This week I have been looking through several blogs regarding intelligent design, creation and evolution. I am going to create a longer blog post describing the media's false assumptions regarding creation. One of the biggest arrogant voices spewing false information is PZ Myers. People like Myers first create a straw man argument relating to the Intelligent Design Movement. Intelligent design is not about biblical creation necessarily. Many of the people who write and speak for intelligent design are not conservative Bible Christians. Some are agnostic or secular Jews.
So one of the biggest myths promoted is that intelligent design equates Bible literalist creation. This is a false assumption.
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If the current intelligent design movement is not merely an effort to rebrand creationism to circumvent the holding in Edwards v. Aguillard, then please explain for us the provenance of the phrase "cdesign proponentsists". You will recall that this phrase came to light during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. You will also recall that in this trial the federal district court held that intelligent design is a form of creationism. You will also recall that the school board members who insisted that they were not advancing a religious agenda with their intelligent design policy were, not to put too fine a point on it, lying.
cdesign proponentsists is a phrase used to brand all people who advocate intelligent design with Creationism. I will admit that some people have an agenda to promote creation under the guise of intelligent design, but not all.
In the Kitzmiller v. Dover case I believe the school board was wrong in demanding a 9th grade science teacher recite a 60 second statement one time about intelligent design.
The statement the school board wanted to be read included a reference to "Of Pandas and People" being in the library. he book does not advocate religion but the lawyers found a link to the books history being a cover for creationism.
Advocating intelligent design does not mean teaching biblical Christianity. In fact British scholars Fred Hoyle and Anthony Flew turned from atheistic explanations to intelligent design. Hoyle died an agnostic and Flew died a deist. Both beliefs oppose evangelical Christianity.
Any policy which forces a teacher to make an educational statement is bad. However, I think lying is a strong term to be used in this case. One's presuppositions do effect one's direction in making policy. The term "religion" has more than one definition. The Dover school board probably thought of religion as a specific denomination or belief system.
It could be said that keeping intelligent design aka "religion" out of public schools promotes religious humanism. See "Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century." By William R. Murry, copyright 2007. Pages 1-14. So not only were naturalistic scientists happy about Dover, Religious Humanist were happy as well.
The term “cdesign proponentsists” may commonly be pointed out to show that intelligent design is merely a re-branding of creationism, but that is not where the term originates. The term actually originates from the creationists themselves. In light of the Edwards decision, proponents of creationism felt they had to invent a new term to describe what they were teaching, since the U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled that teaching creationism in public schools violates the Establishment Clause, since it is advocating a religious viewpoint. So they simply took the creationist book “Of Pandas and People” that they were in the process of writing, and did a simple word replacement: wherever the draft had said “creationism”, it was changed to “intelligent design”. However, the substance of the book remained the same. Thus, where the earlier drafts of the book had said “Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.”, this was changed in later drafts to read “Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc.” The definitions, the arguments, the purported “evidence” all remained the same. During this word replacement process (calling it a revision would be an overstatement), there was a humorous mistake by the editors, where they had intended to change an instance of “creationists” to “design proponents”, but they make a mistake with their cut-and-paste job, creating the now-famous neologism “cdesign proponentsists”.
For this reason, it incorrect to state that “Of Pandas and People” does not advocate religion, because every specious argument made in this book is a creationist argument. The judge in the Kitzmiller saw through this transparent subterfuge quite easily.
As for whether lying is too strong a term to apply to the Dover School Board members, the judge did not think so: "Witnesses either testified inconsistently, or lied outright under oath on several occasions . . . The inescapable truth is that both [school board members] Bonsell and Buckingham lied at their January 3, 2005 depositions. … Bonsell repeatedly failed to testify in a truthful manner. … Defendants have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious, untruthful testimony."
I can tell you that it is incredibly rare for a federal judge to refer to witnesses in a civil litigation as liars. But liars they were. I stand by that characterization.
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