around the world by camped-out news correspondents.

In 1925, the creationists won in court -- but lost in the papers and public opinion. In 2005, they lost both.

The Devil in Dover details the demise of the school board's case unforgivingly. Nearly from the start, Lebo insists, board members lied about their intentions for introducing intelligent design. Before the lawyers taught them more secular-sounding language, they spoke openly about creationism and Christianity at meetings. "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross," one challenged. "Won't somebody stand up for him?" Though these remarks were recorded by cameras and newspapers, the board members claimed to have never said them, in order to meet the legal requirement for "secular purpose."

Early on, seeing how the case would go, the Discovery Institute withdrew its support. The board members pressed on, intent on carrying out their religious duty against the demonic religion of Darwinism. Bearing witness in this way, even in hopeless causes, became a badge of merit; worldly defeat could still mean spiritual victory. In her tender portraits, Lebo reveals how creationism fits into the fabric of faith in these men's lives -- the same faith that carries them through personal illness and the "war on terror." After 9/11, Dover parents petitioned to bring back prayer in schools, and six months later, a mural in the high school depicting evolution was destroyed by a janitor. Clearly, the heart of the matter is about more than scientific doctrines. In court, the board members couldn't even summarize the central claims of the intelligent design theory.

See more stories tagged with: supreme court, evolution, creationism, intelligent design, discovery institute, the devil in dover, thomas more law center, clarence darrow

Nathan Schneider lives in New York City and writes about religion. He blogs at The Row Boat.

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