I'm touching it, sans 10-foot pole

As you can see in "About Me" up there, I homeschool my boys "Secular Classical style". This is probably pig latin to most of you non-homeschoolers. So let me break it down for you. "Classical" means we follow something called the Trivium, which breaks all twelve grades into three stages: Grammar (1-4), Logic (5-8), and Rhetoric (9-12). Grammar is gathering information about the world, logic is making the connections, and rhetoric is taking what you know and doing something with it. Secular means we're spiritual, not religious. More specifically it means we are (*gasp*) evolutionists.

As you probably already know, there was an important court case in Dover, PA regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. The judge's decision is here. It takes a couple of hours to get through, being 139 pages long (as the judge says, "out of an abundance of caution and in the exercise of completeness"), but well worth it. (An aside, as much as I've always known I wanted to be a writer, I've had a little more trouble with what I wanted to do as a job outside of that. I used to think being a judge would be cool, specifically so I could research law books and write massive papers like this one, but then I realized that most of being a judge was a lot more like "Night Court" without the jokes, and dealing with people everyday would be a very bad career choice for me).

At any rate, here is my summary of what the judge has to say, complete with my own thoughts. I'm not flagging anything IMO, or IMHO, or anything like that because duh, this is a blog. Of course everything is IMO here.

OK, it all started over this little disclaimer:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a 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. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that 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. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

For me, that last sentence is the real clincher, but let's leave that lay for now.

For those who want to skim the paper a bit, page 39 is where the judge starts digging into this whole "It's just a theory" nonsense. Look, I run in homeschool circles, and the overwhelming majority of homeschoolers are not evolutionists. So I hear this phrase a lot. Evolutionist homeschoolers usually give the "So is gravity" counterattack. They usually say it snarky, in a "let me demonstrate by dropping this piano on your head" kind of way. Do you know how evolution and gravity are really similar? The mechanisms of both are largely not understood and are often debated among scientists. Is gravity created by particles called gravitons? Particles no one has detected? Why is gravity so much weaker than the other basic forces? My favorite theory for that involves string theory, which has 10+ dimensions (depending on which string theory you're reading). The other forces exist only in the three dimensions we see, but gravity is spread out over all 10+ and is hence much diluted. The point is we don't know. YET. IDers have a way of making the public think that scientists always agree on everything and the only theory anyone is still debating is evolution.

But I'm not the only one with that guff. As the judge says:

Dr. Padian [a witness at court] bluntly and effectively stated that in confusing students about science generally and evolution in particular, the disclaimer makes students “stupid.”

Which makes ninth graders sound really gullible, but I see his point.

The real problem is presenting this whole argument as only having two sides: the religious ID/creationist side and the aethist/evolutionist side. I know a lot of people who believe in evolution. None of them consider themselves to be atheists (although a few call themselves agnostics). Which brings us to:

The McLean court explained that:
The approach to teaching ‘creation science’ and ‘evolution science’ . . . is identical to the two-model approach espoused by the Institute for Creation Research and is taken almost verbatim from ICR writings. It is an extension of Fundamentalists’ view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of
evolution.
The two model approach of creationists is simply a contrived dualism which has no scientific factual basis or legitimate educational purpose. It assumes only two explanations for the origins of life and existence of man, plants and animals: it was either the work of a creator or it was not. Application of these two models, according to creationists, and the defendants, dictates that all scientific evidence which fails to support the theory of evolution is necessarily scientific evidence in support of creationism and is, therefore, creation science ‘evidence[.]’

As Anakin would say, you're either with me or you're my enemy (sorry, couldn't resist). It bugs me when I'm only given two choices, and I don't fit with either.

But then it gets more complicated:

Students who do not wish to be exposed to the disclaimer and students whose parents do not care to have them exposed it, must “opt out” to avoid the unwanted religious message. Dr. Alters testified that the “opt out” feature adds “novelty,” thereby enhancing the importance of the disclaimer in the students’ eyes.8 (14:123-25 (Alters)). Moreover, the stark choice that exists between submitting to state-sponsored religious instruction and leaving the public school classroom presents a clear message to students “who are nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.”

The problem here is that in order to opt-out, you have to know what you're opting out of. So you'd have to read the disclaimer to know if you object to it. Or at least the parents have to. But yet the kids whose parents pull them out of sex-ed for religious reasons face the same outsider status, so I don't know if I find this argument particularly valid. Either way you slice it, someone is an outsider. Which is really the problem with institutionalizing education: it teaches to the "average" student, and no one is "average" either academically or personally (in situations like this one). So everyone is an outsider. OK, some of us are farther outside than others.

At any rate, the paper now turns to the issue of whether Intelligent Design can even be considered science. To the scientific community, this is a nonissue. This quote is from the National Academy of Scientists, an organization that both plaintiffs and defendants agreed was the "gold standard" of science:

NAS (National Academy of Sciences) is in agreement that science is limited to empirical, observable and ultimately testable data: “Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are restricted to those that can be inferred from the confirmable data – the results obtained through observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists. Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not part of science.”

And furthermore:

Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science. These claims subordinate observed data to statements based on authority, revelation, or religious belief. Documentation offered in support of these claims is typically limited to the special publications of their advocates. These publications do not offer hypotheses subject to change in light of new data, new interpretations, or demonstration of error. This contrasts with science, where any hypothesis or theory always remains subject to the possibility of rejection or modification in the light of new knowledge.

And Dr. Padian again (speaking of the book Of Pandas and People which is specifically named in the disclaimer as the source book for students to refer to for more information about ID):

As Dr. Padian aptly noted, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." To that end, expert testimony from Drs. Miller and Padian provided multiple examples where Pandas asserted that no natural explanations exist, and in some cases that none could exist, and yet natural explanations have been identified in the intervening years.

Now we turn to the main book IDers site: Darwin's Black Box. Yes, I've read it. It occurred to me some years ago that evolution wasn't really taught in school, it was just given lip service. I never had it explained to me, what it really means (and doesn't mean, like "man descended from apes" or worse "monkeys". Evolution does not say these things). At any rate, I went to the library and pulled books on creationism, ID, and evolution and made up my own mind. This was one of those books. Professor Behe asserts in the opening chapter that anything that is irreducibly complex must have been designed, it couldn't have evolved. The rest of the book is him outlining how complex bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, and the immune system are. I didn't find his argument convincing. It depends, I suppose, on what your feelings are towards the word "irreducibly". It's no question these things are complicated, but irreducibly complex? I didn't buy it.

Neither does NAS:

Structures and processes that are claimed to be ‘irreducibly’ complex typically are not on closer inspection. For example, it is incorrect to assume that a complex structure or biochemical process can function only if all its components are present and functioning as we see them today. Complex biochemical systems can be built up from simpler systems through natural selection. Thus, the ‘history’ of a protein can be traced through simpler organisms . . . The evolution of complex molecular systems can occur in several ways. Natural selection can bring together parts of a system for one function at one time and then, at a later time, recombine those parts with other systems of components to produce a system that has a different function. Genes can be duplicated, altered, and then amplified through natural selection. The complex biochemical cascade resulting inblood clotting has been explained in this fashion.

But this one I just love:

We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution. As a further example, the test for ID proposed by both Professors Behe and Minnich is to grow the bacterial flagellum in the laboratory; however, no-one inside or outside of the IDM, including those who propose the test, has conducted it. Professor Behe conceded that the proposed test could not approximate real world conditions and even if it could, Professor Minnich admitted that it would merely be a test of evolution, not design.

Which gives me a terrific mental image of scientists proving the Big Bang by recreating it in the lab. Ah, the Big Bang, another theory not all scientists agree about. Do we see a pattern here?

But then I'm probably just getting too silly because this:

Plaintiffs’ expert Professor Padian was the only testifying expert witness with any expertise in paleontology. His testimony therefore remains unrebutted. Dr. Padian’s demonstrative slides, prepared on the basis of peer-reviewing scientific literature, illustrate how "Pandas" systematically distorts and misrepresents established, important evolutionary principles.

just made me think of Ross Gellar on Friends. What is it with paleontologists and slide-shows? They just can't resist.

At any rate, if you are only going to read part of this judge's decision, start at about page 100, when he starts breaking down the sequence of events that led to this disclaimer. It's frightening. Some of the Board members were born-again Christians, and their mission compelled them to do everything they could to get religion back in the school starting with creationism and then going for school prayer. I know they had good intentions, they thought they were doing something good for everybody. But the way they went about it made it very clear that they knew the majority of people who would be affected did NOT think this was a good thing. Starting with the science teachers:

The unrebuted evidence reveals that the teachers had to make unnecessary sacrifices and compromises advantageous toward Board members, who were steadfastly working to inject religion in the classroom, so that their students would have a biology textbook that should have been approved as a matter of course.

The board was making decisions about curriculum in meetings to which the teachers were purposefully excluded (meetings that were held without advance notice as was the standard procedure in order to keep the parents and community at large in the dark as well). It's never said but clearly felt that these teachers suspected their jobs were on the line. In one incidence, school work (an evolutionary mural) was torn down from the walls and burned (to one Board member's glee).

OK, let's let that go. The Board members stated that what they were doing was not trying to inject religion into the school (an assertion which is refuted by other testimony, if you read the paper), but to encourage critical, scientific theory. Except:

Furthermore, Board members somewhat candidly conceded that they lacked sufficient background in science to evaluate ID, and several of them testified with equal frankness that they failed to understand the substance of the curriculum change adopted on October 18, 2004.

Cleaver [a Board member] admittedly knew nothing about ID, including the words comprising the phrase, as she consistently referred to ID as “intelligence design” throughout her testimony. In addition, Superintendent Nilsen’s entire understanding of ID was that “evolution has a design.” Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome advices from the District’s science teachers who uniformly opposed the change.

Let me compare/contrast what I do as a homeschooler with the School Board here. They are not teachers. They are appointed public officials. No one expects them to know everything. BUT when an issue like this comes before them they are expected to make intelligent decisions. That means you do your homework, people. You know what things mean. You know why the choice you made was the best one, and if asked you can articulate why. That seems so basic to anything it sickens me. I make all the curriculum and textbook choices for my "school". If asked why I chose one over another, I can tell you. In more detail than you'd ever want to know, I'm sure.

But what saddens me is what Casey Brown, an opposing Board member who resigned (as much as I can understand why, I kind of wish he hadn't caved), had to say:

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 at 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 beliefs 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.

And other opposing board members were called unpatroitic, unchristian, atheists, and were even told they were going to burn in hell (ooh, I love when people say that to me).

And one last quote, from the science teachers who (every single one of them) refused to read this disclaimer to their classes:

You have indicated that students may ‘opt-out’ of this portion [the statement read to students at the beginning of the biology evolution unit] 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[.]
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.
I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students to ‘Of Pandas and People’ as if it is a scientific resource breaches my ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.

God bless those teachers; they've had a sucky few years.

So I'll wrap up by answering what is perhaps the inevitable question: what does a homeschooler in Minnesota care about what the public schools in Pennsylvania are doing? It's not an out-there question; if you read the judge's decision you see one of the first topics debated was who could be a plaintiff. Did they have to be the parent of a ninth-grader for their opinion to count?

It's like when they have referendums to raise property taxes so the public schools can buy books; there are always a few folks without kids wanting to know why they have to pay to support someone else's kids' education. I'm not sure why this point isn't self-evident. We are all in this together. Those kids are going to grow up to be adults, and some of them will be in charge of things that will directly affect you, even if you never have children of your own. Without sounding too melodramatic, one day they will be running this country. How could you not want them to have the best possible education?

Our country is falling farther and farther behind in math and science. Most of the top degrees earned in our colleges are being earned by foreigners who then take their degrees back to their homelands and use their knowledge there. I'm not saying exclude the foreigners (of course I'm not); I'm saying there should be more American kids willing to carry the "geek" and "nerd" labels that come with wanting to be smart in math and science. And even having this sort of debate (or having these sorts of people serving on a school board) is undermining the way kids see science. And don't even get me started on "new math".

Science is not a collection of facts in a dusty old textbook. It is a process, and it's always happening. Science is not about universal truths; it's about always finding new and better ways of describing the world around us. It's about one person getting an idea and presenting it to the community so that everyone can take potshots at it (or contribute, as the case may be). Science is moving faster than ever, things change. 100 years from now, what is thought of as the "theory of evolution" will doubtless bear little resemblence to what we know now. But the core ideas will still be there, because they work.

A couple of book recommendations: Anything by Richard Dawkins, but especially The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. Anything by Steven Pinker but especially The Blank Slate. And if the idea of "contrived dualism" strikes you as an interesting way of looking at evolution vs. ID, allow me to recommend Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths: A Critical Inquiry by Vine Deloria, Jr., who as a Native American has a unique persective on the whole argument. Well worth the read. Of course I don't agree with everything said in all these books, but that goes without saying.