One of the expert witnesses in the case, Dr.Barbara Forrest, recently published an insider's account of her participation in the case in The Skeptical Inquirer magazine. She outlines, among other things, the desperate efforts of the ID advocates and defense attorneys to get her barred from the case.  None of it worked. But during cross examination, the defense attorney from the Thomas More Law Center, focused not on the substance of her testimony, but on diversions, asking for instance:  "When did you become a card carrying member of the ACLU?"

I was called as a witness because of my co-authorship with Paul R. Gross of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (Oxford University Press, 2004) and other publications about ID. In CTH, we analyze a document entitled "The Wedge Strategy," CSC's [Center for Science and Culture (CSC), the creationist arm of the Discovery Institute]  tactical plan, showing how CSC creationists are executing every phase except producing scientific data to support ID. We show that ID is creationism, thus a religious belief, using the best evidence available: the words of ID leaders such as Phillip E. Johnson, William Dembski, and their ID colleagues. We also show ID's continuity with earlier creationism. My job was to present this evidence to the judge.

Here is an excerpt, summarizing her testimony:

I had two tasks: to demonstrate to Judge Jones (1) that ID is creationism, thus a religious belief, and (2) that Of Pandas and People is a creationist textbook. As part of the evidence for my first task I included the words of two leading ID proponents, Phillip E. Johnson and William Dembski. Under direct examination by Eric Rothschild, I related Johnson's definition of ID as "theistic realism" or "mere creation," by which he means "that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology." To that I added Dembski's definition: "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."  If the judge had heard nothing except these two quotes, he would have had all the evidence he needed that ID's own leaders regard it as not only creationism but also as a sectarian Christian belief. But I had much more, such as CSC fellow Mark Hartwig's 1995 Moody Magazine article in which he referred to a 1992 ID conference at Southern Methodist University as a meeting of "creationists and evolutionists," calling Dembski and Stephen Meyer "evangelical scholars."  During these early years, when they needed money and supporters, ID proponents openly advertised both their religiosity and their creationism.
However, none of the evidence for ID's religious, creationist identity was more important than "The Wedge Strategy," probably written in 1996 when the CSC was established but revised in 1998. Known informally as the "Wedge Document," it was leaked from a Seattle office and posted on the Internet in early 1999. DI did not acknowledge ownership of it until 2002, after I independently authenticated it and wrote about it in 2001. The technical team hired by Pepper Hamilton to create computer "demonstratives" projected the Wedge Document onto a screen in court, and I walked Judge Jones through it, explaining the most important parts. My first slide made its significance clear: "[C]ould I have the first slide, please? This is the first page of the Wedge Strategy, and this is the opening paragraph of it. Quote, `The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which western civilization was built.' This . . . states very well the foundational belief behind the intelligent design movement and the reason that they have rejected the theory of evolution."  As I continued, the judge heard the strategy's explicitly Christian goals: "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialistic worldview and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."  ...

To counter the defense's predictable denials that ID is creationism, I also explained, using an account by ID proponent and CSC fellow Paul Nelson, how Phillip Johnson had master-minded creationism's transformation into "intelligent design" after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed creationism in public schools in its 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard ruling. According to Nelson, creationists believed that Edwards meant the death of the "two-model approach to origins," in which creationists recognize only two alternatives, either evolution or creation, hoping to win by default after undermining evolution. But Nelson explained that "a revolution from an unexpected quarter . . . was about to occur."  The revolutionary was Johnson, who decided that, for creationism to survive Edwards, creationists had to redefine science: "Definitions of science, [Johnson] argued, could be contrived to exclude any conclusion we dislike or to include any we favor." Not only was Johnson's deliberate but nominal transformation of creationism into ID important for demonstrating ID's true identity, but it also provided important support for my testimony about Pandas: to survive after Edwards, Pandas would require a similar transformation. (When the book was first published in 1989, Johnson was already allied with chemist Charles Thaxton, author of the creationist book The Mystery of Life's Origin and "academic editor" of Pandas.  The subpoenaed FTE documents, which contained several earlier Pandas drafts, revealed that precisely such a transformation had been effected.

A Pandas co-author, CSC fellow Dean H. Kenyon, had been a creationist witness in the Edwards case and had submitted a sworn affidavit testifying that "creation-science is as scientific as evolution."  I discovered a letter Kenyon wrote to FTE president Jon Buell showing that he was working on the 1986 draft of Pandas, then called Biology and Creation, while also assisting in the Edwards case!  All pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas (there were at least five) were written using creationist terminology. The earliest drafts had overtly creationist titles. In 1987 the title was changed to Of Pandas and People, and there were two 1987 drafts. One was written in creationist language. In the other, creationist terminology had been replaced by "intelligent design" and other design-related terms, suggesting that the Edwards decision prompted this change. The clincher was a new footnote in the latter draft explicitly referencing Edwards, indicating that this draft was produced after the June 19, 1987, decision in an effort to evade the ruling. I also found a letter from Buell to a prospective publisher in which Buell made profit projections for Pandas contingent upon the Court's decision: "The enclosed projection showing revenues of over 6.5 million in five years are based upon modest expectations for the market, provided the U.S. Supreme Court does not uphold the Louisiana Balanced Treatment acts. If by chance it should uphold it, then you can throw out these projections. The nationwide market would be explosive."

The legal victory in this case has made the public schools less of a battle ground for the promotion of religious views of the origins of the universe as science.  But the battle continues on many other fronts.  (There is even an attack on evolution in the video game Left Behind:  Eternal Forces.)  

Anyway, Forrest's entire article, The "Vise Strategy" Undone: Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District is worth a read. It will serve as a useful backgrounder for anyone approaching this general subject.

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