The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II - Chapter Four

Excerpted Chapters from:

 

Norman L. Geisler's (1982) The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II, Mott Media Inc. 

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Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright (c) 1982. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. http://www.bakerbooks.com 

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Please note: This is not an official record of the trial and may, in part, reflect the views of the author who was a witness for the state of Arkansas in favor of Act 590. 

See Participants page for links to more information on Dr. Geisler.

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Chapter Four

Record of Plaintiffs’ Religion and Philosophy Testimony

 

Summary of Plaintiffs’ Testimony

Monday, 7 December 1981

Plaintiffs’ Witnesses Hicks, Vawter, 

Marsden, Nelkin, Gilkey

 

    The trial opened at 9:30 a.m. in the crowded fourth floor courtroom of the Little Rock Federal Building with the words of the U.S. Marshall: ”. . . God save the United States and this honorable court.” Lawyers for both the plaintiffs and the defense presented opening arguments summarizing their briefs, then the first witness for the plaintiffs was called. 

Bishop Kenneth Hicks 

    Bishop Kenneth Hicks, of the Arkansas conferences of the United Methodist Church, was the first witness to take the stand. Hicks, himself one of the plaintiffs, testified that the Act was clearly a “transgression of the First Amendment.” Hicks outlined three specific objections he had to the Act. First, he said, he objected to the bill’s definition of creation-science, as it limited scientific inquiry to the six areas specified in the bill and reflected a literalistic interpretation of the Genesis account in the Bible. His second objection was to that part of the Act which stated as part of its purpose “preventing establishment of Theologically Liberal, Humanist, Nontheist, or Atheist religions.” (Section 6) Hicks claimed that such language, with its “undefined labels,” contains an element of alarm and imposes constraints on these views. Hicks also objected that the Act was a mixture of philosophical and theological beliefs designed to limit scientific inquiry.

    Bishop Hicks concluded by saying “The Bible is important to my life. I hold very dearly and intently to the opening words of Genesis: ‘In the beginning God created . . . . ‘To go beyond that, and to try to circumscribe the way in which he did it, belittles both God and the theological process.”

    On cross examination, Hicks admitted that the Act specifically prohibited religious instruction in defense of creation-science (Section 2: “must not include any religious instruction or references to religious writings.”) Hicks also admitted that any “limits” to free inquiry were based on his assumption that the definitions of creation-science and evolution-science were meant to be comprehensive. Hicks agreed that his perception of “creation” was necessarily religious because of his training, and that he would have difficulty considering “creation” in a scientific sense.

Father Francis Bruce Vawter

    The second ACLU witness was Father Francis Bruce Vawter, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of theology at DePaul University, Chicago. He testified to the religious nature of the Act. He characterized the book of Genesis as an explanation of religious convictions concerning human origins and the origin of the world. He argued that as there were no witnesses to creation, Genesis should not be taken as a factual account (which could only be derived from a direct witness). Vawter contrasted the Biblical literalists’ view (which would take the account at face value), with the historical-critical view (which accorded more closely to his own approach). Vawter testified that Act 590 was consistent with a literalistic interpretation of Genesis.

    “This Act,” he said, “in its description of what it calls creation-science, has as its unmentioned reference book the first eleven chapters of Genesis.” He gave several specific references. Vawter pointed out that the term “kinds” in the Act (Sections 4(a)(3) and 4(b)(3)) had as its source the King James translation of the Bible. Vawter also noted that “catastrophism” and a “worldwide flood” (Section 4(a)(5)) must refer to the Noahic deluge recorded in Genesis, though he later admitted that this was also paralleled by a similar Babylonian myth. Vawter concluded, “I do not know of any other creation story (except in Genesis) that embodies those parts.”

    On cross examination Vawter was pressed on this point, and he admitted that many points of creation-science could not be found in Genesis according to his view of the book. Specifically, he agreed that Genesis neither affirmed nor denied the “insufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms.” (Section 4(a)(2)) Similarly, he said that “changes only within fixed limits” (Section 4(a)(3)) are not required by the Genesis account, nor must separate ancestry for man and apes (Section 4(a)(4)) be understood from the text. Vawter testified that the only evidence for “catastrophism” (Section 4(a)(5)) to be found in the Genesis account was the occurrence of the Noahic flood, and that even the “sudden creation of the universe” (Section 4(a)(1)) was not required by the Biblical account of origins.

    Vawter agreed that he was not a competent judge of the scientific evidence, and that he had always studied “creation” in a religious context. Vawter said that the idea of evolution was not at all inconsistent with Genesis, and that he saw no conflict between the concepts of creation and evolution.

    On redirect examination, Vawter reemphasized some points in his original testimony, and restated his conclusion that the source of Act 590’s description of creation-science was the book of Genesis.

Dr. George Marsden

    The third witness called by the plaintiffs was Dr. George Marsden, professor of History at Calvin College, an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Marsden’s area of testimony concerned Fundamentalism. Marsden typified Fundamentalists as “militantly anti-modernist” and chiefly concerned with “spreading the faith.” He testified that while anti-Darwinism was not as important a facet of Fundamentalist belief as usually thought, Darwinism was (especially in the South) a symbol of secularism. The Fundamentalists of the 1920’s held to a model of origins based on the Bible and had a “dualistic outlook” in viewing creation and evolution. Marsden said the creation-science movement is “strikingly similar” to the Fundamentalist movement in its approach to origins. He based this view on several observations. Creation scientists, he said, hold a literalistic view of Genesis, oppose all forms of evolution (including theistic evolution) and use the Bible as the primary source for their beliefs. Marsden quoted from Henry Morris’ The Troubled Waters of Evolution and Duane Gish’s Evolution: The Fossils Say No! in order to show the religious intent and source of creationists’ beliefs.

    At this point Defense attorney David L. Williams objected on the grounds of relevance, saying, “Merely because someone calls it creation-science somewhere out in the world doesn’t mean it complies with Act 590.” The plaintiffs argued that Marsden’s testimony was relevant to their contention that all creationist literature advanced religious goals. Overton overruled the objection, saying, “If the people who are writing about creation-science are borrowing their ideas from religious movements I would think that is relevant. These writers can’t wear two hats; they can’t call it religion for one purpose and science for another.”

    Marsden continued, concluding that Act 590 represented a Fundamentalist view of origins. Before cross-examining Marsden, defense attorney David Williams pointed out that the books Marsden had quoted from were printed in two editions, one intended for public school use and one (containing an explanatory notice inside the front cover) intended for Christian schools.

    On cross-examination, Marsden admitted that Act 590 was not exclusively a product of Fundamentalism. In particular, he noted that many Fundamentalists believe that the creation happened in six literal twenty-four-hour days-a view not found in the Act. Additionally, while Fundamentalists typically oppose evolution, Marsden agreed that Act 590 does not, and that not all Fundamentalists would be able to accept the Act. Marsden conceded that he was not a scientist, and since his training was religious, he could not distinguish between “religious” and “scientific” creationism. Marsden concluded by agreeing that it was typical to talk of Fundamentalists as champions of scientific inquiry.

Ms. Dorothy Nelkin

    The next witness was Ms. Dorothy Nelkin, a professor of Sociology at Cornell University. The substance of her testimony concerned the relationship of Act 590 to the creation-science movement. She testified that Fundamentalists were opposed to evolution, and that they make use of science to “legitimatize” their religious beliefs. She claimed that the aim of creation-science was to convince others of their beliefs, and that they “believe it’s necessary to give their ideas a sense of scientific credibility.” Nelkin stated that creationists only give negative evidence against evolution, rather than evidence for creation. She noted that many of the creationists’ books came in public school and Christian school editions.

    On cross-examination Ms. Nelkin agreed that speculation or intuition could legitimately lead to a scientific theory that could then be tested. She said that evolution was not based on any a priori assumptions. She admitted that Julian Huxley had formed a naturalistic religion based on evolution, but said that in so doing he abused evolution.

    Nelkin testified that while the scientific community is theoretically a meritocracy, historically it has not been neutral, and in fact scientific opinion has been influenced by society.

    Nelkin confessed that she had entered her study of the creation-science movement with the presupposition that creation-science was not truly scientific. She also agreed that as she was not a scientist, she was not competent to judge the validity of the scientific evidence for creationism.

    Defense attorney Williams asked Nelkin whether theories of origins were testable. She agreed that such theories were not directly testable by observation. When asked whether evolutionary theory presupposed the nonexistence of a creator, she said “No” (thus contradicting her deposition; she explained this inconsistency by saying “I was confused.”).

    When asked whether creation-science should be taught in schools to the extent that there was scientific evidence, she called the question a “contradiction in terms” (though she had answered the same question in her deposition “Of course.”). Nelkin was asked whether a religion could be based on science, and answered in the negative, though she later admitted that this, too, was inconsistent with her deposition. Finally, she said “People can take science and use it any way they choose.”

    The last questions directed at Nelkin concerned the availability of textbooks presenting the balanced view advocated by Act 590. Nelkin agreed that textbook publishers would probably produce such texts, if the law were upheld. “Sure, there’s money in it,” she said.

Dr. Langdon Gilkey

    The final witness to take the stand Monday was Dr. Langdon Gilkey, professor of theology at the University of Chicago School of Divinity. Gilkey’s testimony concerned the definition of “religion” and the relationship of religious and scientific knowledge. Gilkey defined religion as having three essential parts. He said (1) a religion involves a view of ultimate reality: it deals with the basic problem of human existence and provides an answer to the problem through myths, stories, truths, and teachings, (2) a religion is a way of life finding its source in the ultimate reality, and (3) a religion involves a community structure expressed for example in worship. He stated that in Western religions “God” is the source of ultimate reality. Gilkey said that all that is religious is related to God, and that all that is related to God is religious. Gilkey claimed that creation “ex nihilo” (from nothing) was the most religious of all statements since God was the only actor. He added “A creator is certainly a God if he brings the universe into existence from nothing.” He said that since creation necessitates a Creator, Act 590 “is unquestionably a statement of religion.” He said, though, that a creative force is not necessarily religious, though a creative being must be.

    Gilkey testified that the attempt to distinguish the “Creator” from a God to be worshipped was similar to the Marcionic and Gnostic heresies which plagued the Church in the first century, and which led in part to the adoption of the Apostles’ Creed as a statement of orthodox faith.

    Gilkey’s testimony next turned to the relationship of religious and scientific models. He characterized Act 590 as a religious model of origins rather than a scientific model, and gave several differences between the two. Gilkey said that religious and scientific models differed in the experiences and facts appealed to and in the types of questions asked. Scientific models, he said, deal with facts that are observable, repeatable, and objective. A religious model, though, refers to the facts “as a whole,” to “inner facts,” and to facts which are not objective. Science asks what? and how? questions, said Gilkey, but religion asks why? He said that science appeals to a sense of coherence and elegance which is confirmed by the scientific community, but that religious authority resides in “revelation” and the “interpreters of revelation.”

    Gilkey claimed that scientific laws are universal and necessary, and that no non-naturalistic process may be appealed to within the bounds of science. He said that religious theories use symbolic, not objective, language, and concern personal causes and intentions.

    Gilkey’s testimony then moved to the area of apologetics. He testified that creation-science was in fact apologetics, not science, that it was an effort to “spread the faith.” Continued Gilkey, “There’s nothing wrong with apologetics, I’ve written some, the only problem is when one has two hats on and hides one.” Gilkey claimed that Act 590 represented a “dualistic” approach to origins because it assumed that there were only two views on origins and that these were mutually exclusive, He challenged this assumption, saying that there were other views (e.g., theistic evolution) and that some people believed in God and evolution.

    On cross-examination by Defense counsel Rick Campbell, Gilkey was asked to comment on primary and secondary causality in scientific and religious knowledge. (In philosophical language the primary, or ultimate cause of an event is distinguished from the secondary or direct cause of an event.) Gilkey said that while not all questions of ultimate origins are religious, for scientists to talk about primary causality is for them to stray afield. Gilkey agreed that the Bible does not refer to primary and secondary causality, but said that these might be inferred from the text.

    Gilkey stated that the Bible was the guide in his own life and in his understanding of the world. He said that it influences the fields of philosophy and science as well as his own views. Gilkey said that scientists were not the only ones to define science, and that for example historians have reminded scientists of cultural influences on science.

    Campbell then asked Gilkey whether a scientist should be permitted to talk in a classroom about creation-science if he felt that there was evidence. Gilkey modified the response that he gave in his deposition (“Of course, of course”), saying that this would be appropriate only if the teacher could argue that creation-science was a theory (since according to Gilkey, science resides in theories, not in facts). He said that while a professional should be able to decide, the ultimate authority would reside with the biological community. Gilkey added that he was against requiring that creation-science be taught, not against teaching it.

    Gilkey conceded that apologetics was not always religious, that there were atheist apologists giving a defense for atheism. He cited Bertrand Russell as an example.

    Campbell asked Gilkey where the “why?” questions were in Act 590. Gilkey said that there were none, that there were no questions at all, only answers. Campbell asked whether science could answer “why?” questions. Gilkey said that science could not deal with questions of ultimate origins, and conceded that if evolution were to do this it would not be science, but theology.

    Gilkey agreed that there are religions which hold evolution as part of their creed, such as the religious beliefs espoused by Spencer and Huxley. When asked whether evolution was “atheistic,” Gilkey replied that science does not talk about God. When asked whether this exclusion of God from science was a presupposition, he said that properly speaking there were two types of presuppositions. In the first category were “characteristic presuppositions” of Western culture or of the scientific community, such as the reality of the material world, In the second category were “canons,” or “rules of the road,” which might be based on presuppositions, but were not themselves presuppositions in the same sense. The principle of falsification, for instance, is a canon, as is the exclusion of God.

    Gilkey, when asked, admitted that creative leaps of imagination were part of the history of science, though those who took such leaps were not part of the scientific mainstream. He said that, for example, Copernicus, in making his break with established thought, was not entirely within the mainstream of science.

    On redirect examination, Gilkey said that a secular statement was not necessarily atheistic. He also repeated his opinion that science cannot appeal to a supernatural cause. 

Tuesday, 8 December 1981

Plaintiffs’ Witnesses Ruse, Ayala,

Holstead, Dalrymple

 

   

The court reconvened at 9:00, and the judge revealed his ruling on a Defense motion seeking “an order in limine excluding all evidence addressing either the validity or invalidity of evolution-science and/or creation-science as a ‘scientific theory’ on the ground that such evidence is irrelevant to the determination of the constitutionality of Act 590 on its face.” Overton denied the motion. Defense attorneys then requested that Ms. Nelkin’s deposition be received into the record as evidence. The deposition was accepted, and the first witness of the day took the stand. 

Dr. Michael Ruse

    Dr. Michael Ruse, professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, testified concerning the nature of science, particularly biology. Ruse defined science as consisting of four essentials. First, science must explain events by means of natural law, or “unguided natural regularities.” Also, science must be “explanatory,” “testable,” and “tentative.” Ruse said “explanatory” means that science must predict and confirm events, so that science is self-generating, it is constantly moving into new areas. To say that science must be “testable,” or “falsifiable,” means there must be at least potential for evidence against a scientific belief. As an example, Ruse cited the theory of evolution. Evolution is thought to be unidirectional, that is evolution is thought to continually lead to more and more complex forms of life. If scientists were to find evidence that evolution sometimes proceeded in the direction of less complexity, this aspect of the theory would be falsified. The fourth essential of science is that it be “tentative.” This means that a scientist must always be willing to modify his understanding of the data. Ruse said that a scientist’s work should be objective, without personal bias, public, repeatable, and honest.

    Ruse said that the way in which contradictory evidence is dealt with depends both on the nature of the evidence and the theory attacked by the evidence. Unless the evidence were to be quite strong, it could not overturn a well-supported theory.

    Ruse said that “observability” is not an essential in science, although creation-science literature often listed it as such. He said that sometimes direct empirical evidence simply is not necessary.

    Ruse, who wrote Darwinism Defended, an examination of the attack of the creationists on evolution, testified that evolution is not under attack by credible scientists. He claimed that there is a double use of the word “evolution,” to indicate either the “happening” of evolution or the “mechanism” of evolution. He said that usually the “theory” of evolution is used as a synonym for “mechanism” of evolution, while the “fact” of evolution refers to the “happening” of evolution. Ruse said that, other than creation-scientists, no scientists challenge the happening of evolution, though of course evolutionists do disagree about how it happened.

    Ruse testified that Act 590 is a statement of scientific creationism, and is “very closely” related to the creationist literature, “so closely, I’d say they were identical.” The Act, he said, has a dual model approach to the question of origins, contains the six points usually covered in books on scientific creationism, and used the term “evolution-science.” (Section 4(b)(1), etc.). He said that the wording of the bill implies the existence of a creator in the word “creation.” (Section 4(a)(1)) Ruse said that the word “kinds” used in the Act (Sections 4(a)(3), 4(a)(3)) is not a scientific word, that it is not a taxonomic category, but rather is derived from the book of Genesis. He criticized the Act’s description of evolution-science as inadequate, saying that it implies that all six points are to be taken as a package deal, though not all evolutionists would agree with the definition.

    Ruse said that evolution doesn’t say anything pro or con about the existence of God, nor does it inquire into the origin of life. Ruse gave as an example of evolution the change in predominant coloration of the population of certain species of moth in industrial England. He said that creationists respond to such examples, “We admit the evolution the evolutionists have found-that’s just not enough.” When asked whether creationists explain why evolutionary change should be limited, Ruse said, “Not really, no.” He said the assertion was “an ad hoc device that creation scientists have had to think up to get away from some of the things evolutionists have come up with.”

    Ruse further objected to the points under the definition of creation-science that dealt with the flood (Section 4(a)(5)) and with a young earth (Section 4(a)(6)) as not really important to the question of origins. He also objected to the contrast between “catastrophism” (Section 4(a)(5)) and “uniformitarianism.” (Section 4(a)(5)) He said that the Act polarizes the two views, and implies that disproof of evolution is equivalent to proof of creation,

    Ruse said that “creation-science is not science, it’s religion,” and that it “invokes miracles.” He added, “Nobody’s saying religion is false, they are saying it’s not science.” He said that creation-science does not rely on “natural law” and is not “explanatory.” He said that there is too much dependence in creation science on “ad hoc explanations,” and that though it has explanations, they are not “scientific explanations.” He added that “something that can explain everything is no explanation at all.” Ruse said creation-science also fails to be “testable” and “tentative,” and that it employs an improper methodology.

    Ruse said that creationists often quote evolutionists out of context, that they imply that there is disagreement about whether evolution happened, not just how it happened. He referred to this practice as “dishonest” and “sleazy.”

    On cross examination, Dr. Ruse admitted that he had no training in biology, nor had he done any significant independent study.

    He agreed that many scientists believe that life was generated from nonlife. He said that the ultimate origin of the universe might be an area for scientific concern and that the “Big Bang” model certainly is within the realm of science. Ruse said that the theory of evolution does not extend to the source of life, that it takes life as a given. He added, however, that the origin of life is also a matter for scientific inquiry.

    Defense attorney Williams asked how a theory of origins might be tested, since there were no direct observations. Ruse said that such a theory might be tested by observation in an analogous situation, by controlled experimentation in the laboratory, or by computer modeling. He added that this would not make the work unscientific. He agreed with Williams that these methods would be dependent on the conditions assumed to be on the earth at the time of the origin of life, though these conditions could not be known with certainty.

    Ruse admitted that at least one philosopher of science, Karl R. Popper, considers both evolution and creation to be equally unscientific, because of the impossibility of falsifying either.

    Williams asked Ruse to distinguish between a “fact” and a “theory.” A “model” could be thought of as an “explanation,” and would be “narrower” than a “theory.”

    Williams asked Ruse further about the example of evolution he had given in his direct testimony. Ruse agreed that, although it is often cited as an example of observed evolution, no new species were formed. He said that there were two forms of moth both before and after.

    Williams pressed Ruse on the question of the “polarization” of the two models, asking whether it was true that either there was a creator or there was no creator. Ruse avoided the question, but then admitted that if two models were mutually exclusive, then evidence against one would be evidence for the other.

    Ruse agreed that the books produced by the Institute for Creation Research would not be permitted under the Act because of the religious content. When asked about his personal teaching method in the classroom, Ruse said that he did give a “balanced treatment,” but that this does not mean that he teaches all theories ever held. Ruse said that teaching evidences for creation-science would be meaningless “unless you are talking about a theory.”

    Ruse characterized himself as “somewhere between a Deist and an Agnostic.” He agreed with Williams that religious people can be competent scientists. He said that while creation from nothing is not consistent with his belief, evolution is inconsistent with the beliefs of some students.

    Williams asked whether some scientists believe that the theory of evolution is not falsifiable. Ruse said that most believe that it is falsifiable, though some, including Karl Popper (whom he called an “old man”), do not.

    The plaintiffs objected to the relevance of this line of questioning as evolution was not on trial. The judge overruled the objection after a short recess.

    Ruse was asked to define “teleology.” He said it was an attempt at understanding in terms of purpose rather than causes. He agreed that teleology could be either theological or non-theological.

    Ruse said that there are no authorities in the area of philosophy of science. He agreed that “What is science?” was a question for philosophers of science, and that there is no agreement on its answer.

    Ruse said he objected to Act 590 because it was a foot in the door of science classrooms for religion, that it was “the thin edge of a very large wedge” of an attempt to teach religion as science. He said that he was against Biblical literalism, and was concerned for what might happen if the law were to stand. He further said that he was “shocked” that a creationism display had recently been put up in the British Museum.

    Ruse said that it is possible for scientists to become emotionally attached to their theories, both individually and as groups. He said his purpose at the trial was to “fight a battle” against creationism.

    Ruse agreed that ideas from outside science could be sources of scientific theories, and said that to other scientists it is more important that the theories fit the data than what the source was. He gave as an example the work of Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, a Marxist paleontologist. He said that though Gould “pushes” Marxism the source of his science isn’t important. Ruse said that he did not accept Gould’s theory personally, but that is because of lack of evidence, not because of the theory’s source. He said that Darwin had developed his theory of evolution because of his personal religious Deism.

    On redirect examination, Ruse repeated his assertion that data without a theory are not science. He said that it is not possible to separate evidence from a theory. He said once again that evolution is science.

    On recross examination, Williams asked, “Is evolution a fact?” Ruse replied in the affirmative. Williams asked, “How then is it tentative?”

    The plaintiffs’ testimony turned from philosophy and religion to the scientific and educational portion of their case.

    The plaintiffs’ religious and philosophical testimony was reported in the following manner.

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Extracts of The Creator In The Courtroom: Scopes II (1982) by Norman Geisler, courtesy of Baker Books.

Scans provided by Jim Moore. 

The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II - Chapter Five

Excerpted Chapters from:

 

Norman L. Geisler's (1982) The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II, Mott Media Inc. 

---

Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright (c) 1982. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. http://www.bakerbooks.com 

---

Please note: This is not an official record of the trial and may, in part, reflect the views of the author who was a witness for the state of Arkansas in favor of Act 590. 

See Participants page for links to more information on Dr. Geisler.

---

Chapter Five

Record of Plaintiffs’ Science and Education Testimony

Summary of Plaintiffs’ Testimony

    Tuesday, in the early afternoon, the thrust of the plaintiffs’ testimony turned to the scientific case against creationism. The first scientist was called to the stand.

Dr. Francisco J. Ayala

    The first science witness called by the ACLU was Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of Genetics at the University of California at Davis. He testified concerning the scientific validity of creation-science.

    Dr. Ayala testified that creation-science, as expressed in the Act was not science, because it was neither naturalistic nor was it falsifiable. He gave as an example the creationists’ assertions that there are limits to evolutionary change. Creation-scientists make use of the term “kind,” said Ayala, to delineate the limits of change, but this word is “religious,” not scientific.

    Ayala then explained the significance of the phrase “natural selection,” the idea that, because of the harshness of nature, animals with physical and genetic weaknesses will die younger and have fewer offspring. This, according to evolutionists, would have the effect of encouraging useful genetic change. Ayala said that creationists do not dispute the action of natural selection, but do give limits to the amount of change it may generate. Ayala said, however, that there was nothing self-limiting about natural processes. Ayala’s testimony became increasingly technical as he spoke of the role of genetics in evolutionary science. He explained several ideas concerning the mechanisms of evolution and said that the Act’s definition of evolution-science was inadequate. He said that evolutionary theory does not include the concept of life from nonlife, but that it presupposes the existence of life. Ayala said that evolutionists do not accept “the sufficiency of mutation and natural selection,” (Section 4(a)(2)) but recognize the existence of other mechanisms, such as recombination, genetic drift, and the founder effect. Ayala then discussed the importance of mutation in evolution. He said that while most mutations are harmful to the organism, many are beneficial, and the harmful ones are almost immediately eliminated by natural selection. He said that although creation scientists often assert that mutations must present immediately beneficial results in order to be successful, in so doing they ignore the fact that latent genetic traits can be retained, and become useful later.

    Ayala said that “the emergence of life from nonlife,” (Section 4(b)(1)) is not actually part of evolutionary theory. He said that the theory of evolution deals only with existing processes such as mutation.

    He also objected to the Act’s contention that there were only two models of origins. He said that one can never claim that there are only two models. Instead, he said that the creation-science model is not a scientific model at all, and that there are several evolutionary models.

    He spoke of the scientific validity of evolution, and explained some of the evidences for evolution. He said that the similarities between human and animal proteins implied evolution. At one point, he handed Judge Overton a chart showing these similarities. Ayala said, “It’s simpler than it looks.” Replied Overton, “I sure hope so.”

    Ayala contended that it was not necessary to observe evolution directly and said that it is not possible to observe macroevolution. He noted, however, that “speciation,” the splitting of one species into two, has been observed in the laboratory. Ayala said that evolution does not presuppose the nonexistence of a creator, but that “a creator, a God can create the world any way he chooses.” He said that God might “establish the laws by which the world evolves. God may have created the mountains. He may have created the processes by which the mountains are formed. Science is neutral.” Ayala said that a creator would be a personal God by necessity.

    During cross-examination by Defense attorney David Williams, Ayala agreed that he had been president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and had formed an educational committee, with the purpose of countering movements which were opposed to the teaching of evolution. He admitted that the creation-science movement was one of these movements. He also admitted that he had been instrumental in the attempts of two other organizations, the National Academy of Science and the Committee of Correspondence, to limit anti-evolution movements.

    Williams asked Ayala whether it was true that there either was or was not a Creator. Said Ayala, “The law of contradiction still holds.”

    Ayala said that “testability,” not “observability,” was a necessity for a scientific model, and said that some of the most interesting aspects of science were not observable. He called science “a creation of the mind,” and said models could be used to make predictions, which could then be tested. He agreed that conclusions based on such a technique would be inferences.

    When asked to define the term “religion,” Ayala, who holds the equivalent of a doctorate in theology, quoted from the writings of theologian Paul Tillich. Ayala said that religion was a concern for the ultimate reality, which would require religious convictions, but not belief in a creator. He agreed that humanism could be a religion. He said that evolution might cause some students to reject their religious beliefs.

    Ayala said that he believed that life arose from nonlife through naturalistic processes. He said that this was a testable theory, and that it should be taught in the public schools. He agreed that to the extent that there were scientific evidences for creationism, they should be taught in the classroom. Ayala said that while academic freedom is “a right and a privilege,” a teacher need not agree with an idea in order to teach it.

Senator Jim Holsted

    The next witness for the ACLU was Senator Jim Holsted, an Arkansas state senator, and sponsor of the bill which became Act 590. Holsted testified concerning the source of the bill and his own motivations in introducing it.

    Holsted testified that he received the bill from a business associate, Carl Hunt, and later learned that the bill had been drafted by Paul Ellwanger. (Ellwanger formed the South Carolina-based creationism organization, Citizens for Fairness in Education.)

    He testified that the bill was passed in the Senate without being referred to a committee, and said that the bill received “fifteen to thirty” minutes of discussion on the Senate floor. Holsted said that no one spoke against the bill. In the House, the bill was sent to the Education Committee, where it received a short hearing before being returned to the floor.

    Holsted testified that his motivation in introducing the bill partly involved his personal religious convictions. Of the bill, he said, “Certainly, it would have to be compatible with something I believed in. I’m not going to stand before the Senate and introduce something I don’t believe in.”

    He admitted that the bill was strongly supported by religious fundamentalists, and agreed that the Act favored Biblical literalists. Hoisted admitted that the term “creation” presupposes a creator, but said that the Act did not violate the First Amendment, because “it doesn’t mention any particular god.”

    The cross-examination of Holsted was very brief. Hoisted agreed that because of the nature of the Arkansas legislature, which meets for only 60 days every two years, it is not unusual for a bill to be passed with little or no debate.

Dr. G. Brent Dalrymple

    The next witness to be called, late Tuesday afternoon, was Dr. G. Brent Dalrymple, a geochronology expert and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. His testimony concerned the age of the earth and the relevance of geochronology to creation-science as expressed in Act 590.

    Dalrymple testified that, though creationists usually claimed an age for the earth of about 10,000 years, there was no evidence that the earth was young, but rather that the evidence indicated that the earth was about 4.5 billion years old. Dalrymple indicated that on this point, at least, creation-science could be falsified, and that indeed it had been falsified. Dalrymple said that theories which have been shown false should be discarded, and said that the theory of a young earth was “in the same category as the flat earth hypothesis and the hypothesis that the sun goes around the earth; all are absurd hypotheses.”

    Dalrymple explained that in order to date the age of the earth, scientists must rely on measuring the action of some process which is constant over time. He discredited several arguments made by creationists, saying that they were based on processes which are not constant. He gave as examples the measurement of the earth’s cooling, the small amount of dust on the moon and the supposed decay of the earth’s magnetic field, each of which, according to creationists, point toward a young earth.

    Dalrymple said that more widely accepted values for the age of the earth were based on a technique known as radiometric dating. This technique relies on the decay rates of certain radioactive elements, which, he said, are known to be constant to within a few percent. He said that one creation-scientist, Harold Slusher, of the Institute for Creation Research, had argued that the decay rate of iron-57 was not constant. Said Dalrymple, “The problem with this is that iron-57 is not radioactive.”

    The court adjourned at the end of Dalrymple’s direct testimony.

 

Wednesday, 9 December 1981

Plaintiffs’ Witnesses Dalrymple, Morowitz, 

Gould, Glasgow

 

    The third day of the trial opened with the cross-examination of Dr. Dalrymple by Defense attorney David Williams. Williams questioned Dalrymple about the validity of radiometric dating. Dalrymple testified that “as far as we know,” the radioactive decay rate of an element is constant, but in response to a ‘question by Williams, said that it didn’t make any difference whether the decay rate was constant before the formation of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago.

    Dalrymple said that all methods for calculating the age of the earth rely on the constancy of radioactive decay rates, and said that “in a certain sense,” this was an assumption of the methods.

    He said that for the rate of decay to change, there would need to be a change in the physical laws of the universe. He testified that the rate of decay is found to be constant in the laboratory, and from theoretical considerations. He also said that radioactive testing gives consistent results.

    Williams asked where in the Act Dalrymple found a figure for the age of the earth of 10,000 years. Dalrymple replied that this was not a part of the Act itself, but was a common figure given by creationists. Williams then asked whether Dalrymple would consider “several hundred million years” to be recent. Dalrymple agreed that on a geological time scale this would be recent.

    Judge Overton interrupted at this point to ask Williams just how the state intended the phrase “relatively recent” to be taken. Williams said that the state was not tied to any particular figure. Overton disagreed with Williams’ opinion that the question would not be raised in the biology classroom. “I’m puzzled as to what the teacher is supposed to say,” said Overton.

    When questioning of Dalrymple resumed, he was asked about the use of radiometric dating in conjunction with fossils. He agreed that this method was the best way of dating fossils found in a particular geological formation, and agreed that much of the case for evolution relied on this method. He agreed that because of its importance in this area, evidence about the accuracy of radiometric dating should be studied.

    Williams then asked Dalrymple whether he knew of any reputable scientist who had called into question the validity of radiometric dating. Dalrymple said, “No,” but when pressed, he admitted that one who had done so was Dr. Robert Gentry of Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Dalrymple said that, according to Dr. Paul Daymon, professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona, if Gentry’s conclusions were correct, they would cast doubt on all of geochronology.

    Dalrymple said that Gentry had made a proposal for the falsification of his theory, but that it was not clear whether it was valid. Dalrymple said that Gentry had claimed that if a “hand-sized piece of granite” could be synthesized, then he would consider his theory falsified. Dalrymple said that this was a difficult technical problem, but that he did not see its relevance to Gentry’s claims. He admitted that Gentry was a competent scientist.

    In response to a question from Williams, Dalrymple said that he was a member of the American Geophysical Union, and admitted that he had drafted an anti-creation proposal for that organization. He said that an abbreviated resolution had been adopted by the A.G.U. on 6 December 1981, the day before the trial had begun.

    Dalrymple said that he had read “about two dozen” books and pamphlets by the creationists, and that “every piece of creationist literature I have looked into so far has had very, very serious flaws-and I think I have looked at a representational sample.” He admitted however, that while he was aware of Gentry’s work, he had not made an attempt to examine it more closely before the trial. Dalrymple said that Gentry had raised “a tiny mystery,” for which “I suspect we will eventually find an explanation.”

    Williams asked Dalrymple whether he believed in God. Dalrymple said the question was “highly personal,” but said that he was “half way between an agnostic and an atheist,” though he had “reached no final conclusions.” He said that there was no evidence for God’s existence, but that a religious person could be a competent scientist.

    On redirect examination, Dalrymple was asked further about the recently adopted A.G.U. resolution and read the resolution into the record. Dalrymple agreed that Gentry’s theory depends on supernatural causes and that his proposed test for falsification was “meaningless.”

    Judge Overton interrupted to ask for an explanation of Gentry’s theory. Dalrymple explained at some length the content of Gentry’s research and the conclusions which Gentry had suggested.

    On recross examination, the subject of Gentry’s work again arose, and Dalrymple said that the source of a theory might be important in assessing the validity of that theory.

Dr. Harold Morowitz*

    After the conclusion of the cross-examination of Dalrymple on Wednesday morning, the plaintiffs called Dr. Harold Morowitz, professor of biophysics and molecular chemistry at Yale University. Morowitz testified that because “sudden creation assumes supernatural causes” it is “outside the realm of science.”

    Morowitz complained that the “two model” approach to origins outlined in Act 590 implied that under that law, only those two strictly defined models could be taught, and no others. This, he said, would be limiting on science teachers who might want to take positions not quite identical to either of the two models.

    Morowitz said most creationists argue that the complexity of living things indicates that they could not have occurred by chance. Creationists, he said, “move from complexity to improbability,” and added, “but the fact of the matter is that we do not know the ways in which life came about,” and said science could one day learn of completely mechanistic processes by which complex living organisms first came into existence.

    *From this point on the account follows that of the Times (Cal Beisner) of Pea Ridge, Arkansas (Dec. 30, 1981), except supplements noted by brackets.

    He said creationists also rely on arguments based on the second law of thermodynamics. This law, he said, states that natural processes in closed systems tend toward maximum randomness, a breakdown in complexity. However, he said, creationists ignored the fact that the earth is not a closed system, but receives energy from the sun, making it an open system in which temporary, local processes can occur in a direction opposite that described by the second Law-that because of the energy the earth receives from the sun, growth in complexity and therefore the naturalistic origin of life are possible.

    “Evolution,” he said, “rather than being contrary to the laws of thermodynamics, is an unfolding of the laws of thermodynamics.” He said while science could know that the ordering effect of the flow of energy through the system had caused the origin of life, it was not clear how this happened.

    Under cross-examination, Morowitz testified that he had calculated the chance combination of elements to form life at about one to 101,000,000,000, the number one followed by one billion zeroes. He said, however, that those odds could not be applied to the surface of the earth, since the earth is not a closed system and therefore not directly subject to the second law of thermodynamics.

    Asked if anyone had yet created life by the flow of energy through various mixtures of elements, Morowitz said that in the thousands of experiments done, no one had yet succeeded in creating life.

    Asked how he would define the scientific community, Morowitz said it consists of those who make their livings within the field of science. He said science was a “social activity,” and that essentially science was, in the words of defense attorney David Williams, “what is accepted in the scientific community.”

Dr. Stephen Jay Gould

    The plaintiffs then called Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology at Harvard University, and a proponent of a view called “punctuated equilibria,” which holds that evolution took place through fairly sudden, rapid changes in life forms, which is the reason that the fossil record contains so few plausible examples of transitions from one form of life to another.

    Gould said that creation science tries to explain the geological record, which he said shows the age of the earth in billions of years, on the basis of a single major catastrophe, a worldwide flood. Such a view, he said, is not “scientific, because it calls on a creator to suspend the laws of nature.” He said that the Act creates an artificial dualism when it refers to uniformitarianism and catastrophism. (Sections 4(b)(5) and 4(a)(5) ) Modern geology, he said, accepts both uniformitarian and catastrophic occurrences as responsible for the geological record. He said that there were two meanings for the word uniformitarianism: (1) the constancy of natural law, or (2) the constancy of the rate of sedimentation. Modern geology accepts only the first.]

    Gould said that on the basis of a flood model of geology, one would conclude that all forms of life were alive simultaneously, at least before the flood. However, he said, the fossil record preserved in the strata of sedimentary rocks in the earth shows that the animals were not mixed together, but are “rather well ordered in a sequence of strata, from the old to the new,” and this, he said, showed the flood theory to be wrong. Gould said that creation scientists account for the sequence of fossils by so-called “sorting mechanisms,” but that these mechanisms are not consistent with the observed fossil record.]

    Asked if, relative to paleontology (the study of fossils), creation science were “scientific,” Gould answered, “Certainly not, because it calls upon the intervention of a creator. . . . “The fossil record, he said, shows gaps between various types of life, but while creation science calls on a creator to explain the gaps, and therefore is not scientific, evolution can explain the gaps as resulting from the rapid, short-term changes that occurred from time to time along the branches of the evolutionary tree, and from the incompleteness of the fossil record.

    Gould said that creationists misrepresent his view of “punctuated equilibria,” claiming that he says entire evolutionary sequences can be produced in single steps. This, he said, is not what his theory says, but rather that minor changes occur suddenly. The traditional view of evolution, he said, could be compared with rolling a ball up an inclined plane-the fossil record for such a view should appear fairly smooth. His view, however, would be comparable to bouncing a ball up a set of stairs-because he postulated sudden changes, the fossil record should reflect gaps from one step in evolution to another. [Gould referred to the fossil record as “woefully incomplete.” He illustrated the fossil record as an old book in which there were few pages remaining, on which there were few lines remaining, in which there were few words remaining, of which only a few letters remained. He said that, because of the difficulty of fossilization, the “resolution” of the fossil record was probably not sufficient to show speciation - which would occur quite rapidly according to Gould. Gould then gave some examples of the transitional forms which do occur in the fossil record. Two examples mentioned were Archaeopteryx, a birdlike creature with some reptilian characteristics, (thought to be a transitional form between reptiles and birds) and “Lucy” (a fossil hominid classified as Australopithicus afarensis), apparently a human ancestor, thought to be about 3.5 million years old. He gave other examples of hominid transitional forms, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus].

    Asked if evolutionary theory presupposed the absence of a creator, Gould replied, “No, evolutionary theory functions either with or without a creator, so long as the creator works by natural laws.”

    Under cross examination, Gould said science was not his only motive for opposing creation science, but that another was his political liberalism.  Asked if the term “creator” were inherently religious, Gould said, “not inherently.” He said it had some “metaphorical senses in the vernacular,” and was used that way by Darwin and Einstein. He also said that while the “best judgment of the scientific community” was that “life arose naturally,” that was “subject to question and being proved wrong, just like anything else in science.” [When questioned by Williams, Gould agreed that logically there were only two alternatives-either there was a creator, or there was not.]

Dr. Dennis R. Glasgow

    The plaintiffs then called Dr. Dennis R. Glasgow, supervisor of science education in the Little Rock schools, who coordinates curriculum development for science courses in those schools.

    Glasgow testified that creation science has never been treated in the science curriculum for the Little Rock schools, while evolution is treated under 18 concepts. He said all science courses, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, would be affected by Act 590, and that no materials of scientific merit are available to balance the two views in the state’s public schools. “There aren’t any materials available at all that I know of,” Glasgow said.

    He said the principle of evolution is reinforced by analogy at all levels of nature, and that therefore that principle provides a unifying theme of whole books in the science courses. This, he said, would require massive restructuring of the science education curriculum in his schools, and he didn’t know how that could be done since he was unaware of any legitimately scientific materials on creation science.

    Asked if he understood the term “balanced treatment” as used in the act, he said he didn’t know what it meant, but that he had made an operational definition in his own mind which was that it required “equal emphasis or equal legitimacy” to be given to each view. For this reason, he said, teachers could not give their professional viewpoints on the models, because that would be unequal emphasis and would imply unequal legitimacy.

    Glasgow testified that one sample curriculum for teaching two models, prepared by Dr. Richard Bliss of the Institute for Creation Research, would not be usable under Act 590 because it made value judgments and implied that there were only two views, while in fact there are many. The defense objected, saying that this was irrelevant, since no one had required Bliss’s curriculum to be used in the Arkansas schools.

    Asked how he would implement Act 590 as a curriculum developer, Glasgow said, “I don’t think I can implement the provisions of Act 590 to provide balanced treatment,” and added that creation science could not be taught without religion and that none of the materials about it he had seen were acceptable to him.

    He also said teaching two views without allowing teachers to give their professional opinions would “damage the security of students” and “lower the student’s opinion of the teacher,” and would lead the students to be skeptical of information in class on other issues because they would think that at least some was untrustworthy, since one of these views had to be wrong, and therefore others might be untrustworthy as well.

    He said there was no educational purpose in teaching creation science in accord with Act 590 and that such teaching would be “damaging as far as education is concerned.” He also said it would hinder the hiring of good teachers in Arkansas, because they would not want to teach where they were required to present something unscientific.

    Under cross examination Glasgow said a study of the effects of presenting two models by Bliss indicated students increased In cognitive development and critical ability when both models were presented. He acknowledged that the law would not necessarily require “equal time” to be given to the two views, and that nothing in the law specifically said teachers could not make a professional judgment to their students as to the validity of either theory. He said students should be free to question various ideas, but that they had not yet developed the capability to judge between views well before they were old enough to leave the public school systems.

    He also said that his belief that it would be impossible for teachers and administrators to devise a curriculum for balanced treatment presupposed his belief that creation science is not science but religion. He also said one reason he objected to Act 590 was that he was offended that the legislature might restrict his discretion as a curriculum advisor.

Chapter 5 continued on next page

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Extracts of The Creator In The Courtroom: Scopes II (1982) by Norman Geisler, courtesy of Baker Books.

Scans provided by Jim Moore. 

The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II - Chapter Six

Excerpted Chapters from:

 

Norman L. Geisler's (1982) The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II, Mott Media Inc. 

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Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright (c) 1982. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. http://www.bakerbooks.com 

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Please note: This is not an official record of the trial and may, in part, reflect the views of the author who was a witness for the state of Arkansas in favor of Act 590. 

See Participants page for links to more information on Dr. Geisler.

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Chapter Six

Record of Defense’s Religion, Philosophy, and Education Testimonies

Summary of Defense Testimony

Friday, 11 December 1981

Defense Witness Geisler 

Dr. Norman L. Geisler

   Dr. Norman L. Geisler, professor of theology and philosophy at Dallas Theological Seminary was the first witness called by the defense (to testify] about the philosophical presuppositions of science and religion and their interface with each other. He said he had done his doctoral dissertation on this interface, and in so doing had studied a great deal of the history of science and had found much of modern science to be built on Christian understandings of the principles of the universe as established by a creator.

    Geisler said one of the key issues in the trial and in understanding Act 590 was one’s definition of religion. He said contrary to much popular belief, the main common denominator in religious belief is the idea of “transcending” oneself, making ultimate commitments of oneself to some object of ultimate concern. [Referring to the definitions of Religion by theologian Paul Tillich and John Dewey], Geisler said [Religion] does not always involve the idea of a personal god or God in the traditional sense, nor does belief that a god or God exists necessarily involve religion, for one can make things other than a “god” one’s object of ultimate concern, or one can believe that a god exists without making that god the object of one’s ultimate concern.

    Geisler explained the idea of transcendence by giving the example of when empirical objects suddenly take on “disclosure power” for some scientists. Those scientists have said that empirical objects have suddenly lent them a “flash of creative insight” and led to an effort on the part of those scientists to “go beyond empirical data to a comprehensive, unifying principle of life.” In so doing the scientist “transcends” the merely empirical.

    If the transcendent unifying principle the scientist “discovers” or makes up from the flash of insight becomes an object of ultimate concern for the scientist and he commits himself to it personally, he takes up a religious relationship with it and from that moment until he no longer is committed to it as an object of ultimate concern, his endeavors in relation to it are both scientific and religious.

    Geisler testified that a “humanistic” religion centers its ultimate commitment on mankind. He gave as an example of such religious commitment the beliefs of Thomas and Julian Huxley, both great evolutionists, and other members of the American Humanist Society. Geisler quoted statements in the Humanist Manifesto I and II which declare evolutionism a central doctrine in humanism’s belief, and which speak openly of humanism as a religion.

    Geisler said the first line of the preface to a combined publication of Humanist Manifesto I and II describes humanism as a “philosophical, moral, and religious view,” and’ he said that the word “religion” is used 28 times in the documents, mostly as a description of humanism itself. The publication also refers to humanism as a “quest for transcendent value, and a commitment to abiding values,” and later in the documents it says it is “necessary to establish” such a religion. Geisler also showed the court an article by Julian Huxley titled The Coming New Religion of Humanism, in which Huxley says the framework of humanism is evolutionary and its “gods are made by men.” Geisler said one of the central tenets of humanism is either no God or a god who is not involved in the world, that it is based on the “revelation” of science, and that it is religiously “naturalistic” rather than “supernaturalistic.”

    Geisler explained that there is a difference between speaking of “nature” and believing in “naturalism.” “Naturalism” is a philosophical/religious system, Geisler said, which claims that there is nothing outside of nature, nothing other than what is physical, nothing but matter and energy. Such a position, Geisler said, is clearly atheistic, not merely neutral on the question of existence of a god. Evolutionism as commonly held by scientists, and especially as believed in by the humanistic religion, is expressly naturalistic and therefore non-neutral toward the existence of a god or God.

    Asked by defense attorney Rick Campbell for examples of evolutionary religions, Geisler described the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, who made “evolutionary process itself become the transcendent.” On that basis Geisler said, many scientists of the late 19th and 20th centuries used evolution to attack theism. Darwin, he said, applying the theory consistently, became increasingly skeptical toward Christian belief and eventually referred to “my deity Natural Selection.”

    To show the belief that acknowledging a supreme being or creator is not necessarily religious, Geisler referred to the teaching of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato.

    Aristotle believed [that] there was a “first cause” or “unmoved mover,” but did not worship or commit himself to the being, and did not posit any moral attributes to it. Plato believed in a “demiurgos” which served as a creator in his philosophical system, but again did not think of the being in a religious way as something deserving of his commitment.

    “Belief that there is a Creator,” Geisler said, “has no religious significance. Belief in that Creator does.” He explained that belief “that” a Creator exists is merely intellectual and requires no personal commitment, whereas belief “In” implies a commitment of oneself to that Creator. In the same way, Geisler said, belief that there is such a thing as biological evolution is not religious, but belief in that concept is religious.

    [Geisler said that you cannot reject the Creator just because He is an object of religious worship for some. He illustrated this in two ways: (1) Jesus is an object of religious worship. It is historically verifiable that He lived. Do we reject His historicity just because He is an object of religious worship? (2) Some people have made rocks the object of their religious worship. Do we reject the existence of rocks because they are an object of religious worship? Then he said you cannot reject a creator just because some have made him the object of religious worship.]

    Geisler also testified that the modern scientific ideas of regularity of the world, which are the foundation of the scientific method, sprang from the Christian belief that the world is ordered by an intelligent Creator who has made it regular. He also said the Christian commitment of many early scientists, such as John Newton, Lord Kelvin, and Sir Francis Bacon, had led them to do their scientific studies as a way of learning more about their Creator through His creation. Bacon for instance, wrote his Novum Organum, that the command to “subdue the world” in Genesis was the motivating force behind his scientific studies.

    Geisler said the Christian motivation and sometimes even source for early scientific ideas was never and is not now considered a reason to doubt their legitimacy as a science, because scientists distinguish between the source of a theory and its scientific justification. Kekule’, discoverer of the model for the complex benzene molecule, got the idea while dreaming about a snake biting its tall; Tesla, inventor of the alternating current electric motor, got the idea from a vision he had reading the German mystical poet Goethe; other scientific discoveries, he said, had equally unscientific sources or motivations behind them, but they were not rejected from science for that reason; rather, since they stood the tests of scientific justification, they were accepted. [Geisler also referred to Spencer who, while meditating on a beach, derived his theory of cosmic evolution by watching the motion of the waves of the sea. Judge Overton at this point stopped Geisler from giving more examples, saying, “I have your point.”]

    In the same way, Geisler said, one need not reject evolutionism as unscientific just because some evolutionists have a religious motivation for believing that it occurs, nor need one reject creationism as unscientific simply because some creationists have religious motivation for believing it occurred. Rather, Geisler said, each needs to be judged on its ability to stand the rigors of scientific testing.

    Geisler said there are narrow and broad definitions of science, and that an ambiguity in the controversy over creation science being taught in public schools often stems from the ambiguity between the two definitions. In the narrow definition, nothing is scientific unless it is observable, repeatable, and directly testable. In the broad definition, however, something may not be directly observable, testable, or repeatable, but one can make predictions based on a logical construct designed to explain the world around us, and then test the prediction themselves.

    Evolutionism, he said, does not fit the narrow definition of science, and neither does creationism. For evolutionism, Geisler illustrated, “We can’t say to fossils, ‘Would you repeat that death for me?’ or to the Big Bang, ‘Would you repeat that for me?’” while for creationism, we cannot go back in time and ask the creator to do it all over for us again and let us watch.

    Therefore, Geisler said, both views are built by scientists as “models” or logical constructs designed to give unifying meaning to the data in the world around us. Predictions are made based on these models, and the predictions are compared with the real world.

    Asked how many views of origins there were, Geisler replied that in religion there are many views, but that philosophically all can be put in one of two contrasting categories: (1) a supernatural, intelligent creator designed and created the world, or (2) the world is not the result of intelligent intervention, but came about through random, mechanistic processes.

    Geisler said although the authors of Act 590 probably got their “inspiration” for the bill from Genesis, the source of the bill was irrelevant, and what is important is the scientific and legal justification. Asked if it is legitimate to derive a scientific model from a religious source, Geisler said it was “perfectly legitimate, it’s done many times.”

    Under cross examination, Geisler was asked by ACLU attorney Anthony Siano if he would “consider it absurd to talk about creation science without a creator,” and responded, “Yes, and I would consider Webster’s Dictionary coming from an explosion in a print shop absurd, too.”

    Asked if he believed in the “inerrancy of Scripture,” Geisler replied that he believes that “everything the Bible affirms is true is true.” Siano then asked him about his beliefs about Satan, and Geisler responded that he believes Satan is a personal, supernatural being who is a fallen angel, that other angels fell with him in rebellion against God, that he is a deceiver, and that some satanic phenomena are demon possession, exorcism, parapsychology, and UFOs. When asked about the purpose of UFO encounters he said he believes they are “Satanic manifestations in the world for the purpose of deception.”

 

Monday, 14 December 1981

Defense Witnesses Parker, Morrow, Townley 

Dr. Larry R. Parker

    At the beginning of Monday’s hearings, the defense called Dr. Larry Ray Parker, former teacher of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth grades and currently associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Georgia State University, a specialist in curriculum principles, curriculum trends, and curriculum development, and often a consultant to public school districts in curriculum development.

    Parker said he was not a scientist, but that he believed in teaching two models on scientific views of origins of life because it is sound educational practice to allow students to see two sides of such issues and examine the arguments for themselves.

    Parker described five major principles which lie at the basis of curriculum development: the nature and character of the learner, the nature of the learning process, the nature of society, the nature of knowledge and the sources of knowledge, and the role of the schools in society. He said teaching two sides of a controversy like this is consistent with all those principles, because the students (the learners) are capable of handling controversy rationally and learn better when they have the opportunity to examine contrasting points of view, because learning functions best when opposing ideas compete for the respect of learners, because for students to function well in a society in which many members believe in either of the two contrasting points of view demands that the students under stand both, because knowledge and the sources of knowledge are interrelated with opportunities learners have to make evaluations and decisions of their own, and because the schools, since they are “creatures of society,” supported by taxpayers’ money, ought to be responsive to the needs and demands of society. [He said the nature and character of the learner are found in the general area of educational psychology and specifically in the topic “human growth and development.” Parker stated that the best expression of this is found in the French psychologist Piaget who proposed that “thinking is innate to the learner.”]

    Parker said that an especially important element in the quality of a learning experience [or learning process] is the “extent of inquiry” that is involved. “if the learner can be an active part of the learning process ... the learning is greatly strengthened,” he said. The extent of inquiry and the activeness of the student are greatly increased if the educational process asks the student divergent questions, questions which demand that the student consider alternative possible answers. Education works best, he said, when it challenges the students to “comparative analysis,” asking students to “compare and analyze divergent questions leads to a great increase in divergent answers and learning.” Asked what he thought would be the impact of Act 590, Parker said, “I believe that implementation of Act 590 would allow the classrooms to be stimulating, thought-provoking” places where “students can be involved in analyzing.” Schools should be places where students are taught how to think, not told what to think,” Parker said.

    Asked about the relationship of the schools to the society, Parker said the schools “belong to the people, the students belong to the people, and the schools must be responsive to society and its changing needs.” [Parker said, the role of the school is that of “passing on the culture and heritage of our civilization.” Because education takes place within a culture, whenever a law is passed it is “the voice of the people” who represent that culture and heritage.] He said the very fact that Act 590 was passed by the legislature “demonstrates that the constituency of the curriculum in this state has not been served or satisfied with that curriculum.” He said several polls showed a strong favor in society as a whole for teaching both evolution science and creation science in the public schools. He mentioned one in which 9% said evolution only should be taught in the schools, 16% said creation only, 70% said both, and 5% said neither should be taught in the public schools. Most others, he said, gave similar results.

    Parker referred to a movement in education called “accountability-based education,” which says curriculum should be tightened to meet the demands of the constituency, and shows that society wants its schools to be more responsible for producing students capable of certain skills. He said examples of new programs in education which resulted in educational responsiveness to society were law-related education in the state of Georgia, consumer education, multi-cultural education in areas which have many cultural groups, bilingual education, sex education, metric education, personal finance education (which was made a requirement by the Georgia state legislature), career education, drug education, and, most recently, computer literacy. [Parker also said that sources of knowledge were the responsibility of the state, thus it is the state that develops criteria for facilitating knowledge and developing textbooks based upon the desires of its constituency.]

    Parker said he thinks one message the state is giving to the educational establishment in Arkansas with the passage of Act 590 is that society wants its students to graduate from high school with a certificate that shows they’re “capable of thinking” critically about competing ideas.

    Asked what “balanced treatment” would mean, Parker said it is normally used in curriculum development to refer to treating all materials from an unbiased perspective. He said he creation/evolution problem is not unique as a balance problem in education, but rather that discussion of balance in other areas is common in curriculum texts and courses. He said in most teaching on curriculum development, it is stressed that “balance needs to be constantly monitored.”

    Asked if he thought that required “equal time” for competing ideas, he said that was not the case, because of the nature of the content of the competing ideas. “Time is not necessarily of the essence,” he said.

    Asked whether he thought Act 590 violated academic freedom, Parker said, “In a public school context, my understanding is that academic freedom relates more to the student than to the teacher.” [He said the teacher conforms the state’s views to the students regardless of what those views are.] The main point of academic freedom, he said, is allowing the student to be exposed to a wide range of materials and ideas.

    He said in actuality, a law like Act 590 was necessary to protect teachers who might want to teach things normally outside the curriculum in many science courses. He said many teachers had come to him asking him whether it were “safe” to teach certain things, and added that because of the climate of the scientific community and educational establishment, presenting creation science as an option is a “professional risk.”

    Asked if Act 590 were consistent with sound curriculum principles, he said it was, not only for the reasons given earlier, but also because one of the main functions of curriculum is to “transmit the culture,” and “depriving students of learning creationism is actually violating the culture and the tradition of western civilization,” putting students out of touch with their cultural roots.

    Under cross examination, Parker was asked if he would advocate teaching two views on a controversial subject even if there were “not a shred” of evidence for one of them. Parker responded that was not quite his view, and gave as an example the “flat earth” theory. Although the theory is clearly wrong, it could be helpful for learning scientific principles of testing for students to examine the arguments used for the “flat earth” theory and see how those arguments are treated by sound scientific principles.

    Attorney Kaplan of the ACLU asked Parker whether one principle for determining course content were the question, “What can the subject contribute to the general education of the law-abiding citizen?” and Parker responded that that was a valid principle, and that it was also one reason he supported Act 590, since it “helps students to think and analyze,” and added that any bias in the controversy is on the part of the evolutionists, since they want to teach only one view. Teaching only one view, he said, is “tantamount to indoctrination.”

Dr. William Scot Morrow

    The defense then called Dr. William Scot Morrow, professor of biochemistry at Wofford College, South Carolina. Asked about his religious beliefs, Morrow said he is an “agnostic,” “ . . . a person who holds the middle ground and hasn’t made his mind up on the existence of a divine being or god.” He also said he is “an evolutionist.”

    Morrow defined science as “learning the nature of nature,” [or an effort to determine the nature of nature] and the scientific process as consisting of the elements of curiosity, observations of data, hypothesis, and experimentations. He said the principles of experimental repeatability, testability, and falsifiability are essential to science. [Morrow explained that you must have a correct operating model to affirm or falsify an experiment. He said that creation and evolution have no such model available.]

    Morrow said evolution is not falsifiable, and therefore does not fit a strict definition of science. Neither, he said, does creation. He said he thinks the main reason many scientists believe in evolution is that they have “wanted to believe in it, they looked at evidence and saw it one way, and didn’t consider alternatives.”

    He said new ideas are not easily accepted in the scientific community unless they are “linear extrapolations” from existing scientific theories. He described two camps in the scientific community, the “conservative and defensive,” in which people try to preserve the status quo, and the “revolutionary,” which focuses on “anomalies,” the unexplained in science, and uses those as step-off points to new discoveries. “These people ‘the revolutionaries) frequently have a problem getting published because they can shake cherished ideas” because their new theories don’t fit an established worldview or philosophy. Often, he said, they’re either not given the slightest consideration and are treated with “plain silence,” or the scientific community refuses to publish their work, even though it’s good science. Then, he said, as is the case with creation scientists, lack of publication in the scientific community is used as a reason for saying it’s “not scientifically respectable.”

    He put creationist scientists in the “revolutionary” camp in science, saying they were “on the cutting edge of science.” He compared the closed-minded rejection of their work with earlier closedmindedness toward the theory of continental drift, the work of the earliest molecular biologists, and the explanations of early biochemists of biological problems “conservative biologists” had been unable to solve.

    Morrow explained there is a difference between data and interpretation in science. Data are the evidences collected, the accumulated “facts” scientists study, while interpretations are in “intelligent analysis of data.” He said the data creationists look at are the same as the data evolutionists look at, but that creationists have a different interpretation for the data. He also said creationists generally are willing to “look at more of the data,” and that evolutionists often “refuse to look at it.”

    Asked what he thought the prohibition of religious teaching in Act 590 meant, Morrow said he thought it meant a prohibition of trying to persuade students toward any particular religious point of view. He said balanced treatment was something that might often confront teachers, and that the fact a teacher might not like one view was no excuse for not teaching about it. He compared the responsibility of teachers to teach opposing views with that of a doctor to treat a patient even though he doesn’t like the patient.

    He said both evolution and creation should be taught, and that both can be as “scientific or nonscientific, as religious or nonreligious, as the teacher is capable of making them.”

    He said multiple-model teaching, even in science, is quite common and works well. He added that he was surprised that Dr. Mayer of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study would oppose a multi-model approach, since one of the textbooks the BSCS developed actually encouraged multi-model approaches to scientific controversies, and Morrow himself had used that textbook as the basis for a multi-model approach to origins in a course he taught at Concord College. He said the approach emphasized helping students think about evidence and fostered open minds as a learning device. He said the point of a multi-model approach is “to teach how to learn and how to think” more than simply teaching the facts of biology.

    He said in preparing that multi-model approach to origins, he had to do most of the preparation of the evidences for creationism himself, but that by using the principles for seeing various interpretations of data shown in the BSCS textbook, he had found it easy to see how creationists could legitimately understand the same data in different ways from evolutionists.

    He said he supported Act 590 because it “makes for good science” by giving balance to two models, neither of which “lends itself easily to scientific testing and both of which are held by good scientists” [Morrow said that it forces the student to test other views]; because as an educator he believes the inquiry and multiple view ideas are good educational principles [he said that they “cause the student to have a deliberate introduction to contrasting ideas’]; and because as a parent and citizen he thinks the schools should be responsive to the citizenry. He said refusal to present two models on origins was “intellectual arrogance.”

    Asked for evidences for the creationist model, Morrow said they were the same data as were used by evolutionists, but interpreted differently. Creationists, he said, use fossils, experiments on synthesis of life, geology, study of living creatures, and all the other areas of science, just as the evolutionists do. He added that the creation model was just as intriguing to him as a scientist as the evolution model, and that it had a “lot more potential for explaining things.”

    Asked why distinguished scientists who witnessed for the ACLU had said that evidences used by creationists simply are not science, Morrow said, “They’re wrong. They’re lousy in their interpretations on this case.” He added that the fact that “heavyweights favor evolution is of no great matter.” He said he thought the reason witnesses like Stephen Gould, Harold Morowitz, and Francisco Ayala had ridiculed creationism was that they “don’t like it’s conclusion,” they don’t want it to be considered, and they’re “closed-minded.”

    He said one of the best evidences for creation as the explanation for the origin of life was the fact that the statistical probability of the random formation of life from nonlife was “negligible-even for a piece of DNA, let alone a living cell,” He said, for example, that the statistical probability of getting one histone by chance was about 1/20^100, or about like trying to find a single certain grain of sand in all the deserts of the earth-basically impossible. “And that’s just one polypeptide, not life!” he said.

    Under cross examination, Morrow was asked if he knew of evidences for some of the specific points in creation science. Morrow said some examples were the statistical “impossibility” of life coming from nonlife by chance, absence of transitions in the fossil record, insufficiency of mutation to bring about large changes in populations of organisms, and the work of Robert Gentry, another of the defense witnesses, on radiochronology (radioactive decay measurements for dating the earth). [Morrow repeated his previous statement that those who held to diverse opinions on scientific issues were shunned by the scientific community. When asked for specific examples Morrow said that he could not immediately think of any. It was here that Judge Overton stopped the cross examination and vehemently lashed out at Morrow. Overton said, “Something bothers me about you, Dr. Morrow. Do you mean to tell me that you make that statement and cannot give one reference?” Overton continued, “We have been sitting here since 10:30 (time now: 12:10); you have made numerous various opinions, but you have not given any reason for creation except the improbability of the evolutionary position?” Can you site anything in support of the creationist position?” In response Morrow said, “Yes, the fossil record.” Overton again questioned Morrow: “Are you saying the scientific community is engaged in some sort of conspiracy?” Morrow replied that he “would not be surprised to find systematic censorship.”*

Jim Townley

    The defense then called Jim Townley, a chemistry teacher in Fort Smith Southside High School.

    Townley said he understood balanced treatment of two views on origins as requiring that each be taught sufficiently for students to understand them, but that this would not require equal time. He explained that as a chemistry and physics teacher, he would like to be able to teach his students some of the statistical improbabilities of evolution that point toward creationism, and some of the invalidities of radiometric dating which call into question the extremely old ages given by evolutionists for the earth.

    However, Townley said, he had not taught these, and would feel liable for “discipline” from his administrators if he taught them without the backing of Act 590. He said he felt confident that under Act 590, he could research both sides and teach each competently and with balance. He added that he is sure he could teach creation science without its being religious. He said he thought it would be good for his students because it would generate greater interest and the students would therefore try harder to understand the ideas on both sides.

    *Morrow told reporters after his testimony: “Closed-mindedness is something which we have no room for in the courtroom and I think the judge is closed-minded.” He later said, while in an interview with United Press International, that Overton’s interruption of his testimony was “inappropriate and represents bias.”

    Under cross examination, Judge William R. Overton, the judge hearing the case, interrupted ACLU attorney Robert Cearley to ask Townley why he felt like he couldn’t teach about statistical improbabilities of evolution and problems in radiometric dating without teaching creationism. Townley said that it was because questioning one side of mutually opposed options would imply support for the opposite. [In this case, support for creationism. During this exchange between Townley and Overton, Overton warned him the classroom “is not Sunday School.* You’re trying to teach about science!” Townley added that in order to teach creation science the concept of a creator must be included. He said, based upon the untestable character of either model, a creator is “not a scientific concept,” yet when spoken of in the realm of origins is as certainly a viable option as evolution.]

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Extracts of The Creator In The Courtroom: Scopes II (1982) by Norman Geisler, courtesy of Baker Books.

Scans provided by Jim Moore. 

The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II - Chapter Seven

Excerpted Chapters from:

 

Norman L. Geisler's (1982) The Creator in the Courtroom: Scopes II, Mott Media Inc. 

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Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright (c) 1982. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. http://www.bakerbooks.com 

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Please note: This is not an official record of the trial and may, in part, reflect the views of the author who was a witness for the state of Arkansas in favor of Act 590. 

See Participants page for links to more information on Dr. Geisler.

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Chapter Seven

Record of Defense’s Science Testimonies 

Summary of Defense Testimony

Monday, 14 December 1981

Defense Witness Frair 

Dr. Wayne Frair

   The defense then called Dr. Wayne Frair, professor of biology at The King’s College, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.

    Frair testified that through his work in biochemical taxonomy (classifying forms of life by the chemicals they contain), he has become convinced that a “limited change” model - essentially like the creation science model - is the best explanation of living things. This model would be described as a “forest of trees” in which individual kinds of life are the trees, with the branches representing variations within limits of the individual kinds of life. The trees themselves are not connected with each other.

    Evolutionism, he said, could be described as the view that all of life forms only one tree, rather than a forest of trees; and the various kinds of life are the branches, and variations of the kinds are the twigs and leaves on the branches. In this model, every kind of life is related genetically to every other kind of life.

    He said that within the creation science model, one could hold to the “special theory” of evolution, which says that variation has taken place within certain limits among the types of life, but that one would oppose the “general theory” of evolution, which says that all forms of life developed from a single early form and that they are therefore all genetically related.

    Frair said he considered the “State of Arkansas to be on the very cutting edge of an educational movement” which promised to improve education around the country by focusing on teaching students how to think and analyze alternative views not only in science, but in other areas as well.

    Frair quoted from several scientific writings that have been in circulation for as many as fifty years which called into question the general theory of evolution on purely scientific grounds, but which, he said, had been ignored by the scientific community. He also referred to scientific writers who said it is important to present “scientific heresies” to students so they’ll learn to examine points of view and judge them intelligently.

    Overton interrupted the examination by state’s attorney Williams to ask whether Frair could show positive evidence for creation science, not just negative evidence against evolution science. Williams responded that since the two are mutually exclusive, whatever is evidence against one is automatically evidence for the other.

    When Williams asked how creation science could be presented without religious instruction, Frair replied that teachers could present evidences for the two views that life is either all related on a single tree (the evolutionist view) or that life is on many unconnected trees and therefore genetically unrelated. “There wouldn’t even [need to be reference to] a creator,” he said. “They’re just saying, ‘There they [the evidences) are.’ And maybe some people would infer a creator (from that].” He said people could be nonreligious and be creationists. [When asked about the meaning of balanced treatment, Frair said that it meant the teacher should give enough information to make the basic positions “clear and fair.” When asked by Williams how his view of creation effects his teaching methodology he said, “it basically doesn’t.”]

    Frair said most evolutionists seem to misunderstand the creation model. He said they don’t understand the value of having the option of viewing various kinds of life as genetically unrelated, an option he said had made him able to do more objective biochemical research in his own laboratories. Instead, he said, evolutionists feel constrained to fit all life into a single tree, and that can put heavy pressures on their research.

    He said the assertion that removal of evolutionary theory from biology would leave scientists with nothing but confusing, unconnected facts, an assertion made by witnesses for the ACLU, was “patently false,” and that his own studies [Frair here made reference to his studies in proteins and DNA] showed how creationism could be an equally good unifying principle in biology.

    Under cross examination by ACLU attorney Bruce Ennis, Frair acknowledged that as a professor at The King’s College he had to sign a doctrinal statement which said the Bible is without error, and that he is on the board of director of the Creation Research Society, which has a similar doctrinal statement.

    Ennis asked Frair if he could give a clear definition of a “kind,” as referred to in the act, and Frair said a “kind” would “constitute a group of organisms genetically unrelated to other organisms.” He said there was considerable discussion within the evolutionist community about groupings of types of life, and that there was the same kind of discussion going on in creationist circles. He added that “kind” is not necessarily equivalent to “species.”

    Ennis asked Frair if he had Biblical reasons for rejecting evolution, and Frair asked for reference to a particular part of Scripture. Ennis said he was referring to a part of Frair’s own book, The Case for Creation, p. 81, where he said that there were Biblical reasons for rejecting evolution. Frair responded that that statement occurred in a footnote to the book and was a quotation from a Biblical commentator, not his own words.

Tuesday, 15 December 1981

Defense Witnesses Helder, Chittick,

Roth, Coffin 

Dr. Margaret G. Helder

   The defense then called Dr. Margaret G. Helder, retired professor of biology at Brock University, St. Catherial, Ontario, Canada, a specialist in the biological study of algae and other areas of botany.

    Helder testified that her research showed that the green algaes could not be, as evolutionists had long thought, ancestral to all the types of plant life, but rather that the various types of plants had to have genetically unrelated ancestors, a view which she said supports creation science.

    Helder also testified that there are two groups in the world of science, one of which says that there are some things that can not be explained by purely mechanistic, naturalistic processes, and another group which says there aren’t. She said an assumed sine qua non of much scientific endeavor has been the belief in an ability to explain all phenomena in mechanistic terms. “I want to challenge that definition of science,” she said. She said, though, that her own religious faith had nothing to do with her studies in plant biology which indicated that creationism was a better explanation of origins than evolutionism.

    Helder said that she had often discussed evidences for separate ancestry for plants in her botany classes, showing that while certain characteristics might indicate a relationship between two kinds of plants, other characteristics contradicted the idea of relationship. She had never had to introduce any religious literature to discuss her creationist views. She said her studies indicated that many biologists, especially among botanists, are “becoming more and more aware of the differences in forms of life. They are tending more and more toward the position of creationism of separate origins of life.”

Dr. Donald Chittick

    The defense then called Dr. Donald Chittick, former professor of chemistry at the University of Puget Sound and George Fox College, and currently director of research and development of Pyneuco, Inc., a business which converts biological waste materials into usable fuel.

    Chittick said he was an evolutionist while in graduate school, but that by reading literature on origins from both sides when he was a graduate student he “was convinced that the creation model was a better explanation of the data.”

    Chittick pointed out that science works by beginning with certain assumptions, which it uses to interpret data, and then arrives at conclusions which are consistent with both the assumptions and the data. However, if one begins with different assumptions, he can interpret the same data and come to different conclusions. This, he said, is what happens in the controversy over evolution and creation-evolutionists begin with certain assumptions about reality and natural processes, interpret the data in accord with those assumptions, and arrive at evolutionary conclusions. The important thing to realize, he said, is that both groups look at the same data, and the different conclusions are necessitated by the different assumptions.

    He said he believes, even though he is a creationist, that evolutionism should be taught, but that it should be balanced with teaching creationism. He said he has taught creationism often, and that he has done so without making it religious. Balance, he said, need not mean equal time for the two, but simply mentioning both and giving evidences for both. Each view, he said, should be taught by starting with an examination of the assumptions behind each view, then seeing how those assumptions bear on the interpretation of the data, then examining the data themselves, and then viewing the conclusions.

    He said his own preference for the creation model had assisted him in making discoveries about converting biological wastes into synthetic “fossil” fuels. Evolutionists, he said, assume that the earth is extremely old and that “biomass” was converted to oil and coal through millions of years by biochemical processes.

    However, he said, if one assumed that the earth were young, he could look for another way of forming “fossils fuels” like oil and coal. When Chittick did this, he found that geochemical processes could convert biomass into fuels much more quickly than biochemical processes, quickly enough to do it within thousands of years, thus consistent with a creation model assumption of a relatively young earth.

    Experiments he performed based on this assumption resulted in the development of a process for converting biomass into fuels which he has already shown workable by using that fuel to power a cross-country trip.

    He said actual studies showed that because of geochemical processes, wood used as mine supports had in some cases been known to convert to the level of anthracite coal in as little as ten years, implying that a geochemical explanation for the formation of coal and oil was better than the traditional biochemical explanation. The studies showed that coal and oil actually resulted from having large amounts of biomass buried rapidly, heated and pressurized rapidly. This, he said, sup ported a young age for the earth and also the creationist idea that a universal flood was responsible for much of the geological structure of the earth’s crust.

    Chittick also testified that his research had shown traditional radioactive decay dating systems to be unreliable for dating the age of rocks, and therefore of the earth. [The rocks Chittick referred to were actually moon samples. He said that when examining moon rocks by isotope methodology re searchers concluded with three different ages for the same rock.] Instead, he said, those systems were an indicator of the type of geologic forces which acted on the rocks when they were formed, and were not indicative of age at all. This meant, he said, that the most highly-relied-upon method for dating the earth to the about 4.5 billion years assumed by evolutionists could not be used, and other methods, which indicated a young age for the earth, should be used instead.

    [When asked if it was fair to challenge the evolutionary theory Chittick said yes, that refusal to teach creationism “dulls education-teaching only evolution is bad science and bad education.”]

    Under cross-examination, Chittick was asked whether he held certain religious beliefs. Defense attorney Williams objected to that line of questioning, as the defense had done several times before, on the basis that a person’s religious beliefs had nothing to do with his reliability as a scientific witness and were therefore irrelevant unless it could be proved that “in fact one’s religious beliefs have caused one to compromise one’s profession as a scientist,” and referred to a ruling in another court which said the religious beliefs or opinions of a witness could not be used to discredit him. Judge Overton overruled the objection. [When asked whether he agreed with the contents of a Bible Science Association newsletter about putting “Christ and the Bible . . . back into science is one of the most powerful methods of witnessing,” he said no.]

Dr. Ariel Roth

    The defense then called Dr. Ariel Roth, director of the Geoscience Research Institute at Loma Linda University, California. Roth is a former professor of biology at the University of Michigan, Andrews University, and former chairman of the biology department at Loma Linda University. [Roth testified that when the creation and evolution models were compared, creation best fit the available data. He said that since both use the same data, interpretation is the real issue.]

    [When asked if both were theories, he said yes, based on the fact that each view was an extrapolation from available information. The issue of origins cannot be tested but can be theorized. When asked if both views should be taught, Roth answered in the affirmative yet asserted that both should be carefully scrutinized.]

    Roth testified that his research on coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean showed that the reefs probably grow much faster than evolutionists had thought, and explained that this supported the creation model. He said the reefs grow 1-4000 times as fast as the speed at which the ocean floors are dropping, yet there are many reefs which are “drowned,” which are now so deep in the ocean that they get too little sunlight to continue growing. This means, he said, that the ocean floors must have dropped very quickly at one time, a fact which is consistent with the creationist belief that a worldwide geological-hydrological catastrophe helped shape the earth’s geology.

    According to the evolutionist assumption of the speed at which the ocean floor drops, Roth said, the reefs should never have gotten “drowned” because, according to his studies, they would have been growing so fast they would have kept their tops right at the surface.

    Asked about other evidences for creation science, Roth mentioned a number of “serious problems” with the evolution model: high improbability of random formation of life; difficulty of evolving complex integrated structures since each part of the integrated structure alone would be useless to the organism in which it first appeared and therefore would be weeded out by natural selection; the near impossibility of the random formation of chromosomes, genes ordered to fit together both by internal components of genes and the ordering of the genes to fit each other. Roth explained that while these problems can’t be explained by the evolution model, they fit perfectly into the predictions of the creation model and therefore support creationism.

    As examples of the difficulty of evolving “complex integrated structures,” Roth noted the relationship of “the ear, the brain, and the auricular nerve,” and the respiratory system. Of the respiratory system, he said, “This system would not be functional until all the parts were there .... How did these parts survive during evolution as useless parts under natural selection?”

    Roth said evolutionists usually have not fairly evaluated creation science, but simply reject it without proper scientific investigation because it is a “paradigm” that conflicts with the “paradigm” of evolution. He said a paradigm is an “interpretive grid” through which scientists examine data. Roth said it is difficult for scientists to question their paradigms, but that in the history of science, many paradigms have been adopted and used for awhile, and then questioned and replaced by others. With their commitment to the evolutionary paradigm, Roth said, it is not surprising that evolutionists should “object so strongly” to a balanced presentation of creation science and evolution science.

    Asked if creation science could be taught only on scientific grounds without religious references, Roth said it could, since .1 origin by design” is a scientific idea and since “knowledge is separate from commitment.” “I don’t have to join a church to learn about it,” Roth said.

Dr. Harold G. Coffin

    Dr. Harold G. Coffin, senior research scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute, Loma Linda, Calif., testified next for the defense.

    Coffin began by saying that both evolution science and creation science are assumptive constructs through which data is interpreted. “We are dealing with something that we have to accept by assuming, by assumption, in both cases.” He said evolution has to assume spontaneous generation of life, because it has never observed it, and creation science has to assume the existence of a creator, because it cannot prove the creator’s existence. [Coffin said that in either case “faith” is necessary for acceptance.]

    He said his own work in biology supported the creation science model and opposed the evolution science model because he had found four important factors: (1) the “uniqueness of life” [“We cannot define what life is; we can tell what it does, but we can’t define it.”]; (2) sudden appearance of life in the “Cambrian” rocks of the geologic column indicates sudden creation instead of slow evolution, since on the evolutionary assumption, the complex life forms found there should be preceded by millions of years of less complex life forms, but are not; (3) the absence of “connecting links” between basic kinds of animals and plants in the fossil record; (4) the inability of scientists to cause or observe in modern life forms changes from one basic kind of life to another.

    He said he estimates that about 95% of the material he reads on evolution he would have no quarrel with, because it deals with minor changes within basic kinds of life, while the rest of evolutionary theory “is speculation.”

    Coffin said many examples of fossils supported the creationist model which says fossils are primarily the result of a worldwide flood. [He said that according to present processes, an expired fish decays in one week. In order to get the perfect shapes available in the fossil record, the fish would have to be covered within a period of five hours. This rapid burial could only have been caused by a catastrophic flood.] He showed a picture of a fossil fish which was completely intact when it was buried and which had its mouth open at the time, showing it suffocated. This, he said, was one of thousands of fossils around the world which support the idea that a flood buried most life forms and resulted in the present fossil record.

    Other examples of fossils which he said would require rapid burial in a flood are animal footprints in sand and fossilized animal dung, either of which would have been obliterated if they had to wait for slow burial as predicated by the evolution model. He said such fossils suggest “rapid geological activity” similar to what would be expected in a worldwide flood.

    He said modern research on coal beds indicates that they are not the result of slow, stationary burial of biomass but rather of enormous amounts of biomass being transported in liquid and deposited quickly into depressions, and then buried quickly by sediments. This, he said, was the earlier understanding of coal beds, but when George Lyell and others postulated a slow buildup for geology in accord with evolutionary assumptions, many coal geologists abandoned this understanding, but now the geological community is returning to it. Such formation of coal beds would indicate enormous flooding.

Under cross-examination by Ennis of the ACLU, Coffin said that the term “kinds” should probably be understood as broader than the term “species,” and in some instances could include all the organisms in a given order in standard taxonomy.

 

Wednesday, 16 December 1981

Defense Witnesses Wickramasinghe, Gentry 

Dr. N. Chandra Wickramasinghe

   The defense then called Dr. N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, professor and head of the department of applied mathematics and astronomy at University College, Cardiff, Wales, in Great Britain. Wickramasinghe is a Buddhist.

    Wickramasinghe testified that his research in partnership with Sir Frederick Hoyle at University College in astronomy and astrophysics proved beyond doubt that “interstellar dust,” the tiny dust particles which form immense clouds in space and filter the light from some stars, are actually bits of biological material similar to the bacterium E. coli, a bacterium which aids in digesting food in animal colons, This discovery led Wickramasinghe and Hoyle to examine modern theories of the origin of life.

    They found on examination of the traditional Darwinian idea of the random formation of life through mechanistic processes that the statistical probability of forming even a single enzyme, which is a building block of genes, which in turn are building blocks of cells, is 1 in every 1040,000 tries, or in other words, statistically impossible. That would require more tries for the formation of one enzyme, he said, than there are atoms in all the stars of all the galaxies in the entire known universe.

    These statistical improbabilities caused Hoyle and Wickramasinghe to decide that there must be some intelligent creator, either within the universe or outside it. Wickramasinghe testified that his Buddhist background drove him to the belief that the creator was a part of the universe, but that it would be equally possible to think the creator was supernatural.

    Hoyle and Wickramasinghe theorize that this creator designed and formed life in the cosmos, and that life came to earth during its early periods through influxes of this interstellar dust. They said they do not believe that spontaneous generation of life is possible, but that they do believe life evolved on earth,

    They added a twist to evolutionary thinking, however, by saying that the new genetic material needed for upward development of life forms is added to earth life forms by the addition of new bacteria from space, carried sometimes on meteorites. These new bacteria, Wickramasinghe said, would combine with the genetic material in a given organism and would cause upward changes.

    Wickramasinghe said, though, that the probabilities of upward change by chance combination of the new bacteria with current life forms was so infinitely tiny that he and Hoyle had to postulate the idea that the “intelligent designer” arranged the times and places at which the interstellar bacteria would arrive on earth so that it would cause upward change.

    Wickramasinghe explained that he and Hoyle came to their conclusion about the nature of interstellar dust through minute astrophysical examination, and that the scientific community, while skeptical of their findings because they militate against traditional ideas, has not been able to show any flaws in their research. He said they measured the light spectrum given by interstellar dust and compared it with the spectrums of known chemicals on earth. They first found that the dust particles had to contain large amounts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; in other words, that they had to be organic. Then they realized that the spectrum was that of a highly complex organic substance. Then one day while searching through an atlas of light spectrums, Wickramasinghe stumbled on a spectrum that was exactly like the one given by interstellar dust. The amazing thing, he said, was that the spectrum was one for cellulose, a sugar which is the basis for most fibrous plants. Further research led them to the conclusion that the chemical makeup of the dust is most like that of the bacterium E. coli.

    Wickramasinghe said he and Hoyle were both surprised at their findings, and described the experience as “traumatic” because it called into question age-old assumptions about life having been limited primarily to earth. They delayed publishing their findings for nearly a year because they wanted to test the findings thoroughly and rule out all other possible interpretations of the data. “We tried, in the true spirit of science, to remain as conservative as possible, until it finally became impossible to remain conservative.”

    Wickramasinghe said the scientific community had responded primarily with silence, and that this was common when research challenged basic scientific assumption. However, he said, another scientist studying meteorites had found corroborating evidence in the form of fossilized bacteria in the meteorites, bacteria which he said had to have come from space before the meteorites came into the earth’s atmosphere. He said he and Hoyle had encountered a bias from the scientific community against anything which questioned traditional neo-Darwinian ideas, and that was the reason for his support of Act 590. He said the best spirit of science is an open mind. While he did not accept all of the ideas of the creation model, he said that as a scientist he would not reject any of them until he had examined the scientific arguments pro and con, and said examination of competing views in science would be beneficial to students.

    Wickramasinghe said that contrary to the popular notion that only creationism relies on the supernatural, evolutionism must as well, since the probabilities of random formation of life (spontaneous generation) are so tiny as to require a “miracle” for spontaneous generation to have occurred, making belief in spontaneous generation “tantamount to a theological argument.” [Wickramasinghe said that to believe life came from spontaneous generation was about as plausible as “a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747.”]’

    He said his research drove him to believe that an intelligent creator exists because of the impossibility of the chance formation and development of life anywhere in the universe. He said this conclusion was despite his agnostic Buddhist beliefs. It was a difficult position for him to take emotionally because it differed from all his earlier thought.

    His research, however, left him two possible conclusions: “I think one is driven, almost inescapably, to accept the fact, or rather the possibility, that there is a creator, and this brings the creator’s existence into the realm of empirical science.” He concluded that denial of some form of creation implies “blindness to fact” and “absolute arrogance.”

    “I think that these scientists have been incredibly perverse,” Wickramasinghe said in an exclusive interview with the [Pea Ridge, Arkansas] TIMES after the trial. “I believe that they have made all manner of ridiculous statements. In fact, [they] sort of imply that some kind of scientific miracle occurred. They are quite vehement in denying the possibility of miracles in the theological or religious way, but they have involved miracles all along in this chain of argument-processes that are so improbable that to postulate that it happened really is tantamount to saying that a miracle happened.” either life and the universe were the result of a deliberate act of a creator, or they are eternal. For those who accept the modern cosmological ideas which hold the universe to be about 15 billion years old, he said, the idea that it and life are eternal is impossible.

    He said such denial of a creator and creation in the scientific community generally comes from an “anti-religious bias” in the scientific community. He said there was an implied rejection of theological views in the rise of Darwinism at the beginning of the industrial revolution. He said the “strong instinctive reaction of scientists” against creationism stems from their “belief in the supremacy and centrality of man and earth,” and added ...... the human ego has been pushed right into an insignificant corner,” and humanistic evolutionary ideas are a way of saving that ego. He said evolutionists view man as a god.

    Wickramasinghe said he and Hoyle had not published their research in standard scientific journals because the editors of those journals generally are closed-minded to anything which questions Darwinian ideas on the origin and development of life. Instead, they chose to publish it in book form so their critics and they would be free to have exchange of ideas on the matter. He said the general commitment of the scientific community to the “conventional wisdom” about biology made it nearly impossible for most people to objectively analyze ideas that called the “conventional wisdom” into question, and added that his own lack of training in biology since he graduated from college was an advantage to him because he would have been “hamstrung” by the “conventional wisdom.” [He stated that you cannot accommodate the conventional wisdom in a rational framework. He said that creationism “so profoundly and so deeply” challenges the main line thinking in biology. He asserted that children who are made to accept the evolutionary model in the classroom are “brainwashed.” He added “it is the biggest travesty of all that a society would close its mind to the biggest question of all, the origins of life.”]

    When asked to compare evolution and creation as to their religious overtones, Wickramasinghe said they were both “deeply religious,” and that if he had to choose between the two, he thinks evolution is religiously “more insidious and has more evil implications” than creationism.

    Under cross-examination, the ACLU lawyer argued with Wickramasinghe that probability arguments are really illegitimate, since highly improbable things happen all the time. He gave as an example the chance attendance of any given 50,000 people at a football game. He said the chances for that would be 50,00050,000, a probability far less than that Wickramasinghe had estimated for the random formation of an enzyme. But, he said, the attendance of a given 50,000 people at a football game occurred regularly nearly every week through football season. This, he said, showed that probability statistics are not relevant.

    Wickramasinghe responded under redirect examination by the state that the ACLU’s argument on probability misunderstood probability theory. First, he said, the 50,000 people at tending a football game don’t get there by chance-they decide to go, buy tickets, and travel there. Second, the arrangement in which 50,000 people sit at a football game is unimportant, since any order is fine enough for a football crowd. However, with enzymes, arrangement is of utmost importance, there being at least 15 positions in a chain of amino acids in any given enzyme which must be “present.” Since people go to football games by intelligent choice, Wickramasinghe said, the ACLU attorney’s argument actually supported the creation model, not the evolution model.

Robert Gentry

    The final witness called by the state was Robert Gentry, a research scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Gentry specialized in the study of the breakdown of radioactive materials in rocks.

    Gentry testified for nearly five hours regarding research he had done on “haloes” formed by radioactive decay of polonium in granite rocks and in coalified wood (wood that has turned to coal). The “haloes” are circles around the decaying atoms of the radioactive material, circles which are etched into the rock by escaping alpha or beta particles that result from the decay.

    These circles, Gentry explained, can be identified with certainty through examination under an electron microscope, and are made by all decaying radioactive materials in solidified rocks. The circles given by different radioactive materials are different from each other.

    Gentry said one isotope of polonium has a half life of only about three-and-a-half minutes. This means that the rock has to be solidified before or within seconds of the time the polonium isotope gets into it, or there will be no halo in the rock.

    In some instances, this isotope of polonium can be given by the decay of uranium, of which the polonium isotope is one by product. However, sometimes polonium decay haloes are found in rocks without any possible uranium source for the polonium. This, Gentry explained, means the polonium had to be present in the rocks at the moment they solidified.

    This in turn, Gentry said, means the rocks had to solidify extremely rapidly, under conditions unknown to science today. This indicates the likelihood of a creation of the earth and its primordial rocks and elements by a supernatural creator, and cannot be explained on the basis of evolutionary assumptions.

    Evolutionary assumptions about geology insist that “basement granites,” the granites which underlie the sedimentary layers of the earth, and the type in which Gentry often finds polonium haloes without uranium sources for the polonium, were formed by slow cooling and compaction over periods of two or three billion years. Since Gentry’s research shows that they must have cooled almost instantly, Gentry said his research calls into serious doubt the traditional scientific idea that the earth must be 4.5 billion years old.

    Similar experiments on polonium haloes found in coalified wood led Gentry to postulate that the wood had been buried during a huge deluge and had turned rapidly to coal rather than very slowly, as evolutionary assumptions would predict. This, he said, supported the idea of the creation model that the earth’s geology is best explained on the basis of a flood.

    Gentry also testified and showed letters substantiating his testimony regarding what he called a bias in the scientific community once it realized the implications of his research. Before the implications became clear, he was able to get his studies published quickly in the leading scientific journals, because his work was recognized around the world as the leading work on radioactive haloes in rocks. However, when it became clear that his work was calling into question the whole of traditional “geochronology,” the assumptions about dating the age of the earth and its rocks, and would support a belief in a young earth, the journals suddenly became closed to him, and it took repeated efforts, and threats to tell the press about the bias, for Gentry to be allowed to publish the papers in the journals again.

    He said the general reaction of the evolutionist community was to discount the research, even though they could show no errors in it. He gave several examples of geologists who responded to his research simply by saying it must be wrong because if it were right it would require them to rethink all their theories about the age of the earth and the formation of the earth’s geology-a hard task!

Thursday, 17 December 1981

   Responding to one critic who said Gentry’s research called into question the whole of modern theories of geologic time and who said that should not be done since so much data had been shown to fit into those theories, Gentry said, “While I can appreciate York’s desire to emphasize internal consistency, it should be evident that irrespective of how much data has been or yet can be fitted into the present model, the question of its ultimate reliability hinges on whether there exist any observations which falsify the theory.” He said his data on radiohaloes were such data, and that therefore the theories of an old earth and slow formation of earth’s basement rocks should be abandoned in favor of a theory of a young earth and rapid formation of the basement rocks.

   Gentry concluded with a challenge to the scientific community to try to falsify his theory. He said if they could simply synthesize one piece of granite the size of a fist under ordinary physical processes, he would abandon his theory and become an evolutionist.

   Under cross-examination by Ennis, Gentry acknowledged that he does subscribe to the statement of belief of the Creation Research Society, of which he is a member, but added that if the scientific evidence leads him to believe that the Bible is in error, he will certainly abandon his current belief that the Bible is without error in matters of science.

Judge Overton’s Closing Statements

   At the close of the cross-examination of Gentry, the defense rested its case, and Judge William R. Overton gave a concluding statement. He told people not to write to him with suggestions for how to decide the case because he does not consider mail about cases, and told reporters not to make collect phone calls to his office because he wouldn’t accept them.

   “I will not undertake to decide the validity of the Biblical version of the creation of the earth and life, or the theory of evolution,” Overton said, but rather he will decide whether Act 590 itself is constitutional-in other words, whether it violates the separation of church and state guaranteed under the First Amendment, whether it violated academic freedom, and whether it is unconstitutionally vague.

    He said he would try to make a decision before Christmas. [The decision was not announced by the judge until January 5, 1982

 

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Extracts of The Creator In The Courtroom: Scopes II (1982) by Norman Geisler, courtesy of Baker Books.

Scans provided by Jim Moore.