No. LR-C-81-322
REV. BILL MCLEAN, ET AL. *
Plaintiffs * IN THE UNITED STATES
*
VS. * DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN
*
THE STATE OF ARKANSAS, * DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS,
ET AL. *
Defendants * WESTERN DIVISION
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ORAL DEPOSITION OF DR. W. SCOT MORROW, PH.D.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
APPEARANCES: MS. LAURIE R. FERBER,
Attorney-at-Law
AND
MR. DAVID KLASFELD,
Attorney-at-Law, Skadden, Arps,
Slate, Meagher, & Flom, 919
Third Avenue, New York, New
York 10022
** For the Plaintiffs
MR. CALLIS CHILDS,
Attorney-at-Law, Assistant
Attorney General, Attorney
General's Office, Justice
Building, Little Rock,
Arkansas 72201
** For the Defendants
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ALSO PRESENT: DR. JOHN W. CRENSHAW, JR., PH.D.
DR. NORMAN GILES, PH.D.
MR. KEVIN MALLERY
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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ANSWERS AND DEPOSITION OF DR. W. SCOT MORROW,
PH.D., a witness produced on behalf of the Plaintiffs,
taken in the above-styled and numbered cause on the
22nd day of November, 1981, before Certified Court
Reporters and Notaries Public in and for Fulton County,
Georgia, at Atlanta Marriott Hotel, Courtland and
International Boulevard, Atlanta, Georgia, at 2:45
p.m., pursuant to the agreement thereinafter set
forth.
MR. DAVID KLASFELD: There are certain
stipulations we want on the record, that is,
signing is not waived; that our expectation
is to get the signed copy back prior to the
trial.
All objections are waived except as
objections to form. The deposition is being
taken for all purposes of discovery.
MR. CALLIS CHILDS: I don't think
that's what we stipulated.
MR. KLASFELD: No.
MS. LAURIE FERBER: All purposes
allowable under the Federal Rules.
MR. CHILDS: There's no stipulation
that is it to perpetuate testimony.
MS. FERBER: Okay.
3
MR. KLASFELD: Okay.
DR. W. SCOT MORROW, PH.D.
the witness hereinbefore named, being first duly
cautioned and sworn to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth testified as follows:
EXAMINATION
BY MR. KLASFELD:
Q Dr. Morrow, would you please state all the
scientific evidence that you're aware of which supports
Creation Science?
A All right. Do I have time to think about
this one, or do I have to --
Q Certainly.
A Well, previously, I've expressed myself
to the effect that Scientific Creation is -- as I see
it, is not a coherent body of concepts, and it, as I
see it, consists of a complication of what could be
called insufficiencies in evolutionary theory.
Now, to try to answer your question directly,
I would say, the strongest argument against evolution
is probably a statistical one based upon what I think
is the low probability, the complex systems -- complex
living systems could develop that degree of complexity
in the time that apparently was available.
Q How much time is that?
4
A Well, not being a cosmologist, I'd have
to rely upon what other people have told me or what
I have read. And presumably, if we take five billion
years as the age of the earth and if we believe the
evidence for fossil bacteria is about three billion
years, we have two billion years to go from nothing
to the first cell. I don't think that's enough time.
Q You don't think that two billion years
to the development of the first cell was enough time
for the first cell to be developed.
A That's exactly right.
Q How much time would have been enough time?
A I haven't the slightest idea, but I'm
certain that two billion years is not enough.
Q Why?
A Why?
Q Yes.
A Well, for the first cell to be a viable,
living, reproducing cell, you would have to have a
working protein synthetic system, DNA replicating
system, RNA replicating system, and you'd have to
have a generic road in place; and I don't see how this
is going to happen, given -- well, at least to my
knowledge -- the loss of chance.
Q And that's how life came together, by the
5
loss of chance?
A Well, it depends upon what you're choosing
as your starting concepts.
Q My problem is that if you don't know how
long that it would have had to take, why do you think
two billion years wasn't enough time?
A That's a perfectly good question. I would
myself turn it around and say that if you think it
isn't enough time, then it's your obligation to show
me the mechanisms and the time spans and show it
adequately.
Q But why is two billion years not enough
time?
A Why is it not enough?
Q Yes. What are the probabilities and the
mathematical functions that suggest that it's not
enough?
A I'm not a statistician. I don't make
those calculations.
Q Well, somebody else made them in the way
that you were satisfied with?
A In general what I have read about that;
yes.
Q Whom?
A Who?
6
Q Yes.
- - -
7
Q What have you read?
A Well, some recent statements by Hoyle.
Q That would be Fred Hoyle?
A Right. I don't have a long documented list
of what I read and what said what to back this up.
Q I may be wrong, but is it Mr. Hoyle's area
of expertise of astronomy?
A Sir, I don't see that that is any particular
deficiency on his ability to sit down and make statis-
tical calculations; that that's one of his specialities.
Q Doesn't it affect his ability to make statis-
tical calculations about subject matters other than
astronomy?
A No.
Q If he was going to use statistical abilities
to pick race horses, would that be okay?
A I don't know if I quite understand what you're
saying. If you are asking me whether or not Hoyle is
capable of making intelligent scientific statements
outside his formal area of expertise, I would say yes,
he is.
Q Who else besides Hoyle?
A Something I read attributed to Echols indi-
cated that he felt that there was insufficient time for
the brain to develop.
8
Q Who is Echols?
A Sir John Echols is a Nobel Price winner and
neurophysiology or biochemistry.
Q Where did you read this?
A I can dig it out of my briefcase, it was an
article sent to one of my colleagues at Wafford College.
Those are recent things. Like I can put names to
articles, so to speak, or a name to an event.
Q Who else?
A I don't remember. But let's just put it this
way: A simple type of calculation, as I see it, would
be something like this. Let's say you have a polypep-
tide, it's fifty amino acids long. That's a reasonable
length for an enzyme.
If you have 20 different amino acids, I would
presume you would put these amino acids into a specific
order. I guess you would have something like twenty
to the fifty power combinations.
Q Un-huh.
A Now, if we assume, for example, that molecules
-- all of these molecules are viable and they collide,
let's say, one per second, I would tend to doubt that
you would get that enzyme in two billion years.
Q Tend to doubt is -- at least to my mind --
an unscientific choice of words.
9
A Not at all. Scientists not in exact field.
Q I understand that. But to say that your
most serious argument against the Theory of Evolution
--
A The Theory of Molecular -- I think you know I
am an evolutionist. I am talking about the difficulty
from going from no polymer species to a living cell in
two billion years.
Q How do you define evolution? You say you are
an evolutionist. How do you define that?
A How do I define it?
Q Yes.
A Let's say there's two different realms that
you would be dealing with. One would be what I call the
chemical evolutionary days which would take us from the
beginning of the planet Earth -- or whatever that might
be -- to the point where you have a cell that's capable
of reproducing itself.
Then beyond the cell to what we have today
would be the Darwinian phase. So what I direct my
attention to is the earlier part.
Q When you say you are directing your attention
--
A Yes.
Q Is it what you direct your attention to in your
10
attention to in your professional life?
A I am a biochemist. Insofar as I have to teach
biochemistry in these topics, these are part of what I
teach, yes.
In other words, I don't see a difficulty with
the Darwinian aspect of evolution once you have the
cell. I see some central difficulties getting to this.
Q What has all this got to do with Creation
Science. I mean, the fact that you don't think that the
cell would have lived in two billion years --
A That's not exactly what I said. I said -- not
being accustomed to talking in a legal terminological
way. I don't think there's enough time to produce the
first cell, that's what I said. Now, what that had to
do with Creation Science?
Q Yes.
A Well, presumably your scientific creationists
don't think there's enough time either, and I would
presume that my fellow evolutionists feel there is enough
time.
Q But creation -- let me start at the beginning.
How would you define Creation Science?
A Creation Science is a set of concepts that's
pretty much based upon what I would call a sudden un-
folding of events leading to the formation of life on
11
the planet as we know it.
Evolutionary Science is based upon a much more
gradual unfolding. So we are really talking about how
much these things happen.
///
12
Q Does Creation Science have any kind of
scriptural basis, or is it purely a scientific --
A As I understand, it's quite scientific.
I don't see any necessity to bring the Bible in it
at all. Frankly, I think it's irrelevant.
Q The Bible is irrelevant?
A As far as these particular arguments are
concerned, yes.
Q Well, the Act 590, Section 4A and 4B,
Section 6, contrasts what is characterized as the
Evolution Science Notion of how long all of this
took to the Creation Science function.
The Evoluation Science Notion is, quote,
an inception several billion years ago, the earth and
somewhat later of life. The Creation Science Notion
is, quote, an irrelatively recent inception of the
earth and living kinds.
Now, in earlier depositions in this case,
witnesses for the Defendant, expert witnesses, have
testified that they believe that the relatively
recent inception of the earth, of which the statute
speaks, took place between eight and ten thousand
years ago.
Do you believe that to be true?
MR. CHILDS: David, we will interject
13
one thing, and that is, that some of the
witnesses went over -- one witness went to
a million, and another witness went to a
hundred thousand, so within that range.
MR. KLASFELD: Okay.
MR. CHILDS: I think that will be a
fair statement.
THE WITNESS: You are asking me if I
think that's true. My own understanding of
the evidence is that, that is far too recent.
MR. KLASFELD: Okay.
MR. CHILDS: Remember, I was talking
about five billion and three billion.
MR. KLASFELD: Right. I understand.
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) Well, let me just take
you through the definition of creation of science, as
it reads in this statement.
(Pause.)
Section 4 says, quote, Creation Science
means the scientific evidence for creation and
influences from that scientific evidence. Creation
Science includes the scientific evidences and related
influences that indicate, one, sudden creation of the
universe, energy, and life from nothing.
What is the scientific evidence that you
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are aware of that supports that statement?
A Well, I would have to delete "life" from
it, and I would say that pretty much sounds like the
basic concept; in other words, I don't see any
difference between that statement, if you delete
"life" and what is called the Big Bang Theory.
Q And if you include life?
A Now, if you include life, then we have to
worry about what the word "sudden" means.
Q Okay.
A Now, if the universe is 25 billion years
old, and all this takes place in five billion years,
that might qualify as being sudden.
Q Too, the insufficiency of mutation and
natural selection in bringing about development of
all living kinds from a single organism.
Let me just for a second skip down to
B2.
A Well, I would, myself, say that I don't
see anything wrong with Item 2. Remember, I'm an
evolutionist.
Q I understand.
A Okay. I think that mutation is fine.
Q Do you think that mutation of natural
selection are sufficient to bring about the development
15
of all living kinds or a single organism?
A I'm convinced of the evidence of mutation
or natural selection of being sufficient, yes.
Q Are you aware of any scientific evidence
that supports 4A, that is insufficient?
A The insufficiency, only insofar as time
goes, on the people that are in that field, do change
the model.
Q Well --
A But they don't change it enough to make
the model invalid.
Q But are you aware of any scientific
evidence?
A I'm aware that the evolution scientist
or the scientists that do this work have not settled
among themselves exactly how mutation and natural
selection brought these processes about.
Q Well, that's a different thing. That
sort of speaks toward the mechanism.
A Well, there are insufficiencies in their
model. But I'm not persuaded that those insufficien-
cies are enough to throw those out as the Bible
processes.
Q Three, changes only in fixed limits of
original kinds of animals. Are you aware of any
16
scientific evidence that supports that?
A No.
Q Four, separate ancestries of apes. Are
you aware of any scientific evidence that supports
that?
A There are the two people that are
preeminent of that aspect who are alive today, and
I cannot remember their names.
Q Do they disagree as to whether or not
there was at some point a common ancestor for man and
apes?
A As far -- now, they don't disagree about
that, but they certainly disagree about how that
common ancestry was.
Q I understand that, but are you aware of
any scientific evidence that supports a notion of
a separate ancestry for man and apes?
A None that I think is sufficient enough
to persuade me to change my mind on it, so I would
say none.
Q None.
A I mean, there's no point in bringing
up half arguments and conjectures.
Q My point exactly.
Five, explanation of the earth catastrophism
17
including the occurrence of world-wide flood.
A I know of no evidence for a world-wide
flood, that I find persuasive.
Q Okay.
A As far as catastrophism, what do you mean
by catastrophism?
Q I think the question is what the Statute
means. The Statute means to say essentially that the
processes are going on here and taking place much
more suddenly than the evolutionists would have occur
in their model.
Q Well. to the extent that you are familiar
with the Creation Science model --
A Right.
Q -- are you aware of after the emotion of
a world-wide flood, that --
A I know the creationists interpret the
fossil evidence that say, and I know that as an
evolutionist, I interpret the evidence a different
way.
Q Are you aware of any scientific evidence
that lends credence to the science model of --
A I'm aware, or that there's no scientific
evidence proving either one, and that's more to the
point.
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Q But there's no scientific evidence --
A There's no scientific evidence proving
either of those concepts.
Q Do you have any expertise in theology?
A I don't need it.
Q Why don't you need it?
A Because what I said stands on its own
merits, as a principle of science.
Q You are not aware of any scientific
evidence that supports the notion that the fossil
record --
A There is plenty.
Q Excuse me. Let me finish.
A No. You are putting words in my mouth.
Q First, let me finish the question, just
for the record, so the record accurately reflects
what my question is and what your answer is.
A Okay.
Q My question is, is what you said, that
there's no scientific evidence which supports the
notion that it took more than a year to lay down the
fossil record?
A I know of no scientific evidence that I
find persuasive that supports the idea of a world-wide
flood of the kind that scientific creationists believe
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in.
Q Okay. My second question: What I
understand 5 to be about, from my taking of
depositions in the case, and my studying of Creation
Science, and if you have a different perception, you
should make that clear, is that the evolution --
excuse me -- the creationists believe that there was
a world-wide flood that took place over approximately
the course of a year, and that the entire geologic
column and the entire fossil record throughout the
world was laid down during the course of that flood,
and the subsequent drainoff of evaporation of the
water from that flood.
Are you aware of any scientific evidence
which supports that theory?
A No. None that I find persuasive. Look,
I've discussed this with creationists back for about
the last 30 years. Okay. And their own thinking
has changed over these 30 years.
Q But it hasn't changed --
A I know that there are creationists that
don't think that all this took place in one year.
Q How long do they think this took place?
A I bet they are talking about 10,000 years.
Q Ten thousand years?
20
A I would guess.
Q Are you aware of any scientific evidence
that would suggest it could happen in 10,000 years?
A No.
- - -
21
Q And you've already said that you're not aware
of any scientific evidence that -- relating to No. 6,
a relatively recent conception of the Earth, when
"Relatively Recent" means less then a million years.
A That's correct.
Now, can we go back to that thing about pale-
ontology expertise?
Q Certainly.
A Find. Now, as I understand it, you were
asking me whether I had expertise in paleontology, and
I said I didn't need it.
Q Right.
A Now can we clarify that point?
Q Please.
A All right. One does not need expertise in
paleontology in order to make the statements that I did
that neither of these models can be proven scientifi-
cally.
Q Well, what is there about the -- shall we
call it the standard paleontological model that remains
unproven, in your view?
A You mean about origins? We don't know how
we got here. That's the insufficiency.
Q I know. I understand that.
I'm talking here about the fossil record, which
22
I understood you to be talking about.
A Fine. The fossil record has gaps in it that
all paleontologists will be agreeable to. Now, the
importance of the gaps are unsettled. If you use
evolutionary contacts, the evolutionists feel that
Evolutionary Theory would propose you to find the gaps;
and there's no way to bring those two groups of people
together. But I think that's irrelevant, whether those
two models are scientific or not.
Q But the Creation of Theory goes considerably
further. I mean, it talks as I understand it, about
two things that they view as important -- one, gaps in
the fossil record between species and reptiles and birds
and then what they sort of characterize as the sudden
appearance of life in complex form in Cambria.
A Uh-huh.
Q Now, that's two aspects of it, which I suppose
we could argue about whether or not you could scienti-
fically falsify one or the other. But they go further
and say that the entire geologic column was laid down
during a period of, you say, at an outside, 10,000
years.
Are you satisfied, from a scientific manner,
that it took more than 10,000 years?
A Oh, I am; yes. But if you want someone to
23
speak that point, obviously you need to talk to someone
like Gish. That wasn't why I brought up that point a
minute ago. What I said was that neither of these
models can be proven scientific.
You can do work on individual processees like
natural fossils and prove what their origins were. You
can't prove what our origins were. We can't do that.
And something scientific which is in direct proportion
to a degree of falsifibility is something called the
principle of falsification; and for something to be
scientific, it must be -- at least theoretically be
capable of being shown to be false. Now, you can't
show either of these things to be false.
Q Well, if I found --
A And you can't do that, because you can't
run the creation off again. There's nobody around to
do it.
Q Yes. But if I found a human fossil among the
Trilobites, would --
A It would not be something that would fit into
the Creation Science at the present time or the --
Q I think it would fit into the Creation Science
model.
A I think both models --
Q But the Creation Science model, as I understand
24
it, would simply say -- as a matter of fact, one of
their major articles with which you may be familiar is
the argument about whether or not there are fossil --
human fossil footprints on the Poluscy River with the
dinosaurs, and their argument, as I understand it, was,
look, that is humans and dinosaurs at the same place at
the same time. That's what the Creation model suggests,
and they are looking for these kinds of arguments; and
they would argue that if you found human fossils with
Trilobite fossils, that would show that you know men
and Trilobades were at the same time.
A Okay. To that extent, I stand corrected. If
you find a good old human skull, preferably recent,
okay, back that far, that would be a thunderbolt.
Q My point then, is that classic paleontology
would be falsified if they were true.
A Not in terms of origins. Now, if you're
talking about origins as if they began, for example,
in the Cambrian or pre-Cambrian, that's a very insuffi-
cient use of the term. I'm talking about origins of
life; not just origins of man.
Now, if the origin of life occurred five
billion years ago or if it occurred one billion years
ago, there's no way we can test that. We have no obser-
vations at that time about anyone. So we're extrapolating
25
back into the past in both models.
Q Now let me go back to where I started. You've
talked about one area of criticism you have of the
evolutionary model, which has to do with the amount of
time that it might have taken place until the first
life forms.
All right. What other scientific evidences
are there against evolution and in favor of Creation
Science?
A Well, again, the strongest things are the
statistical improbabilities that you would have complex
systems arise in the way that would be required. Okay?
The second thing, I guess, would be the problem with
what are called gaps in the record. One thing I don't
particularly like is the fact that Evolutionary Science,
in what I think is circular reasoning, uses the gaps to
support itself.
Q You're speaking now of gaps in the fossil
record?
A Yes. But I would be much happier if there
were more transitory forms.
Q What are archaopterists?
A What about it?
Q Is it a transitional form?
A It may very well be, but we need more transi-
26
tional forms than just one.
Q What about intermedial structural forms?
A Well, I mean, those things are there if you
look strongly enough at them.
Q What about -- I mean, it's something like
this. You could look at the comparative anatomy or
physiology among, let's say, all chordates. That's
c-h-o-r-d-a-t-e-s. Now, you can look at those similar-
ities and say, ah, they all had a common origin; however
some are more advanced than others, so they came later.
Or you can look at that sort of thing and say they
pretty much occurred at the same instant in time and
some appeared initially as more complex than another.
Now, there's two different ways you can look
at the same evidence, as far as I'm concerned.
Q Do you have any expertise in physiology?
A Insofar as I'm a biochemist.
Q Well, have you ever -- what courses have you
taken in physiology?
A What have I taken in Physiology?
Q Yes.
A I haven't taken any in physiology. I'm not
a physiologist.
Q And you have no courses in paleontology?
A No. You don't need it to make the statements
27
that I did. You don't need to take a course or have a
degree in something to be able to talk about it.
Q Well, that's correct. But in order to give
expert --
A Expertise comes through study and work; not
just through formal practice in a classroom.
I'd like to throw in that typically, the people
who contribute most in this life contribute in fields
other than where they got their Ph.D.
Q What studies have you conducted on our own
in the area of paleontology?
A I haven't done any. I'm not a paleontologist.
Q And in physiology?
A I haven't done any. I'm not a physiologist.
I think those are irrelevant questions.
Q Okay. What about the area of fossils them-
selves, what studies have you done?
A That's also irrelevant.
Q Okay. We have the length of time it took to
create life, the gaps in the fossil record. What other
evidence --
A I think those are quite sufficient.
Q Are there others?
A There may be, but they've escaped me right
now.
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Q Would you anticipate and testify in the trial
that you'd be testifying in these two areas?
A Possibly, if I thought I was strong enough
in that area; yeah.
Q And other areas?
A If they come to mind, I'll be glad to communi-
cate that information to you.
Q But right now, you can't think of anything
else.
A Right now, I can't; no. But I don't think
that those are important. My support of this piece
of legislation does not rest only on the things that
I've said; they rest on other things.
Q Okay. We will go to the other stuff later.
A Okay.
Q Why did you change your name?
A Frankly, that's none of your business.
Q Why did you change your name?
A I still think it's none of your business.
Now, if you can show me that that's pertinent to this
particular topic, I'll be glad to answer your question.
Q You know, it's something that leaps off your
resume, and I'm entitled to ask about essentially any-
think that I want to.
A And I'm entitled to withdraw an answer if I
29
see fit.
Q Well, I understand that. I mean, basically,
eventually what happens at the trial is, if somebody
asks you the question --
A I'll suggest you go back to Chapter I and
check the legal record, and they'll have the reason
there.
Q Okay. Your resume indicates -- at least this
copy of your resume that I have -- no publication since
1977. Have you published anything since 1977?
A Huh-uh.
Q Was that a "No"?
A No.
Q Is the "Bulletin of the South Carolina Academy
of Science" a refereed journal?
A I doubt it. I mean, I expect that the papers
we submit for publication there are read and reviewed,
but they're not read and reviewed with the type of
rigor that you'd have with, let's say, the "Journal of
the Book of Biology."
Am I allowed to ask you questions? No.
Q No.
A So be it.
Q That's one of the glories of the deposition
process -- the lawyer asks the question, and the witness
30
gives the answers.
A I take it you're on the other side. You know,
I don't really know.
Q I'm on the other side.
A Okay.
Q What is Snow's two culture concepts? What
are --
A The general idea, as I understand it, is
that Snow divides academic or intellectuals into two
different categories -- scientific intellectuals and
literary intellectuals -- so that we have, in the
intellectual world, these two realms of intellectability.
Q Have you found out anything about the bio-
chemical methodology for the Gambling Addiction Inter-
vention and --
A I would like to know why that is interest
first with Snow's thing.
Q It simply occurred to me as you were answering
the question.
A Thank you for answering.
MR. CHILDS: It's perfectly legitimate
for the lawyer to -- if a question occurs
to him, to go back to it.
THE WITNESS: That's also a technique
that's used in brainwashing.
31
MR. CHILDS: I don't think we ought to
say anything about that.
Q (By Mr. Childs.) Are you familiar with brain-
washing?
A I've read a little bit about it.
Q What kind of work are you doing with the
Gambling Addiction Intervention and Research Center?
A Right now, I'm not doing anything. I'm waiting
for them to ask me what they want me to embark on. This
center, I think, was set up within the last two or
three months, and the psychologist who is responsible
for putting it together is a good friend of mine, and
he would like somebody with some biochemical expertise
to provide him with some, say, provisional answers and
some criticism of any grant proposals that he might
come up with. So it's just a consulting position where
there's no remuneration.
Q What biochemical methodology might be involved
with gambling addiction?
A Well, it's been proposed, for example, that
you, shall we say, get fatty fluid samples from people
that are compulsive gamblers and then body fluid
samples from people who are not compulsive gamblers,
and look for biochemical differences. And he asked
me my opinion as to whether that is feasible, and I told
32
him, to the best of my knowledge, it's feasible, but
involves a lot of work, and I don't know if it's worth
the effort yet.
///
33
Q How did you come to be offered as an
expert witness in this case; what was the first
knowledge that you had of this case?
A I believe I received a telephone call
from a gentleman named Ed Gran.
Q Could you spell that, please?
A I think his last name is G-r-a-n.
Q Who is Mr. Gran?
A If I remember correctly, he is a physicist
professor at the University of Arkansas.
Q What did Mr. Gran say to you?
A He introduced himself, I think, and
indicated that he had received information that I was
favorably disposed toward this type of legislation and
asked me if I would be willing to assist in Arkansas.
So we discussed it in general terms and
I said sure because I had done that kind of thing in
South Carolina.
Q What happened?
A What happened?
Q Yes. Who was the next person that you
spoke with?
A Frankly, I don't remember. It may have
been Gran again or it may have been Wendel Berg.
Q Was this in relation to your testimony in
34
this case or your possible intervention in the case
as an intervenor?
A I guess -- I don't know what you mean by
intervenor. I offered my services, I will put it that
way. Since I am an evolutionist -- I am also not a
Christian -- I dare say that would be important for
people on what could be called our side.
Q There was a Motion to intervene in this
case made by Mr. Berg on behalf of a number of groups
and individuals of who, I believe, you were one in
which you sought to become a party to the case. Are
you familiar with what I am speaking about?
A Probably not sufficiently for the legal
aspects of it. Essentially what I had to say was
something like this: I laid out probably to Gran
what I believe in, what I was in favor of, and what
I was willing to do. And I probably said something
to him like: If you can use this thing in some sense,
I will be glad to support it. I don't know if you
find that satisfactory.
Now, I had a long talk with Byrd, I
think, over the telephone for someone in Byrd's
office, and he took down a lot of what I had to say.
MR. CHILDS: Was he an intervenor?
MR. KLASFELD: Yes.
35
MR. CHILDS: Why don't you tell him
what that means.
THE WITNESS: That would help.
MR. CHILDS: I am not sure he under-
stands.
(Thereupon, and off-the-record discussion
was held.)
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) Who don't we both
look at these copies which we will mark as Plaintiff's
1, the affidavit of Dr. W. Scot Morrow, a science
professor, evolutionist, and agnostic. This is a
supporting motion to intervene.
(Thereupon, Plaintiff's
Exhibit No. 1 was marked
for identification.)
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) Have you ever seen this
document before, Dr. Morrow?
A Probably. It looks like -- have I seen it?
Q This copy, does not have your signature.
A I probably said something like that.
Q No, no. My question is: Have you seen
this document?
A What I am trying to tell you is I don't
memorize things flat out. And if you give me a moment,
I will tell you whether or not -- I probably did it.
This is probably the kind of thing that I
36
would have said to someone like Wendel Byrd in the
course of that conversation. But I didn't sit down
and take dictation on it.
Q I am not asking you whether or not you
said what is in the contents of this document, I am
asking you if you have seen this document before.
A I would say yes. I mean, how can I tell
you otherwise? I told you that I talked to Byrd --
I guess this is the document, I don't have any way of
proving it one way or the other. I would have probably
signed it.
Q I am asking you if you recollect seeing
it before?
A This sheet of paper?
Q Not this particular sheet of paper, but
the original from which this document is a copy.
A I don't know how to answer your question
within the legal framework. I suppose so; I mean, I
don't know how I can prove to you whether I have seen
it or not if I didn't sign it.
Q I am not asking you to prove anything
to me. I am only asking you whether or not you recall
seeing this document.
A Can I talk to that gentleman?
Q Sure.
37
(Thereupon, a short break was held.)
MR. CHILDS: I want the record to
reflect that I have advised Dr. Morrow
that he is not a party to this litigation
and that I do not represent him here.
He is here as a witness voluntarily;
but he will be a witness for the Defendants'
side of the lawsuit in Little Rock.
And he asked my advice on what he
should do. I advised him that I was not
his lawyer, and then I did tell him to
answer the questions; that it would be
better for all if he answered the questions
as clearly as he possibly could. And if
there was any question in his mind about
what was happening, I would be glad to
discuss it with him.
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) My question, as I
recall it, was: Have you seen the original of this
document?
A I believe so. However, the piece of
paper that I saw before I had signed. And this does
not have my signature on it. That was the difficulty.
I am reluctant to answer that type of question with
a simple affirmative answer because it implies
38
something other that what I think is implied.
Q That's fair. It says in Paragraph 1 that
you were the Vice-President of Arkansas Citizens for
Balanced Education in Origins. Are you a citizen
of Arkansas?
A Not to my knowledge.
Q Where do you reside?
A South, Carolina, Spartanburg.
Q When was the Arkansas Citizens for
Balanced Education in Origins formed?
A Roughly the same time that Ed Gran called
me on the phone, and that date I don't remember.
Q Approximately when was it?
A The fall.
Q This fall?
A I imagine so.
Q 1981?
A I believe so. I don't really consider
that of substantial importance.
Q Okay. Was the Vice-President an elected
office for the Arkansas Citizens for Balanced
Education in Origins?
A I nave no idea.
Q You are Vice-President?
A Yes.
39
Q Were you elected?
A I have no idea. Mr. Gran asked me if I
would be Vice-President and I said, "Sure." What's
wrong with that?
Q There's nothing wrong with it. But it
suggests that it wasn't elective.
A Being elective or not doesn't have anything
to do with it.
Q The point of the questioning and the
answers is not for you to define the importance of it
but to answer the question.
A Fine. I said I didn't know.
Q Why did you want to be an intervenor in this
case?
A Now, if you mean by intervenor, a party
to defend the Arkansas law -- is that what you mean?
Q Okay.
A It's something that I believe in very
strongly.
Q How does it come that a nonresident of
Arkansas is the Vice-President of the Arkansas Citizens
for Balanced Education and Origins?
A You have to ask Gran that. I am not
aware that there is a geographical limitation on
whether I can become an officer in an out-of-the-state
40
organization.
Q Are you aware of other members of this
organization who are not from Arkansas?
A No.
Q You went on to say in Paragraph 4: "I
am an evolutionist and I believe strongly in public
schools teaching both Creation Science and Evolution
Science.
"I personally believe that Evolution
Science possesses more experimental strengths, and
in the origin of life area I believe that the initial
life forms evolved by the various mechanisms offered
by Oparin and Fox.
MR. CHILDS: Could you spell that.
MR. KLASFELD: O-p-a-r-i-n.
MR. CHILDS: And Fox?
MR. KLASFELD: F-o-x.
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) Earlier you testified
about the lack of time on earth for life to evolve
from nonlife. What are the opinions of Mr. Oparin
and Fox about that?
A As far as I know, Oparin -- since he is
an atheist -- would certainly not accept the idea
of any type of Creation Science.
Q That's not my question.
41
A As far as I know, Oparin and Fox are
evolutionists. And considering the writings of both
men in the general field of molecular evolution, they
are molecular evolutionists.
Q You previously testified that there wasn't
sufficient time.
A That's my opinion. And Fox disagreed
with me.
Q They disagreed with you?
A I would guess so. I haven't asked them
personally.
Q Well, in this document that says: "I
believe that the initial life forms evolved by the
various mechanisms offered by Oparin and Fox."
A If you are asking me how I could make that
statement and also assert there wasn't enough time --
Q That's right.
A All right. What I am trying to say is
that those proposals of Oparin and Fox and other
people in that general field of inquiry, those things,
I think, were the kinds of things that had to go on.
They will represent our best understanding or best
hypothetical guess today on what went on.
But the thing is it might have required
more time to carry out those kinetic activities than
42
Oparin and Fox thought it was necessary.
You could put it this way: I could say,
for example, that the number of people that are
involved in automobile accidents is a certain number,
let's say, in the State of South Carolina. Then we
could, perhaps, argue about whether or not a sufficient
amount of traffic would be sufficient to greet those
accidents or whether more traffic would be needed to
greet those accidents.
The mechanisms would, perhaps, be the
same; the time frame in which they took place would
be different.
Q How do you believe life came into being
on this planet?
A I think there is a very strong possibility
that this planet was seated for extra terrestrial
forces.
Q When would that have occurred?
A My guess would be roughly within that
two billion year time period that I said was insufficient
to produce the first replicating cells.
Q Do you believe in unidentified flying
objects?
A What do you mean do I believe in them?
Q Do you believe they exist?
43
A Yes.
Q Have you ever seen them?
A Probably not.
Q Have you spoken to anyone who has ever
seen them?
A Not to my knowledge.
Q What is the basis for your belief that
they exist?
A Things that I read.
Q By whom?
A Eminently a man called Hynek.
Q Would you spell that?
A I believe it is H-y-n-e-k or H-y-e-k.
And there is a rather pretty good French astronomer,
Jacque Vallee, V-a-l-l-e-e. Those are two people
that have been quite convincing.
- - -
44
Q Is this belief of yours about the origin of
life here similar to that expressed by Francis Creek, I
think the name of -- the name is directed to Panspermi?
A Panspermiogenesis was advised by Arrhenius
quite a few years ago, I guess around 1925, and Creek
is a more contemporary exponent of the idea, so there
are several different possibilities.
Q But that's your notion of how the life began
on the planet?
A That's, I think -- let's just say I favor
that. My feeling is that that is perhaps the simplest
way to explain how life was able to become so organized
in the time available.
Q And this all happened about how long ago?
A Well, somewhere between the time the Earth
formed and probably the time we note the first fossil
bacteria, although there's no absolute requirement for
that, if this planed had been seeded. It could have
been seeded later. We could have had a whole series of
seedings.
Q Is there evidence for more than one seeding?
A I'm not aware of it. This is rather hypothe-
tical.
Q But you are satisfied that the evidence for
-- for that is better than, stronger than the evidence
45
for life having evolved on the planet on its own?
A Let's just say that I find it rather more
interesting and probably, you know, it's more -- there
seems to be -- there's more fruitful opportunities to
answer the insufficiency, the statistical insufficiency
by going to extraterrestrial sources.
Q I guess I just don't understand at all why
you mentioned Oparin and Fox in your --
A Because Oparin and Fox have proposed a model
that involves relatively simple chemical species becoming
increasingly more complex, until the polymerian mole-
cules of characterized living things appear, and pre-
sumably by some kind of selective and --
Q You don't believe that happened, do you?
A I think it may very well have happened, but
I don't think they allow those processes to occur.
Q And how long do they --
A There's a kinetic difference something can
take place, but it may not take place fast enough for
a certain type of connection to occur.
Q And how long do they --
A There's a kinetic difference that something
can take place, but it may not take place fast enough
for a certain type of connection to occur.
Q Do Oparin and Fox think it took place?
46
A Well, the last thing I remember reading on it
was that they certainly felt two or three billion years
was plenty of time.
Q What's the difference between a coaceruate
and a proteinoid?
A Well, there are several differences. One has
to do with stability. A coaceruate is by and large,
as I remember it, is much more unstable. A proteinoid
is plenty stable.
Q What is that holds the coaceruate together?
A That, I guess, is rather hypothetical. I
would expect you would be talking about hydrogen bombing,
ionic bombing, etcetera.
Q And the proteinoids?
A Proteinoid, that I can't be certain of. I
would presume that the proteinoid is something equivalent
to a three-dimensional colloid polypeptide. See, what
you do know is this: Typically, Oparin's coaceruate,
as well as I remember it, had a finite lifetime, in
terms of their chemical stability under normal tempera-
tures. You might find in a laboratory, whereas pro-
teinoids, as far as we know, is quite stable. If the
stuff we've made, be it, however, so simple, did not
decompose as far as we could tell by the normal test
we had available to us. But there's other differences,
47
too.
Typically, Oparin's coaceruates were put
together using molecules are much more complex, whereas
proteinoid started with much more simple molecules.
Oparin would make a coaceruate molecule system, using
his D.N.A. and his tone. These are basically any ionic
polymers. Your thermal proteinoid would be made by
the coaceruates.
Q Okay. How many students are there at Wofford
College?
A Approximately a thousand.
Q Is it a church affiliated institution?
A I would say so in an phenominal sense, yes.
Q What church is that?
A What church? Methodist.
Q Is it accredited by the State of South Carolina?
A Well, I don't know that the State of South
Carolina is in the business of accrediting colleges.
If it is in the business of accrediting colleges, I
would find it difficult that Wofford College was not.
We are a member of something like the Southern Associa-
tion.
Q Are you an officer of the Libertarian Party?
A Definitely not.
Q Does the Libertarian Party have offices?
48
A Probably, but I consider those people stoic.
I think they are Epicureans.
Q What is the difference of an Epicurean and a
Stoic?
A It has to do with whether your philosophy is
based upon personal pleasure or not.
Q And the Libertarians, I guess, is the greater
or the great?
A In my opinion, the Libertarians that I have
typically met are more interested in personal pleasure
than the more important things.
Q What are those more important things?
A First off, honor; secondly, doing what could
be called the right just thing.
Q How does one determine what is the right just
thing?
A You figure it out and use your own values.
Q But it's all something one decides for him-
self?
A I would like to think so. I mean, if you are
a Libertarian by any stretch of the imagination, you
should be fundamentally either an objective or either
an agonist, which means you start with what we would
like to call the self.
Q When you say we, will you --
49
A Well, teaching as a Libertarian, as far as
I'm concerned, what I know best is myself.
Q Do you have any other kinds of teaching posi-
tions or consultant positions, which you are paid at
the present time.
A Not to my knowledge.
Q Since you graduated from North Carolina State,
have you taken any continuing education courses?
A I graduated from the University of North
Carolina.
Q I'm sorry --
A That's not the same place. Have I taken
continuing education courses, what do you mean?
Q Have you taken any other courses -- have you
been a student in any courses since you graduated?
A No. I had quite enough. I was in college
for 20 years. I haven't stopped studying; however, I
now study for my own purposes.
Q Did you receive any honors at North Carolina?
A I'm unaware of any.
Q Have you received any grants during the time
you've been a professor at Wofford College?
A Let's see, the first three summers I was
there, I had three separate summer research grants.
Q Who funded them?
50
A Let's see, I guess the Federal Government.
Fundamentally, there was something called the C.S.I.P.
Program, and it's something like the College Science
Improvement Program, I think that's what it was called.
So the college had money to fund appropriate research
activity, if your proposals were accepted, and you were
allowed to do this for three straight years, if they
approved your work, and I had three consecutive grants.
Q Did you apply to the college or to the
Federal Government?
A Well, I applied to the college.
Q The college had the money?
A Yes.
Q And then you applied --
A To the Federal Government, and they got it
from the taxpayer.
Q Do you have any philisophical objection to
that?
A Hell, no. There is something I have called
the "Chicken Noodle Concept." Do you want to hear
that?
Q I do.
A The general idea is if a society has decided
to take money from you, then you have a perfect right
to get it back again.
Transcript continued on next page
51
Q Why the Chicken Noodle Soup Theory?
A All right. It goes something like this: I
happen to like Chicken Noodle Soup. Supposedly there
was a program that was designed to give everybody as
much Chicken Noodle Soup as we wanted, so I went ahead
and decided that Chicken Noodle Soup was good for every-
body. So every day, they brought the wagon by, and
you trotted downstairs with your pail, and had as much
Chicken Noodle Soup as you wanted.
Now, you have people who are faced with the
fact that this was a poor decision on the part of the
government, like myself. Now, what do they do, do they
partake, or do they not.
Let's say the Libertarian Party, he says, go
down and eat the Chicken Noodle Soup and gat all of the
people, you know, to get Chicken Noodle Soup, and there-
by, you'll put sufficient stress on the financial or
monetary support for the program, and this will force
people's attention to the enterprise, and it will event-
ually be voted out.
If, indeed, you have benefits, as our govern-
ment has determined, claim them. That's the best way
to show that type of government benefit program is
absolutely a waste of time. If you don't claim your
benefits, then the people who are in favor of these
52
things will continue to lead you on.
Q What was the amount of those grants for either
of those summers?
A Well, let's see, they probably -- I would have
to guess at this -- it paid my salary for the summer,
it paid the salary, I think, of two assistants, each
summer. and they probably came up with five hundred or
a thousand dollars worth of equipment, something like
that.
Q And what would the total of that be?
A What would my summer pay be? Well, I don't
remember right off the bat. We might be talking about,
what, two to five thousand dollars, I mean, I forget
what I was making in those days, and I don't remember
what the kids were making. That's a small amount of
money, if you compare it to, let's say, a large univer-
sity. It's not a small amount of money for a small
college.
Q That was the first three summers you were at
Wofford?
A Yes.
Q Since then, have you received any grants?
A No.
Q Have you applied for any?
A No. As far as I know, the C.S.I.P. Program
53
dried up.
Q Were there grants available?
A Sure. I've applied for grants, and this sort
of thing, but, I mean, they have not been accepted.
Q To whom have you applied?
A Well, we have typically applied as a depart-
ment. Okay. And I believe we applied to the National
Science Foundation probably a couple of times and --
we've also applied to the Research Corporation.
Q What was the nature of the work that you
applied for a grant with the National Science foundation?
A If I remember, as long as -- I remember two
grants which were instrumental grants that we were
requesting the money to buy specific pieces of instru-
mentation that would be used by the whole department.
And then there was a grant that I put together with a
physical chemist, that would be designed to allow us to
implement what we would call a non-traditional teaching
center at Wofford College. And I applied at N.S.F.,
and it might have been the Research Corporation, or
some other type foundation that was interested in that
kind of thing, but they weren't accepted.
Q Have you applied for any grants to do research
in the field of biochemistry?
A In biochemistry?
54
Q Yes.
A The three that I got from the C.S.I.P. Program
were biochemistry.
Q Other than those three?
A Other than those three, no. I've been working
on a grant for the study of the analitical biochemistry
of certain insect forms, but the thing is, I haven't
had time to put the thing together. It takes quite
awhile to do that, when you have the teaching like we
do.
Q What is the teaching?
A Well, it's a minimum of 21 contact hours, not
counting other duties. And typically what I have done
in the summer is teach.
Q What is Fermi's dictum?
A It's something to the effect that a really
good scientist changes his field of inquiry every ten
years.
Q Okay.
A That was meant to be humorous, you realize.
Q Do you think that there's any relationship
between the origin and evolution of living systems and
the conflict between the Western Civilization and the
Communist Society?
A Wait a minute. What is that again, any rela-
55
tionship?
Q Yes.
A I would doubt it. If there is such a relation-
ship, it escapes me at the moment. Scientists can be
interested in things besides your science, you know.
Q I know. I have read Creation Science work
that does draw a conclusion about the relationship --
A Oh.
Q -- between evolution --
A Oh, that's correct. Let me say that I'm --
you recalled to my mind that I have read parallels
that some people have drawn between Marxism, Darwinism,
if you want to call it that, Oparin's work, Fox's work,
and so on. I don't see those parallels, I mean.
Q My experience in reading a lot of these books,
it usually takes about eight pages before they say
Communism is a direct result of evolutionary thinking.
A Well, I call to your attention that the
enterprised people, as well as Marxists have used
Darwinian principles.
Q I agree with you a hundred percent. I'm only
saying, I have seen books that do say --
A Well, it's an intellectual right of these
people.
Q But it's not a right that you share?
56
A i think it's a lot easier for people to be
an evolutionist, if they are a totalitarian. Okay?
Q Why is that?
A Which is the same thing as a socialist. I
think it's easier, but the thing is, I don't fall on
those lines.
Q Why is it easier?
A Why is it easier? Well, there's more emphasis
certainly on collective processes and collective changes
with Darwinian evolution than if you have, let's say,
in a Scientific Creation concept, where maybe the em-
phasis is on individual type things happening.
Q What is the collective process that's made
reference to the Darwinism?
A Well, your Darwinism ideals relate to popula-
tion effects and the overall influence on what will
happen to a population, organisms, given enough time,
and let's say, the chance for mutation. So you are
looking at a vast group of living things, as if there
are one entity.
Q What's that got to do with Socialism?
A Well, Socialists are typically collectivists
and usually quite totalitarian. If you give me enough
time, I think I can establish that.
Q But you're an evolutionist; and you don't share
57
any of those views?
A That's absolutely right, because I happen to
be, like I said once before, a Stoic Libertarian.
(Pause.)
Q You say in your resume that your goal is to
achieve a proper caliber between teaching and research?
A That's correct.
Q What research are you engaged in now?
A Well, let's see, I've got two active projects,
the first consists of developing analitical methods to
detect certain protozoa. They are called histones, in
lower life forms, where they have not been found before.
Okay?
Q And the second one?
A And the second one is -- how can I summarize
that. There's a specific bacteria. You want the name
of it?
Q Sure.
A Okay. It's Agrobacterium tumofascins.
Q Okay.
A Now, this bacterium is known to produce plant
cancer, and what we call galls, in plants and trees.
that's a very interesting bacteria.
Now, there is considerable interest in the
research group which I'm a part to use this bacterium as
58
a testing agent for anti-tumor agents. In other words,
the bacterium can produce tumors in plant tissue, if
you want to know whether a specific chemical compound
can stop tumor activity. We think we have a very nice
little assay that can't take place on a petri dish.
Now, a third project has to do with the
developing, what could be called microbiological processes
to make either interesting or important industrial
chemicals or to use microbiological processes to detoxi-
fy waste that are industriously important.
Q Do you anticipate publishing papers on these?
A Yes. If we get something that can be
sufficiently complete, I'll be glad to publish it.
Everything I do is for publication. It's very difficult
to do it, given the limitations and the time and money
and student help.
Now, you asked me about this proper balance.
See, I happen to think that a teacher should also be an
active scholar. Now, if you are an experimental scien-
tist -- if you are an experimental scientist, you
should be doing research all the time, and getting
students interested in this Science, as well as just
teaching a classroom. Far too often I observe that the
people who are research scientists are not very good
teaching scholars, and many of the best teaching scholars
59
are not active in research. And I would like to try
to remedy that. That's why I left industry 20 years
ago, to go into the college of teaching. Or it's one
of the reasons why.
Q You list three professional societies which
you are a member?
A Yes. Could you rattle them off for me?
Q American Chemical Society?
A Yes.
Q American Association for the Advancement of
Science?
A Yes.
Q South Carolina Academy of Science?
A Yes. I don't belong to the S.C.A.S. anymore.
Q Is there any reason for that?
A No. Quite frankly, I had to delete certain
things from the family budget, which an increasing
family made necessary.
Q Are you a member of any evolutionary socities?
A Not to my knowledge, unless you include the
Arkansas organization.
Q Have you ever held any office in any of these
societies?
A Well, let's see, I was -- what was it now --
these are quite insignificant. I mean, do you still want
60
that?
Q Sure.
A There's a Western Carolina American Chemical
Society, and when you are a member of the National
Organization, you are sort of automatically a member,
as I understand, of a subdivision association. I was
asked to be on there, what was it called, you know,
like new members committee, okay, sort of thing.
Q Okay.
A And I believe I was on the same or an analo-
gous committee for the South Carolina Academy of
Sciences. I think it's called a membership committee,
or something like that.
Q Were you ever denied membership in any scien-
tific organization?
A No.
Q Are you a member of any of the various
Creation Science organizations?
A Other than the Arkansas group, no.
Q Were you on the mailing list for any of
these?
A Yes.
Q Which group are you on the mailing list?
A Let's see, I get something from Paul Elanger's
group, the name of which I forget, and I'm on the mailing
61
list of the Institute for Creation Research.
Q Is this Mr. Elanger with the Citizens for
Fairness in Education?
A Yes, that's right.
Q How did you come to be on those mailing lists?
A Those poeple put me on them.
Q Without speaking to you about it?
A Yes. I mean, quite a few years ago, for
reasons I don't quite remember why, before any of this
sort of thing became popular, I suddenly found I was
getting acts and facts, and every six months, if you
want to keep getting it, you send a little card back,
and I did that. And it's a purely voluntary thing. It
doesn't cost me any money, and I find the stuff inter-
esting, and they keep sending it to me.
Q Do you have an opinion as to the Civil
Liberties Union?
A Yes.
Q What do you think about it?
A Well, to be perfectly frank, I do not like the
organization.
Q Now, why is that?
A To what extent should I get into this?
Q To whatever extent you think is appropriate.
A I do think they have objective concepts of
62
Civil Liberties.
Q In what way?
A In what way? Well, some of the things that
they are interested in defending, let's say, I'm
interested in attacking.
Q Which are those things?
A In some of the things I'm interested in having
defended, they attacked.
Q What are examples of those things?
A I did not like their support for the marching
of the Nazies in Skokie.
Q And what else?
A What else? Well, within the Spartanburg area,
one of the field directors had an office right next
to mine. Now, I like the guy very much. We get along
fine. He was an inorganic chemist, and generally
speaking, I did not like the local rule that the local
ACLU was taking with respect to, let's say, discipline
in the Public School System. I felt they were far
too lenient.
Q Were there cases that they were involved in?
A Yes, as far as I know. I have to go back and
be very specific. I find it to be very difficult because
I don't typically retain that kind of thing.
But one had to do with whether or not the
63
principle of the school was able to dictate the dress
of the students and the length of hair, and I'm sure
it had to do, also, with discipline and spanking, and
things like that.
Now, I don't consider myself a medieval
torturer expert, but I do think much more solid dis-
cipline was certainly needed in the Spartanburg School
System, at the time that my peer next door was working
for the reverse.
Q And Epicurean Stoic?
A I don't know what an Epicurean Stoic is.
I'm a Stoic.
Q I'm sorry. A Stoic Libertarian?
A In order to try to clarify what I believe in,
I used those terms, stoic libertarian.
Q Does a stoic libertarian believe it's impor-
tant to have short hair?
A No.
Q Or dress in a certain manner?
A Not necessarily.
Q But you think that the government should
impose --
A I think --
Q -- short hair and dress codes?
A Certainly not.
64
Q So what is your disagreement with this?
A The disagreement is this, if you have a
Public School System, and if you have people that are
put in charge of that Public School System, and among
other things, they are supposed to maintain a good
atmosphere for learning, you must have a certain amount
of learning discipline. Now, this includes things
like laying down dress and conduct codes. And as far
as I'm concerned, the ACLU was interested in having no
dress, no conduct codes worth talking about.
Now, from a national standpoint, I regret
to say, that the various things that I think the ACLU
have gotten involved in are --
Q What are those things?
A Preservation of our security and our freedom.
Q How has the ACLU interfered with the preser-
vation of our security and freedom?
A I think it would make it very difficult to
make any law to be sensibly enforced.
Q Are you thinking of any specific examples?
A Well, just recently I read in the newspaper
of the bond which was reduced from twenty million dollars
to five hundred thousand dollars for a specific dope
smuggler. He probably jumped bail. Now, if what I've
read in the paper is correct, and if the ACLU typically
65
is in favor of reducing such bonds, I don't consider
that in the best interest of the United States of
America.
Q Are you familiar that the ACLU plead no role
in that drug smuggler's case?
A According to the newspaper, the ACLU was
responsible in getting the bond reduced, and not just
in that case, but generally.
Q Are you aware of any involvements of the
ACLU that are --
A Again, from what I read and remember, and
a preferial fashion, the ACLU seems to be in favor of
rather lenient sentences for -- for people accused or
convicted of crimes, where I think the sentences should
be much more severe. I also think that the ACLU is
overly interested in defending people whose apparent
purpose is to frankly undermind this country.
Q Who would that be, please?
A Pardon?
Q Who would that be, for instance?
A Roughly people like Algil Hess.
Q Who else?
A Rosenberg, all the way down.
Q Who else?
A Well, it would take me a little while to sit
66
down and recite a whole list. Wouldn't that be, at
least, a good example of what I'm talking about?
Q I guess. I guess I was looking for more
current people.
A Well, what's wrong with those guys?
Q Well, nothing is wrong.
A Why not go back to some of the classical
situations. I mean, if the ACLU, and if the ACLU makes
it possible for it to be difficult to prosecute Algil
Hess, that bothers me.
Q But he was prosecuted and convicted --
A Of a rather minor crime, right.
Q And the Rosenbergs were prosecuted and con-
victed --
A And eventually put to death, yes. And typi-
cally, I think you have people in the ACLU today who
would like to erect the whole Rosenberg thing and make
them into martyrs and heroes and quite frankly, they
were spies.
Q Are you aware of any activity on behalf --
A Not specifically. Right now, it is a question
of reading over the years what people either who were
in the ACLU had to say about it or what the organization
had to say about it in a formal way.
Q What have you -- I mean -- who do you link with
67
the ACLU with the defense of the Rosenbergs?
A Well, again, we are talking -- you are asking
me to be specific, and these are the kinds of things
where you don't remember things specifically. You
remember a fact in the past, and you remember the con-
clusion, but you don't remember the specificity thereof.
I also find the ACLU also, most insufficiently
in its activities, let's say, in defending the right
to work laws. I had a long discussion with my friend
next door, whose no longer there, but my friend next
door, who felt that the right to work laws, of course,
were not a proper, what, realm for the SCLU activity.
Q What are you referring to, the rights to
work law?
A The right of a person to join a union and not
to join a union, and not to be coerced one way or the
other. And I would be amazed if you could find me any
ACLU members who are not opposed to the not to work
laws.
Q How long have you been opposed to that?
A Well, I didn't start out being opposed to
them. I was a radical socialist until I was 30 years
old. And when I found out a little bit of what was
going on, I changed my mind.
///
68
Q Are you a member of any church, Dr. Morrow?
A No.
Q Do you read the Bible with any regularity?
A No.
Q When was the first time you had any contact
with the Arkansas Attorney General's office in this
case?
A The last time?
Q The first time.
A The first time. Well, I don't remember
the date. I guess it may have been about a month or
so ago. Somebody called me up from the office --
let's see. What was the guy's name. I'll have to look
at my briefcase to dig it out.
Q Tim Humphries?
A It was a guy before Tim.
Q Rick Campbell.
A I think it was Rick Campbell.
Q And what did he say to you when you called?
A I don't remember exactly, but it was
something -- I guess it was something to the effect
about me appearing in the case as a witness, and I
guess he asked me what I thought about it.
Q Did he say how he got your name?
A I don't remember, I really don't. I would
69
guess he had been given it by Wendel Byrd, I think,
who called me up earlier. That's just a guess, though.
That's --
Q Did Mr. Byrd ask you to be a witness in
the case or if you would be a witness in the case?
A I don't know if he asked me. I may have
volunteered before he asked me.
Q Has Mr. Byrd been in contact with you
since then?
A I don't believe so.
Q Well, when you got in touch -- when Mr.
Byrd got in touch with you in relation to this case,
is this the first time you had spoken with him?
A I believe so.
Q Is it the only time that you have spoken
with him?
A Well, I may have spoken to him more than
once, but I doubt if I have spoken to him more than
twice.
Q Did he visit with you in Spartanburg?
A No.
Q Who drafted the intervenous document
that we were looking at before?
A You mean this thing? (Indicating).
Q No, no. I mean this (indicating).
70
A Frankly, I don't remember. It may have
been Byrd.
Q But did you basically speak with him
over the phone and relate this --
A I know I spoke with Byrd at length over
the telephone. Now, it could be that as a result of
that consequence, he put this together. That would
seem to fit. I don't think it was Humphries, though,
and I don't think it was Campbell.
Q Have you ever testified in any court
proceeding?
A Any court proceedings?
Q Yes.
A I testified in the suit once.
Q What was that suit in relation to?
A Well, on February 23rd, 1963, a very
precociousness boy, age 15, burned down an apartment
house that I was living in, and about three weeks
prior to that time, the superintendent of the building
found the same boy setting a similar fire. He stopped
the boy, admonished him not to do it again, and didn't
tell anybody else.
Three weeks later, the boy pulled off a
coup de grace; whole place went up like a Roman candle
at 6:00 o'clock in the morning with me on the top floor.
71
Damn near killed me and a lot of other people; produced
a lot of material damage; almost wiped out my Master's
thesis.
This bothered me a great deal and also
bothered the other people who lived there; so we
sued the apartment manager -- or I should say, you
know, the owner for restitution of damages, since we
maintained the manager was, of course, incompetent.
Among other things, we lost the suit.
And there was a trial, and I had to appear at the
trial and, I guess, what, testify.
You know why we lost the suit?
Q Because?
A One witness who overheard the boy
confessing had a heart attack and died before the
trial. The heart attack had been brought on by the
stress of the fire. The manager, who freely admitted
his negligence to the commissioner -- the fire
commissioner of the City of Philadelphia vanished
and was not available for the trial. The judge did
not allow the fire commissioner to testify for
reasons I found most perplexing.
Q Hearsay, I suppose.
A No. He interviewed the kid. He inter-
viewed the kid on the day of the fire and got a sworn
72
testimony from him. Now, the boy refused to testify
on grounds of the -- what was it, the Fifth Amendment.
Q Yes.
A And so the judge threw it out. That
bothered me a great deal; made me rather less liberal
in such things.
Q Have you testified in any other kind of
quasi judicial proceedings?
A Not that I can remember.
Q Before a Legislature.
A Oh, oh. Well, I testified before the
South Carolina General Assembly Education Committee
with respect to the South Carolina Creation Law --
South Carolina Creation Evolution Law.
Q When was that?
A Let's see. It was either one or two years
ago in the spring.
Q Did you prepare a written speech for that?
A No.
Q Do you know if there's a transcript of
that proceeding?
A If there exists one, I don't know of it.
I typically do not like to write things down. I
prefer to speak.
Q Was the testimony that you gave before the
73
South Carolina Legislature, do you anticipate it will
be similar to the testimony that you would give in
this case?
A I'd like to think I had more time. I
think they gave me ten minutes; and essentially what
I said was that I found no difficulty -- I foresaw
no difficulty teaching biology, shall we say --
modern biology, if I had to work under the South
Carolina law. I also pointed out that the principle
of falsification applied equally to evolution and
creationism.
I also said something to the effect that
in my experience, very few high school biology
teachers really knew enough about evolution to teach
it intelligently. They didn't like that. They were
all out there in the audience and treated me as some
kind of pariah.
Q Any other kind of testimony similar to
that --
A I don't think so --
Q Before any school boards or --
A No. I've told a few people I'd be glad
to talk if they wanted me to, but they haven't asked
me.
Q Have you ever given speeches on Creation
74
Science and evolution?
A I, shall we say, sort of lectured in an
ad hoc way around school on the controversy and on
what could be called what we should be doing in
teaching science, and I remember once I had a
luncheon talk before the Spartanburg Ministerial
Association.
But none of these were prepared -- you
know, I prepared what I was going to say, but I didn't
have any written down. I learned years ago that I
simply didn't follow a written text anyway.
Q Have you ever been charged or convicted
of any crime?
A Not that I know of.
Q Have you discussed the specifics of your
testimony with anyone from the Arkansas Attorney
General's office?
A Oh, a little bit with Mr. Childs here
before we came in here.
Q What did you discuss?
A What did we discuss? Oh, I would say,
in a general way, the kinds of things I might be
asked. But I think he rather spent much more time
asking me about myself, the kind of things I found
interesting.
75
Q What about your testimony did you discuss?
A Very, very general things.
- - -
76
Q What were the general things that you
talked about?
A Let me see. I remember something to the
effect that an important aspect, I guess, of your
challenge to the law rests upon academic freedom.
And I guess also that we may have spent a little time
talking about what creationism means or is involved
and how it posed evolution.
He didn't put words in my mouth or
something like that, it's very difficult.
Q Are there specific areas that you anti-
cipate testifying about?
A I would expect three. I think I told him
there were three.
Q What are they?
A I would like to testify or would feel
comfortable testifying -- this is not in order of
increasing or decreasing importance or anything like
that.
First to a certain extent as a scientist
on what I would think would be the scientific aspects
of the dispute, if there is any.
Secondly, I would like to testify as a
teacher; and thirdly, as a private citizen, parent.
Q What would be your testimony as a private
77
citizen or parent?
A I see absolutely no inconsistency with the
First Amendment. I think singularly, unmoved by
judicial decisions, to the contrary. And I also
believe there's a concept of fairness and fair play
that's a part of what I call the American Concept.
And I think you guys are against it.
Q Does the Arkansas Citizens for Balanced
Education in Origins believe that the Flat Earth
Theory should be taught in school --
A I thought --
Q -- the Phlogiston Theory.
A I doubt it.
Q Why not?
A There is rather poor evidence for those
things.
Q Is there good evidence for Creation of
Science?
A I think it is better than the two things
that you mentioned. We can certainly disprove the
Flat Earth Theory by flat out experiments. Phlogiston
was discarded quite a bit ago.
Q So was Creation of Science.
A Only in the minds of certain people. I
would call to your attention that vitalism was also
78
was also discarded a hundred years ago and it keeps
popping its little head up.
Q I guess that gets me back to where I
started. What's the scientific evidence that supports
Creation Science?
A The science that supports Creation Science
would be those pieces of evidence that would appear
to explain things better than Evoluation Science.
Q What would that be?
A Preeminently the statistical difficulty
with having those reactions occur, as I see it. That
to me is enough; that to me -- there is enough
difficulty with the statistics to allow or to insist
upon the inclusion of an alternative model in a
compulsory government-run school system.
Q An alternative model, is that the earth
10,000 years ago, an alternative model that there is
a massive world-wide flood that lay down the geologic
column in one year?
A Well, if they wanted to present the
evidence for it, it would be very interesting.
Q I guess what I don't understand is --
A It becomes to what you are trying to foster
in a school classroom.
Q That's exactly the point.
79
A Now, we get down to basics, as far as I
am concerned. You guys essentially are putting
yourselves in the position of the State of Tennessee
about the middle of the 1920's. You want to close
out other ways of reasoning through the evidence.
And rather interestingly, what could be
called our side is in the position that scopes that
in a very broad general way of understanding. You
fellows want a close forum for your own pet model.
And if I may continue, you want to do it
at public expense, yes. Government schools are run
by taxpayers' money. You won't make it voluntarily.
It's like a lot of other things that I think again
that the ACLU wants.
You don't like voluntaryism when it
touches on the things that are really important.
You fail to see relationships where they are absent.
And also difficulties where they are absent.
(Thereupon, an off-the-record discussion
was held.)
MR. CHILDS: Just because David is
representing ACLU does not mean that he
necessarily agrees with all of the contents
that they stand for.
He is an advocate. Don't direct anything
80
personally to David.
THE WITNESS: I don't mean it personally,
I just happen to get that way.
MR. KLASFELD: No offense taken and
I am sure not intended.
THE WITNESS: When I get in debates
with people, the same thing happens with
me. Let's just say that I feel very strongly
about these things and I am not accustomed
to discussing totally dispassionately.
MR. KLASFELD: Fair enough, neither
am I.
Q (By Mr. Klasfeld) I guess my problem is
from a frankly just a sort of intellectual scientific
point of view is if there is -- as a scientist, you
are unsatisfied about the possibility of the Creation
of Life from nonlife during the two billion years
that's necessary.
Why not just say that's a problem with
the evolution model? Why contrast it --
A For several reasons.
Q Let me finish. Why contrast it or allow
it to be contrasted in school with other models which
you testified earlier which you know of no scientific
evidence to support five of the six criteria for the
81
model?
A Well, there are several reasons that are
involved here, reasons of my opinion. One has to do
with what you should be doing in a classroom, okay?
Now, what you should be doing as a teacher
is fostering, understanding, and learning and
facilitating on the part of the students that develop-
ment of what could be called an inquiring mind. You
should be developing what could be called healthy
intellectualism. I don't believe you do that when
you only have one explanation for any phenomenon.
Now, we go back to Phlogiston. Quite
frankly, if you take the trouble to present to the
students the arguments for the Phlogiston Theory,
Lavoisier argues to the contrary. You foster on
the part of the students an understanding of what
the scientific method involves.
Now, I don't think you would be opposed
to presenting Phlogiston in that light, and I don't
see any reason to be opposed to having scientific
creation presented.
I could name several other things where
typically if you have a multiple-working hypothetical
approach, better learning, better teaching, and
better education can be one of the consequences.
82
Q My question really is: Why not contrast
Oparin and Fox's thinking with directed panspermiogenesis?
A Why just have two models, why not have
several?
Q But if your concern is simply limited to
the notion of whether or not two billion years is
sufficient time for life to have developed from nonlife
on the planet, why is it necessary to get involved
with a theory in which you don't believe in any of the
aspects of it?
A Well, there are other things that are
separate from the technical aspects of the question.
And these include the sensitivities of the people in
the country who help support the public school system.
I mentioned a while ago that we have a concept called
"fairness in this country." And one way that you allow
fairness to occur is to allow parents or allow
taxpayers who are a minority group to have their views
expressed.
You don't just have a simple presentation
of one explanation for a whole series of things which
apparently are factual in a classroom.
Q Based on the scientific evidence, isn't it
insane to think that the world was created 10,000
years ago?
83
A I think insanity requires only one kind
of thing to be presented to developing intellects.
Q Maybe insane was too strong a word.
But isn't it the epitome of nonscience to think that
the world was formed 10,000 years ago and to teach
that to schools?
A The epitome of nonscience is a closed-
mind presentation of any topic. Now, if there is a
body of opinion that asserts that the world is 10,000
years old, I think there is plenty to be gained in a
course in science to handle the evidence for that.
What do the evolutionists have to be
afraid of? Are they afraid, for example, that the
evidence is so strong that some people may think the
earth is only 10,000 years old? What's the fear?
Q Do you think there is any evidence that
the earth is 10,000 years old?
A Personally, I don't know of any. But
that doesn't mean to say that I don't think people
ought to be allowed to present it.
And the other thing is that people have
to get the kind of education that they think their
kids ought to have. The education that kids get in
a classroom should not be picked by the teacher up
front.
84
Q How would you decide what is taught and
what isn't taught in a classroom?
A Ultimately, the people who vote in a
state or school district. We have what could be
called a democracy. You present your ideas and
express your strength or influence through all sorts
of indirect mechanisms like school boards, okay?
Q Yes.
A If you are going to have a public school
system, then you have to decide what's going to be
taught. The only way you can decide that in a fair
way is let the people decide.
Q We should vote?
A Not just the practitioners.
Q We should vote as to what gets taught in
the classroom?
A You should vote for people who represent
your views. You can't vote on every nit-picking
thing obviously. But the people who make up the
backbone of the country should be able to pick who
they want to represent their views, the view shouldn't
come down the other way.
Q If Arkansas and South Carolina voted to
teach that we were at war with England and Germany
was on our side in World War II, that should be
85
taught in history class?
A If the people of Arkansas are paying for
the education, ultimately they are the ones who should
be able to decide what's taught.
Q If they wanted --
A If they want nonsense taught, they should
be allowed to teach nonsense.
Q That would be okay with you as an educator?
A I wouldn't be happy with that specific
teaching, but we would be much better off having
the people of the state teach nonsense since they
are paying for it than a totalitarian way of learning
things that they are also having to pay for.
In other words, I am a believer in
freedom, young man, not the idea of teachers doing
anything they like.
Q I understand and appreciate that.
A I find the alternative argument is most
reprehensible; that indeed -- I can't ask any questions.
Q You can ask me questions.
A How will you decide what's taught in a
biology classroom?
Q How would I decide?
A Yes.
Q That isn't the question that i was
86
anticipating.
A That's the one that I asked.
Q Some questions are appropriate for me to
answer and some aren't. That I view as one that's
not.
A Okay. There is a very simple way out of
this whole problem: You don't teach either.
Q You don't teach either?
A Right, isn't that rather obvious? Is it
critical to the safety or sensible progress of this
country that we always treat all controversial things
in public education?
Q No, of course not.
A Well, I point out to you that the
typical pieces of legislation are in favor that
we don't require the teaching of Creation Science;
we require it as a balance.
Q But as far as you are concerned, whoever
the Arkansas taxpayers want taught in schools is
what should be taught in schools?
A You have oversimplified it. It has to
do with the public school system and, let's say, the
court as a last resort should again do what the
people want taught.
Q Regardless of the factual merit of what
87
they want taught?
A Yes, because they are paying for it.
What is a fact to one group of people is not a fact
to some other group of people.
Q Is there some specific incident that
changed you from a radical Socialist to the
philosophy that you hold today?
A Several things happened over a period of
about, roughly, ten years.
Q What were they?
A In the first place, I made the acquaintance
of a man who was one of the ten best chess players
in the world, Paul Schmidt.
Dr. Schmidt was a chemist in a laboratory
where I was an assistant. And as you probably suspect,
I like to talk about things. When I was the lowest
guy on the tandem pole in this lab, I bothered all of
the chemists with the ideas of Lenin and Marx and
so on.
By and large, they ignored me and treated
me with, let's say, a great deal of amenities. I
was the best guy they had that ever cleaned the
place up.
One day Schmidt came over to me and said,
"Bill, have lunch with me and read a little book that
88
I will give you." I proceeded to do it. Over
approximately one year, Schmidt and I had lunch
a few times each week and discussed the book.
Being essentially young and stupid, his
ideas didn't really sink in until I was a bit older.
The little book was Frederick Hyek's The Road to
Serfdom.
Then I also made the acquaintance later
on when I was 29 years old of a fellow who was much
younger than me who was my lab assistant. He had
no real complete college education. His name was
Harold. Harold and I liked to talk about politics
and political theories and economic theories. No
one else in the lab liked to do this.
So Harold and I had lunch every day for
a long period of time. I found much to my discomforture
Harold was a better analyzer of human behavior in the
marketplace than I was. Now, let's see, were there
other people in between? Somewhere along the line,
I picked up Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. Let's see.
Those are the things that remained in my
mind. Harold, Dr. Schmidt, and Ayn Rand.
Q Did this conversion take place around
the same time that you changed your name?
A No, totally unrelated.
89
Q I asked at the same time, not whether or
not it was related.
A No, I essentially changed my opinions
when I was approximately 29 to 30 years of age. And
the name change occurred later.
Q What's the first contact that you had
with the Creation Science movement?
A The first contact?
Q Yes.
A I guess the first time they ever sent me
a copy of Acts and Facts.
Q How did you come by that?
A Frankly, I don't remember. I am not trying
to be evasive, but all kinds of stuff is sent to me
all the time. I have no idea how I get on many of
these mailing lists.
Q How long was that?
A I am sure it was several years ago, I
guess. But I really have no idea how I got the
first copy of it; I really don't know.
Q When was the first time you initiated
any kind of contact?
A Let's see. It probably was this letter
to Major Rhodes which I told you I can't find. And
I wish someone would find a copy so I can have a copy.
90
MR. CHILDS: I am sure they will
have it.
A (Continuing) Okay. It seems to me that
my friend, the botanist downstairs, may have had
something that he circulated -- and I know I have
got it in my briefcase -- a whole series of statements
one, two, three, four, five, and, I think, the appended
letter had something to say like if you agree or
disagree with any of these things, please contact
Major Rhodes, the President of the South Carolina
Biological Teachers Association.
So I sat down and typed out a letter to
Major Rhodes telling him where I stood. I also
challenged him to debate it. I never heard from the
guy, of course. That's how I got started with Rhodes.
I don't remember how Wanger first heard
of me, but it would be conceivable that somehow or
another I had gotten on the mailing list of the
Creation Research Society or whatever you call it;
that they may have automatically sent Al Wanger all
of the names of the people in South Carolina. And
maybe he contacted me that way, I just can't remember.
Q Are there any other criteria that you have
that you view as indicia of science?
A As what?
91
Q As indicia of science.
A I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the
word you used. Indicative of?
Q That's another form of the word.
A By and large, I think something is
scientific and direct proportional to how well you can
test it.
Q So testability?
A I think that's the ultimate thing, the
fundamental thing.
Q You had made reference before to falsifi-
bility.
A That has to do with testability. If you
can by tests show something is incompatible with the
facts, then that satisfies the falsifibility criteria.
Q Is evolution testable?
A Some processes of it are, yes.
Q Which processes?
A Mutation and, I think, certain aspects of
natural selection.
Q Which other processes of evolution aren't
testable?
A I think the other sort of thing is
observational. In other words, You said essentially --
Q Another criteria.
92
A Well, observation is not as good as
control testing obviously. I mean, the essence of
doing a scientific experiment is to be able to
manipulate viabilities and see what their relative
relationships are.
I don't think you can do this observation-
ally with evolution, not in the past.
You dig down and take out a core of what's
down there and try to make sense of what you are
looking at. And you try to fit that into what we
know about such processes --
Q But you don't think that's testable?
A What I said previously was that I don't
believe we have a way of testing how life began on
the planet, okay? Once you got a cell, I can accept
the idea that the cell could have evolved and given
us, let's say, advanced life forms that characterizes
the earth right now.
But I don't see any way that we can test
or prove how that first cell got here. I think it is
all speculation.
Q Okay. But after the appearance of life
on the planet -- however that occurred -- is the
rest of evolution testable?
A The processes are testable. We can show
93
that mutation occurs. We can presumably make
calculations to approximate the rate of mutation
in terms of solar radiation, for example.
And then we try to fit that into what
would be needed to create the rather large genetic
changes that are needed and going from, let's say,
a bacterium to a simple bucarriotic cell and up to
Phlogiston.
We can test those processes in a very
limited way. I find those results very encouraging.
And I think they are a very useful and excellent model
to account for that Darwinian-type of evolution.
Now, the earlier part is where the problem is.
Q Is the three billion years or so from the
first appearance of life on the earth to the present
sufficient in your mind to have accomplished evolution
from the basic forms to life as we know it on earth
today?
A Probably, although I see some stumbling
blocks. I find it very difficult to see how the human
brain could have evolved all right. That's a very
complex structure and I find that very difficult to
understand. Anatomical variety and physiological
complexity, separate from the brain, I have intuitive
sense that this is not too difficult.
94
Q Do you have a theory about how the brain
got to its present capabilities?
A No. You have to rely on the ideas of
other people.
Q Is Creation Science testable?
A I would say it is testable; it is non-
testable to the same extent that evolution is in
during that early period.
Q In the early period?
A In the early period. Now, in the later
period, my reasoning would be something like this:
If the creation scientists say there was a world-wide
flood 10,000 years ago, then it is incumbent upon
them to show us the evidence for it. Then when we see
the evidences, then we deal with the evidences. It
is not incumbent upon me to show nonevidences, although
it wouldn't work.
Q Have they shown you any evidences?
A No. The creation scientists have not
been particularly interested in converting me to being
a creation scientist.
Q To the extent that you have done reading
on it, have you seen any evidence that supports the
notion of a world-wide flood in the last 10,000 years?
A No, not that I found persuasive. Typically,
95
as I said previously, Creation Science is based more
upon identifying and maybe interrelating what looked
like inconsistencies in evolutionary theory.
The fact that the creationists don't,
to my way of thinking, have a coherent model, that
does not make their approach intellectually unacceptable.
Q How would you distinguish between the
creationists' model and sort of a model that would
hypothesize that a Creator made the world yesterday
and implanted within us the memories that there
existed a time before that? How would you distinguish
those two models?
A I'm unaware that any creationists
proposed that the world was made yesterday.
Q I am proposing my own model.
A I would certainly say fine, let's see
your evidence for it.
Q I have no evidence for it.
A Then I can't very well do much with it.
I can't prove the lack of availability of your evidence
if you can't show me the evidence.
Q What's the evidence for --
A In a dialogue like this, it is incumbent
or it's the responsibility of the person that makes
the assertion to offer the first evidence.
96
Q What is the evidence that the creationists
have asserted which suggests that the world was made
a million years ago?
A What is the evidence of that?
Q Yes.
A Well, among other things, the creation
scientists do not believe or do not accept the dating
methods as far as I know. And I would say they like
to believe -- they point out insufficiencies in,
let's say, the operating physics that make possible
carbon dating.
Q Do you have any of your own personal
doubt of the efficacy of carbon dating?
A No, I don't. But the thing is I am not
a specialist in radio carbon dating. Generally
speaking, in science, what we have is a lot of
faith in science. We typically called it confidence
in other people and what they do. Okay.
Now, if I read, for example, the work of
Willard Libbey on radio carbon dating, I am left with
two alternatives: Either Willard Libbey knows what
he is talking about or he doesn't. I prefer to believe
that Willard Libbey knows what he is talking about.
Q Whose writings do you believe on the
problems created by the gaps in the --
97
A Try that again.
Q You testified earlier --
A That there are gaps --
Q In the fossil record that are not
satisfactorily explained by evolution science.
A I would be happy if there are more
transitional forms.
Q My question is: Which writings that
question the gaps in the fossil record lead you to
believe that the creation scientists have a better
solution to those gaps?
A I don't believe they have a better solution
to those gaps. We are again on the Darwinian side
of things. I don't think they have a better solution,
but that does not mean to say that again in a classroom
that those views should not be expressed.
Q I guess we spent a few hours talking.
A Let me try this one on you. Let's say
we are talking about what caused the Great Depression.
Now, as far as I know, nobody knows what caused the
Great Depression. But the only way to try to find out
what caused the Great Depression is to show in model
explanations and try to test them, that's the thing.
Q We have been talking for a few hours.
We will talk for a few more hours.
98
THE WITNESS: Can we take a break?
MR. KLASFELD: Sure.
(Thereupon, a short break was held.)
- - -
99
Q Let me not take up where I ended off.
I'll get back to it, but not just now. I do, however,
want to get back to what we spoke about just at the
beginning, which is your belief that there wasn't
enough time in the two billion years or so before
life appeared on the planet for life to have been
created from nonlife.
Just what are the calculations that you do
to lead you to believe that that was unlikely, if not
impossible?
A Well, one would have to estimate how
long, let's say, a piece of DAN would be needed for
self replications. This would be one approach, now,
just one approach. Then you would have to estimate
what the probable concentrations were.
Q Concentrations of what?
A Of the molecular building blocks of the
DNA. You'd have to estimate these concentrations on
the primitive earth. Then you would have to estimate
how frequently these molecules would collide or come
into contact. You'd have to estimate how frequently
they would form, what we call dynode nucleotides.
Like, you have a mononucleotide here and a mononuc-
leotide here; two come together; it they attach
properly, you get a dynode nucleotide. You'd have
100
to make the calculations that would indicate how
successful these calculations would be toward building
a long chain.
Now, I don't think that I could make those
calculations from a kinetic standpoint. It would
take a kineticist to do it. But intuitively, I strongly
feel that there's not enough time for that to occur.
Now, that would just be a piece of DNA.
Q What leads you to this intuitive belief?
A It's a sense of statistical probability.
Let's see. How can I explain it? I don't know any
way that we can show that mononucleotides will build
up a long chain by simple molecular contact in the
absence of a catalyst, and then the catalyst would
not be available unless it had the form.
Q What catalyst are you referring to?
A Well, today, we have enzymes; so we would
be talking about whether an enzyme were available to
foster the formation of a nucleotide polymer.
Q What about -- what do you find unsatisfactory
about Stanley Miller's experiments?
A I don't find anything unsatisfactory about
what I know of Stanley Miller's experiments. Are you
talking about the famous Urey-Miller experiment?
Q Yes.
101
A That's a very admirable experiment. I
wish I had done it.
Q Well, why doesn't that experiment satisfy
you with respect to --
A Oh, that's your thrust. Miller was able
to show, for example, that hydrogen, methane, and
another synthetic could produce polypeptides of a
molecular kind. As far as I know, there has been
an insufficient amount of catalytic activity on the
part of those synthetic polypeptides to account for
what would be needed for DNA synthesis to occur.
Q Are there other authorities in the field
who have done these calculations and satisfied them-
selves that there wasn't enough time?
A I don't know.
Q Is there anybody in the field who agrees
with your position that there wasn't enough time?
A I don't know.
Q But you're not aware of any?
A No. I haven't really looked around for
people.
Q Are there people in the field who do
believe there was enough time?
A I would expect that someone like, Seygud
or --
102
Q Now, Seygud's not a biochemist.
A Well, that doesn't keep him from having
the opinion of the statistical validity of other
people's work.
Q Are there people in this area of expertise
who do believe there was enough time?
A Well, I would expect Miller or Steinman
and Fox, of course, any of Oparin's students -- any
of the people that are particularly in molecular
evolution, I would guess that they are working with
the assumption that there is sufficient time. This
is the prevailing belief; okay?
Q Okay. Are all of the combinations that
you would take into account in doing this study,
this statistical study, are all of those collisions
random?
A As far as I know, they're random. In
order to be nonrandom, you would have to be able to
show a chemical -- a preferential chemical affinity
for certain groupings; okay?
Now, I don't really think, from what I've
read, that there's a sufficiently strong argument
for a preferential chemical affinity.
Q So that even once it got started in a
very basic way, that the advance from there was
103
completely random?
A Well, see, randomness, in chemistry, may
or may not be operating in a given system. Typically,
what we call randomness has some preferential
possibilities over others. But I don't really see
that there's enough evidence for that preferential
activity to support an accelerated formation of a
polymer.
Q Are you aware of anyone who has done
these calculations which --
A I would assume that Kenyon and Steinman
have made such calculations, and I would assume that
they found them insufficient and had been to propose
another factor.
Q Have you read any of these studies of
calculations?
A I've read an interesting textbook by
Steinman and Kenyon. It's called "A Predistical
Calculation."
Q But in that text, don't they believe that
there was enough time for all these things to take
place?
A I don't think they discussed it that
way. I don't think they were concerned with the time.
I don't remember it being in there.
104
Q Why did you make reference to the text?
A Because I said that I presumed that they
needed to postulate another factor.
Q Do they postulate another factor?
A They postulate what I think would be
equivalent to another factor.
Q Which is?
A The general idea that there is an
accelerating tendency for molecular organization as
a function of molecular weight. At least this is
what I get out of what they wrote.
Q What do you understand the science of
Creation Science to be? How would you define it?
A I would say it's an accumulation of
asserted inconsistencies or insufficiencies in the
evolutionary model.
Q Sort of a negative science?
A I think that's too harsh.
Q Well, are there any positive theories that
are --
A I would say the fact that the criticism
comes from people with respectable credentials makes
it a positive contribution to science.
Q But do they postulate any kind of
positive kind of notions that replaced the areas that
105
they criticize?
A Well, they look at the same evidence
that the evolutionists do and draw different conclusions.
Now, I find this a positive activity if, for no other
reason, as an evolutionist it would make the evolution-
ist's work a bit harder to prove their case and find
additional evidence.
Q Well, this about the creation of the
earth 10,000 years ago, is that part of Creation
Science?
A I'm certain it is in the minds of some
people, but I don't consider that of any particular
importance in holding my own position.
Q Well, but the Statute -- I mean, we're
talking about the Statute here. That's what this
case is about.
A Does the Statute say that? What does
it say in here that --
Q It says "relatively recent."
A Well, does it say 10,000 years?
Q No.
A Well, then, relatively recent, to me,
might mean two billion years.
Q How would you feel about the teaching that
the earth is 10,000 years old?
106
A I think that would be very interesting.
I think it would be very difficult for someone to be
able to establish to the satisfaction of a group
of scholars that the earth was 10,000 years old.
Q But we're not talking about a group of
scholars. We're talking about a group of eleventh
graders.
A Okay. Let's make it a group of five-year-
olds. Let's put it that way. Any way you want. If
the experiment is properly designed, you bring in your
evidence and you state your case, and then you let
the people sit there and make their decision. I
wouldn't want to have to prove that it's 10,000
years old.
Q But this bill would require the teaching
of separate ancestry from different --
A Fine. I think that's perfectly satisfactory.
A teacher does not have to be an exponent and a
believer of everything that he presents; all right?
If we want to foster understanding on the part of
students, you let alternative hypotheses exist and
be weighed in the balance of the classroom.
Q Well, why these alternative hypotheses?
A Why not?
Q Why these?
107
A Because I think they affect a substantial
number of people who send their children to school
in this country in a government-sponsored program.
Q What is the source of all these people
believing these six listed things?
A The human intellect.
Q Anything else?
A No.
Q Does it have anything to do with Genesis?
A Oh, I suppose some of them believe in
Genesis literally, and some don't; but I think that's
quite preferable.
Q But you think these six things don't have
anything to do with Genesis.
A They don't have to.
Q Well, what if --
A It's irrelevant.
Q Well, what about my theory about God
creating the world yesterday?
A Fine. Then get out there and use your
legal/political pressure and use it in your school
system.
Q And if I could pass it in Arkansas, then
that would be okay with you?
A Yes. If, indeed, you're paying taxes
108
and we're talking about a government-sponsored system.
Q Would you be for any bill that -- let me
ask you this. Were you for this bill before it passed?
A I'm for the concept of people being able
to control the education that their children receive
at taxpayers' expense, and if they want something
taught, it's taught; if they don't want something
taught, you don't jam it down their throats. If
something is deeply controversial, believe me, the
knowledge can be gotten by other means than the public
school system.
Q Why did you testify for the Act in South
Carolina?
A Because I believe in the necessity for
openness in education; I believe in intellectual
fair play --
Q But why this particular belief system?
A What belief system?
Q Why this particular theory?
A Because it has a coherent body of --
there's a coherent body of opinion in the State of
South Carolina manifested by people who are taxpayers
in South Carolina and that are satisfied with the
existing state of affairs.
Q Okay. I guess where I started was, I was
109
asking you what Creation Science was, and you said
that it was --
A Right.
Q -- more or less an accumulation of
asserted inconsistencies in the evolutionary model.
A As I see it.
Q Well, the Statute says -- defines
Creation Science as, among other things, the
explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophism,
including the occurrence of world-wide flood.
A Right.
Q So is that part of the science of Creation
Science?
A Presumably. And if I were teaching in a
classroom, I'd go off and try to find the evidence
and present it to the class.
Q And separate ancestry for men and apes
is part of Creation Science?
A I would presume so.
Q And changes only within fixed limits
originally created kinds of plants and animals?
A Yeah; all the things there.
Q That's part of Creation Science.
A I would presume so.
Q Is there any scientific evidence in
110
support of any of those things?
A I don't believe it's my responsibility
to produce the evidence. I'm interested in making
the possibility available for the people who think
they have the evidence to come forth and make it
available in a classroom.
Q And you would support any bill that
offered the teaching of a different model in any
course?
A I would support legislation that improves
the chance that there is dogmatic presentation of
anything in a public institution.
Q Do you have any expertise in the area of
brain evolution?
A I doubt it.
Q Why does the complexity of the brain
lead you to believe that there wasn't enough time
to have it evolve?
A Well, it has to do with the formation
of brain circuits. I don't know how many billions
of neurons and neuronal circuits exist in the human
brain, but let's say it's ten billion; all right?
How do these things spring up? It's incumbent upon
people who believe in some type of slow development
of complexity that produce the circuits available on
111
a molecular level.
Q Do you think that evolution in and of
itself in any way contradicts the Second Law of
Thermodynamics?
A That's a very interesting question. It
depends on how you interpret the Second Law of
Thermodynamics.
Q Does it have anything to do with evolution?
A I certainly think it does.
Q Do you see any conflict between the Second
Law and evolution?
A I see potential conflicts, yes.
Q What are the potential conflicts?
A Well, it has to do with how you define
the system.
Q What's the problem with defining the
system?
A You can pretty much get anything out of the
Second Law, depending upon how you define your terms.
Q You're talking about whether it's an
open system or a closed system?
A Only in part.
Q What other aspects of the definition of
the system?
A Closseous referred, I believe, to an
112
isolated system.
Q How does the sun's interaction with the
earth affect those issues? Isn't it an open system
in the sense that the sun is always providing energy
to the earth?
A Again, it depends upon how you define your
terms. You can have a system that's essentially and
almost completely closed, as opposed to one that is,
you know, much more in contact with the rest of the
universe.
Q I understand all of that.
A Right. Okay. So if you --
Q But what possible conflict do you see
between the Second Law and evolution?
A Well, it's -- I don't see any way to
prove the bloody thing.
Q Prove what bloody thing?
A I don't see any way to prove that evolution
is in concert with the Second Law.
Q Well, do you see any problem with it?
Do you see any inconsistency?
A The inconsistency is that you can't prove
it. The Second Law -- as far as I know, the Second
Law seems to best work for relatively straightforward
cases in nature.
113
Q And?
A And when you start in making the system
larger and larger and larger, it becomes more
universally applicable, but increasingly difficult
to test.
Q Yes. But what conflict is there between
the Second Law and Evolution?
A Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you,
that -- well, what -- I can't answer that many questions.
To be able to answer that, you have to tell me what
you mean by "the Second Law."
Q Well, I'm reading in this letter to you
from --
A All right.
Q -- Duane Gish. It says, "I have read the
book 'Biochemical Predestination' by Kenyon and
Steinman, as well as many others books on the
origin of life and on the Theory of Evolution. I have
yet, however, to find a rational explanation of the
apparent contradiction between the Second Law of
Thermodynamics and the Theory of Evolution."
Are you aware of any apparent contradiction?
A Well, it's a question of how you define
the system.
Q Do you know what Dr. Gish was making
114
reference to in his letter to you?
A Dr. Gish, if I remember correctly, feels
that evolution violates the Second Law; okay? And
there is various ways to understand the Second Law.
Now, if we take, as a presentation of
the Second Law, the idea that there's a natural
tendency in the universe for physiochemical processes
to go in a direction of increased disorder, that
appears to be in violation of the evolutionary concept
where you have disorder moving toward more order.
Okay?
Q But that will only be true in a closed
system, wouldn't it?
A As far as I know, it's true in an
isolated system.
Q Well, is the earth an isolated system
relative to the sun?
A I think that that is difficult to show one
way or the other. I think the best guess would be that
it is not an isolated system. But I'm not a thermo-
dynamocist.
Q Plants grow, don't they?
A What's that got to do with it?
Q Well, it's increasingly complex from the
seed to the plant. Doesn't that violate the Second
115
Law.
A Not necessarily.
Q Wouldn't it if the earth was an isolated
system?
A If the earth were an isolated system
and if you saw, let's say, as an overall net effect
on this planet, increasing complexity, that would be
a violation of the Second Law.
Q Do you see increasing complexity?
A Yes. Well, now, wait. We see other
things too; right? You see more that increasing
complexity out there.
Q What else do you see out there?
A You see a whole host of phenomena that
are very difficult to sum up in terms of a net effect.
Q Are the aspects of Creation Science, as
defined in the Statute, testable?
A You mean right here (indicating)? To a
certain extent.
Q Which ones, and to what extent?
A Well, I presume that -- let's say, .1
here, we could envision designing an experiment to
produce living systems very, very quickly starting
with, let's say, the most fundamental elementary
particles and energy.
116
Q How would you disprove that the universe
was created from nothing?
A You can't.
Q Okay. So that's not testable?
A Well, you can design experiments that
parallel what we think a hypothetical scenario would
involve, and you could run the experiment and look
at the conclusions and extrapolate back into the
unknown.
Q What sort of experiments would you propose?
A I don't have any such experiment to propose.
Q So you couldn't devise an experiment that
would test that?
A I don't think so. But I'm not saying it
can't be done by other people.
Q How would you test the explanation of the
earth's geology by catastrophism, including the
occurrence of a world-wide flood?
A Probably, this would be an observational
activity. You'd go out there and look at the geology,
take core samplings all over the planet, and then,
let's say, hypothesize processes that would be consistent
with a world-wide flood. It's incumbent upon the
people who accept these and believe these things and
go do them.
117
Q But you're testifying on behalf of this
Statute.
A I'm testifying on behalf of the
Statute in terms of the importance of the Statute
fostering learning in a public school system.
Q But you don't care --
A I'm not testifying in support of
Creation Science, so to speak.
Q As you understand it, is your testimony
going to be limited only to the educational value of
teaching an alternate model, or are you going to
testify about the science problem?
A I say there's three, let's say, pins
on which I could base my testimony; okay? To a
certain extent, as a scientist, as an educator or
teacher, and as a parent or citizen.
Q To what extent as a scientist?
A To the extent that I believe I can present
or at least give support to the statistical problems
in going from a sterile planet to a replicating cell.
Q Through these mathematical computations
that you've never done.
A I think that's an unnecessarily harsh way
to put it. There are many things that we feel to be
right in science and other fields that we cannot embody
118
in specific experiments or mathematical formulas,
equations.
Q How do you define the study of evolution?
A It's the study of processes that are
either Darwinian or pre-Darwinian.
Q Well, is evolution what took place from
the formation of life up to the present, or does it
necessarily include the formation of life in the
first place?
A I think if you want to study evolution,
you have to concern yourself with the very, very
beginning of all things, and then you continue on to
where we are now and project it into the future.
And, also, you try to make some type of relationship
here, let's say, to culture.
Q To culture?
A Right; yes.
Q In what regard to culture?
A Sociobiological extensions of Darwinial
concepts.
Q What do you mean by "sociobiological
extensions"?
A Well, sociobiology is essentially the
science of evolution of human behavior and culture
and all the things that lead up to it.
119
Q Is it satisfactory to you that a science
only be negative? I mean, other examples of science --
A In the very beginning of a science,
I think that's the perfectly logical way to begin.
Q Is this the beginning of Creation Science?
A What. I don't know what you mean.
Q Well, you're saying that it would be okay --
A Creation Science may be in its infancy
right now, I think is what you're asking; and I think
if you would take the time to study the development
of scientifical concepts, you'll typically find
that the best progress is made where people find
insufficiencies in existing explanations, so in
nomalies, and attempt to explain them. There's nothing
wrong with starting with a negative position at all.
Q This theory embodied in the definition
of Creation Science, wasn't that a theory deposited
in the 1820's and 1830's by the geologists in England?
A Possibly. I don't know.
Q Are you familiar at all with the historical
debate among the geologists in England in the 1820's
and --
A Not familiar enough to discuss it
intellectually.
Q Are you familiar enough to recognize that
120
this theory embodied in the definition of Creation
Science is approximately the same argument that they
were making then?
A I would say no. I would rather study
that a bit more to give a sensible answer.
Q Are you familiar with any other scientific
discipline which is made up only of inconsistencies
and --
A Well, off the top of my head, I'd say no.
But the thing is, given enough time, I mean -- I would
say that probably all science has grown by people
focusing on what's not known and what insufficiencies
are in existing explanations.
Q I think that I would agree with you about
that. Is there some insufficiencies in our knowledge
about whether or not man and apes evolved separately
from our ancestry?
A There are certainly debatable opinions
even among evolutionaries in this as to how it
happened and when it happened and --
Q And I think those are important questions
to study.
A Why, I do, too.
Q Aren't we past the point of studying
whether or not it came about that way?
121
A Not necessarily. Not necessarily.
Q What information are you aware of that
leads you to believe that that would be a worthwhile
scientific pursuit, to study separate ancestry from
man and apes?
A Well, a scientist does not study
necessarily with a specific goal in mind. He goes
and looks for evidence, and he hopefully has the
courage and the intellectual openness to take -- to
go where it takes him. Then he interprets the evidence.
Now, if I'm in applied science or
technology, I might be trying to make a better glass
to hold a Coca-Cola. That's directed science. We're
not talking about directed science here. As far as
I know, we're talking about what is appropriate for
scientists to do.
Now, if scientists find it interesting
and valuable to look for separate lines of divergence,
fine; they go look for it.
Q They are not talking about separate lines
for divergence; they are talking about --
A Or separate lines of origin.
///
122
(Thereupon, a short recess was held, and
Dr. Norman Giles and Dr. John W. Crenshaw
exited the deposition.)
EXAMINATION
BY MS. FERBER:
Q Dr. Morrow, do you know when the Arkansas
Citizens for Balanced Education in Origins was founded?
A No.
MR. CHILDS: I want the record to reflect
that we object to more than one attorney con-
ducting the depositions. It hasn't happened
in the last week. This is the first time,
and I just make that for the record.
MS. FERBER: Off the record.
(Whereupon, an off-the-record discussion
was held.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Are you an officer in the
Arkansas Citizens for Balanced Education in Origins?
A I believe so.
Q What office do you hold?
A Vice President.
Q How did you come to be Vice President?
A I was asked to be Vice President by Professor
Gran.
Q And how did you first come in contact with
123
Professor Gran?
A The phone rang and I picked it up, and he
was on the other end.
Q Do you know why he called you?
A I would suspect he called me because he had
found out that I was generally interested in supporting
this type of legislation.
Q Do you know how he would have found that out?
A Not specifically, but it was certainly no
secret in South Carolina that I was in favor of it.
Q What is the purpose of the organization?
A The purpose is to require a balanced treatment
for the topic of origins in the public schools of Arkansas.
Q And how does the group seek to achieve this
purpose?
A Passing a law to require it to be done.
Q Do you know where the organization gets its
funds from?
A No, not specifically.
Q Is it connected with any other Creationist
organizations?
A I would imagine it is. I would find it diffi-
cult to believe that they were working on an independent
effort here.
Q What organization is it connected with?
124
A Well, I don't know. I said I imagine that
they --
Q What has been your duties as Vice President?
A Up to now, they have asked me to do nothing.
Q Okay. Why did you agree to be Vice President?
A Because I believe in their cause.
Q So it is a token office only?
A I wouldn't want to say that.
Q But you haven't done anything as Vice Presi-
dent?
A Maybe just sitting here doing what I'm doing
here this afternoon. That is what they wanted me to
do. I did tell them I had an awful lot of time to
travel and lecture and things like that, but I presume
they are simply agreeing with my original request.
Q What other persons are involved in the organi-
zation?
A I would assume that Miran is, since he's the
President.
Q Anybody else that you know of?
A I don't know anybody else.
Q Are there attorneys that represent the group?
A I would imagine so.
Q Do you know who they are?
A As far as I know, Wendell Bird may be one. I
125
think the gentleman sitting behind me, he is probably
one.
Q Are you indicating Mr. Childs?
A I believe so. I would assume that Humphries
and the others --
MR. CHILDS: Not so, not so.
THE WITNESS: Well, I stand corrected
there.
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Was it explained to you why
anybody wanted you to co-chair the organization?
A Was it explained? Well, if I remember correctly
I had a conversation with Gran. We seemed to be in
agreement on the purposes of the organization, and I
would have, I guess I could say, that he was pleased
that as an evolutionist I take the position that I do.
Q Was it ever explained why they would ask
somebody from South Carolina to chair the Arkansas
Citizens for Balanced Education in Origins?
A I don't think so. But I don't find that
unusual. I mean, if the organization has to have some
name.
MS. FERBER: I would like to mark as
Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 2 a one-page letter
to Dr. Morrow on Wendell Bird's letterhead.
///
126
(Whereupon, the document was
marked by the court reporter
as Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 2
for identification.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Dr. Morrow, this is a copy
of a one-page letter to you from Wendell Bird. Have
you seen this letter before?
A I don't remember specifically, but --
Q I believe --
A -- if it's in the bundle of stuff I gave you,
yes.
Q Okay. And this letter indicates he is trans-
mitting to you a copy of the affidavit requesting that
you notarize it and return copies to Wendell Bird and
Curtis Thomas. Is this the cover letter that would
have come with the affidavit in support of your inter-
vention?
A I would imagine so, yes. If I have a copy
of it, it ought to be in that pile of stuff.
Q Okay.
MS. FERBER: I'd like to mark as Plaintiff's
Exhibit No. 3 a copy of handwritten notes which you
provided to us today.
(Whereupon, the document was
marked by the court reporter
as Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 3
for identification.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Dr. Morrow, I show you
127
Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 3. Are these a copy of your
handwritten notes?
A Very definitely.
Q Where it indicates, I believe, transportation
and lodging expenses to be paid by Defense Fund --
A Yes.
Q -- do you know what Defense Fund that refers
to?
A I would presume the A.C.B.E.O.
Q And that is a defense in support of this
legislation?
A I am guessing that. I told them I did not
have the money to pay for the expenses myself.
Q And these are notes of a conversation you had
with Rick Campbell, Assistant Attorney General of
Arkansas?
A Let me take a look at it.
(Pause.)
No. I remember -- I remember something like
this, where he asked if I charged a fee, and he said
no.
Q And Mr. Campbell indicated that the Defense
Fund would pay your expenses to Arkansas for trial?
A I've written down to be paid by defense
Fund. Well, I guess he indicated it if I wrote it. It
128
could be -- I don't know if I heard him correctly, okay,
but I wrote down that, sure.
Q Thank you.
How long have you known Paul Elanger?
A I guess a year or two, probably a couple of
years.
Q Do you remember how you first came in contact
with him?
A I seem to recall getting a letter from him,
or some other type of correspondence, and I would guess
that he asked me if I would appear or give support to
the South Carolina law that somewhat is similar to the
Arkansas law, and he may have called me on the phone,
I forget. But one way or the other, I said sure.
Q Who is Mr. Sisk?
A Sisk?
Q Have you ever heard of Mr. Sisk?
A I don't know anybody called Sisk. Who is Mr.
Sisk?
Q In a copy of a letter between Elanger and Mr.
Gish, he refers to correspondence from Dr. Morrow and
Mr. Sisk.
A Billy?
Q Did Paul Elanger write to you and describe
any probable control mechanisms you could conceive which
129
would --
A I don't know if it was Elanger. I think maybe
Gish asked me that, or something like that.
Q When was the first time that you saw Act 590,
the Statute that was passed in Arkansas?
A I think it was today.
Q Okay. Had you ever seen a similar bill?
A I would say the South Carolina bill was
similar.
Q Do you know if it was almost exactly the
same or exactly the same?
A If I remember correctly, the South Carolina
law was not as specific or definite, I'll put it that
way, and probably not as inclusive.
Q At the time when you signed your affidavit
in support of the Motion to Intervene, --
A right.
Q -- had you ever seen Act 590?
A I didn't see a copy of it.
Q Okay. Had somebody explained to you what the
bill was about?
A They would have had to, or I would not have
agreed to support it.
Q Do you remember how that bill was explained
to you?
130
A No, not as such. I would guess it had been
explained to me by Wendell Bird, the guy that was maybe
taking the deposition. I may have said, well, what is
it that you people are trying to do, and somebody pro-
bably explained to me. And I said that sounds pretty
good, if it sounds like the South Carolina thing, I
would certainly do it.
Q What is your understanding of what 590 requires?
A It mandates a teaching in the balanced way
of these two different models in the public schools of
Arkansas.
Q What is --
A Now, I've got to correct that. It does not
require the teaching of both, but it does assert that
if you are going to teach the evolution model, then you've
got to teach the balanced.
Q Okay. What does balanced mean to you?
A An evenness of approach that provides alter-
native scenarioes or explanations for origins that
ideally is, you know, not dogmatic.
Q In Section I, Act 590, it states that balance
is required if material deals in any way way with the
subject or origins.
A Yes.
Q What is meant "in any way"?
131
A If the topic comes up, then you have balance.
Q Section II of the Act prohibits religious
instruction. What does "religious instruction" mean?
A I would say directed teaching of religious
concepts, say, direct teaching of religious concepts
period.
Q What are religious concepts?
A Well, concepts based upon metaphysical beliefs
that are typically not scientific testible.
Q Is Creation Science scientifically testible?
A I've answered that quite a few times.
Q And am I correct that you answered, no, it's
not testible.
A I said, in my opinion, it is -- it would be
difficult, or is difficult to test many aspects of
Creation Science, if not all of it, in somewhat the
same fashion that it's difficult to test similar aspects
of evolution science.
Q Okay.
MS. FERBER: I'd like to mark as Plaintiff's
Exhibit 4 a one-page document with the heading
"Citizens for Fairness in Education," a
document which you produced to us today.
(Whereupon, the document was
marked by the court reporter
as Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 4
for identification.)
132
Q (By Ms. Ferber) I call your attention to
the lower half of the chart head, "Scientific Creationism
Creation Science," and under that chart, there is a
box headed "Inherent Religious Implications."
A Okay.
Q I understand that to be referring to the
Inherent Religious Implications of Creation Science?
A Yes; kind of directly.
Q Okay. Do you believe that there are Inherent
Religious Implications to Creation Science?
A Yes. And also in Evolution Science.
Q Thank you.
Section II of Act 590 also prohibits reference
to religious writings. What does religious writings
mean?
A Writings by people whose primary vocational
activity is religious belief or theory or actions.
Q Does this mean merely that a teacher can't
refer to the Bible or textbook, can't quote scripture?
A It would include that, but not really restricted
to that.
Q What are kins?
A Kins?
Q Yes.
A Well, the way this seems to be used by Creation
133
Scientists is an alternative to, I guess, species.
Q Okay. Do you know what the origin of the
term "kins" is?
A I would suspect it's -- well, I would expect
it to be in a religious writing.
Q The Bible, perhaps?
A Probably. In fact, I think it does.
Q Okay. What does catastrophism mean?
A It means processes that happen rather suddenly,
perhaps unpredictably, in such a way that the effects
are enormous, relative to the system that's being
affected.
Q Does it have anything to do with the inter-
vention of God?
A It would be consistent with it, but it doesn't
require it.
Q Does Creation Science necessarily infer the
concept of the creator?
A I would say, no, not the way I see it. It's
consistent with it, but it's not a necessary require-
ment.
Q So you -- how would you teach Creation Science
without reference to a creator?
A Without reference to a creator? Well, I
would concentrate on what evidences there would be for
134
and against different scenarioes for the appearance
of life on the planet. Okay?
Q And when a student asks you where that life
come from, what would you say?
A I would have to tell them, of course, that's
unknown, and as far as we know, it's untestable.
Q How do you feel as an educator as leading a
student to a question that you can't answer?
A It's a perfectly valid way to do things, my
goodness. In your -- in teaching at all, most questions
that you are asked, you can answer, and what I try to
do is foster an intellectual activity in the student
and yourself to try to get answers.
Q Would you agree that teaching the concept that
the Earth was created by a supernatural creator is a
religious idea?
A Well, let's just try that again.
Q Isn't teaching the concept that the Earth was
created by a supernatural creator instruction in a
religious idea?
A Yes.
Q At 590 states that it prevents the establish-
ment of theologically liberal, humanist, Nontheist,
or Atheist religions.
A May I see that somewhere?
135
Q Yes. It's in Section VI of the Act.
A Okay.
Q In the middle.
A Okay.
Q What is a theologically liberal religion?
A Didn't you ask me a question on that?
Q No. I stated the Act said that, as a pre-
ference to my question.
A Okay. Go ahead.
Q What is a theologically liberal religion?
A A theologically liberal religion? It's kind
of a funny question to ask and agnostic. I would say
that a theologically liberal religion is one that is
rather non-stringent in the specific dogmas that must
be accepted to partake of -- to partake in that relig-
ion.
Q What is a humanist religion?
A I think that's a religion that's based upon
man being the ultimate center of the universe and it's
a religion of by and for human kind, for mankind.
Q By the way, these may be strange questions to
ask and agnostic, but I'm asking them of somebody that
is a supporter of Act 590.
A Sure.
Q What is a Nontheist religion?
136
A I guess it would be a religion that does not
require the belief in a God or, shall we say, does not
require a belief in a specific or traditional God.
Q Section VIIB of Act 590, states, Public
Schools generally censor Creation Science and evidence
contrary to evolution.
A As far as I know.
Q Does censor mean to suppress or Creation
Science arguments haven't been argued as a Creation
matter to warrant inclusion in a text?
A I think it's a combination of those things.
Q Creation arguments have not had sufficient
secular merit to warrant inclusion in textbooks?
A I would phrase it somewhat differently. I
would have no doubt that there is a certain degree of
conspiracy involved. And the second thing would be,
insofar as there being secular support -- in order to
have such censorship, you only really need, let's say,
an understanding or a belief on the part of the people
that are responsible for the teaching that that is so.
In other words, what I'm trying -- what I'm trying to
deal with is a certain aspect of what you said.
Q Okay.
MS. FERBER: I'm sorry, could you read
back his answer so far?
137
(Whereupon, the court reporter read the
record as requested.)
THE WITNESS: I would not want to support
the idea that a majority of people were opposed
to the teaching of Creation Science. What I'm
trying to say, is, that's taught in the class-
room, and is left up to the teacher within the
teaching community today, I think there's a
general bias against teaching Creation Science.
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Why?
A Largely because if what they were taught.
Q Since the time that these teachers were
taught biology, let's say --
A Yes.
Q -- have there been significant advances that
would lend more credence to Creation Science?
A Not necessarily. Not necessarily.
Q Therefore, students of biology today would be
taught the same as your term "biases" as teachers of
today who were students several years ago?
A Possibly. But let me phrase it a little
differently. In conversations with people who teach
all sorts of things, and perhaps especially those aspects
of biology, I have found too few teachers who know
enough about evolution to really teach it appropriately.
138
Okay? And I think there's an unacceptable degree of
the non-acceptance of Evolutionary Theory on the part
of biology teachers, rather than an understanding that
science is a developing-type knowledge, and as a
general tendancy on teachers to teach things that are
proven facts. And then we go to the next thing.
Q How much contact do you have with elementary
and secondary school teachers?
A Well, over the last 15 years or so, off and
on, I've talked to biology teachers and other teachers.
Q Preferably, how often?
A How often? I guess maybe about every six
months I run into one or two of them.
Q And do you feel you have a good grasp of
what they are teaching in biology?
A I think so. I -- let's put it this way: I
remember one occasion where I was asked to do some in-
service teaching and Chesnee in South Carolina, and I
wasn't particularly satisfied -- those teachers were
fine people and all that, but they werent' really
science teachers, in the sense that I would want them
to be science teachers.
Q How would you want them to be science teachers?
A I would want them to be much more interested
in teaching kids how to learn things than just teaching
139
them specific bodies of information.
Q Do you think it's important that students
learn what science is?
A I think it's very desireable, yes.
Q Do you think Creation Science is a good
science?
A It can be as good as the person teaching it,
just as evolution can be as lousy as the person
teaching it.
Q Is it possible that Creation Science isn't
a science at all?
A To answer that, I would simply have to say
that something is as scientific again as how well you
could test it.
Q Okay. If Creation Science isn't testable,
and it's taught along side something, which educators
believe should be taught as science, what does that
do to students' ability to understand what science is?
A Well, the way you phrase it, Creation Science
would fall flat on its face, wouldn't it, and the
students should be able to observe that. On the other
hand, if the same degree of skeptisism is presented to
the evolutionary ideas, I think you'll find the typical
student would not accept that either. He concludes
that science has nothing really to offer him in regards
140
to these things.
Q Why shouldn't the same healthy degree of
skeptisism be applied to evolution?
A I think a healthy degree should be applied to
all healthy aspects of proven things.
Q I'm having trouble with understanding how a
high school biology student, most commonly a tenth
grader, is equipped to deal with this healthy skeptisism.
A You are having trouble with that?
Q Yes.
A Well --
Q I'd like to know what tools a tenth grader
brings to the classroom by which he's going to under-
stand that what is being taught to him is a science,
and what is not a science, is emerged as a science?
A Well, I think that the typical tenth grader
today finds enormous difficulties with many intellectual
concepts which are introduced prematurely to them.
Now, ideally if a teacher is trying to handle
these kinds of things, the teacher might pose a series
of problems that require explanation or solution, then
the teacher should try to foster student inquiry to
accumulate the evidence for an organic hypothesis. In
teaching them the scientific method --
Q Okay. If you teach students about science,
141
and you teach them the scientific method, and then
you teach them in a science classroom something that
is not science, how are they going to understand what
science is?
A Now, you present them with a problem. You
try to explain to students what the scientific method
is. Okay? Then you present a problem, can science
offer us information for understanding in this, on this
specific phenomena.
Q Act 590 requires that Creation Science be
taught as science.
A Fine.
Q You have thus far indicated some problems of
the Theory of Evolution --
A Yes.
Q -- which appear to me to be the evidences that
you have offered in support of Creation Science.
A Yes; in a sense, yes.
Q Okay. Are there any other evidences, scien-
tific evidences for Creation Science, other than the
problems with the Theory of Evolution?
A I think those are quite sufficient.
Q Okay. If what you teach students is a scien-
tific evidence for Creation Science is far more than
the evidences, the problematic evidences for evolution,
142
why is that science?
A I don't see why it's not. What we should be
trying again is to foster this healthy skeptisism.
Q Okay. Didn't you earlier say that some
kind of panspermiogenesis is another possible theory
of origins?
A Yes.
Q Are there any other Theories of Origins?
A Well, there's a whole flock of them, but I
don't think they necessarily are all testable poten-
tially as, let's say, panspermiogenesis.
Q Are the scientific evidences that suggest a
problem of evolution also evidence in support of pan-
spermiogenesis?
A To a certain extent, I guess.
Q Okay. Why does Act 590 only require that
evolution and Creation Science be taught?
A Those are the things of most concern pre-
sumably to the people of Arkansas.
Q Okay. If the problematic scientific evidences
about evolution are evidences in support of panspermio-
genesis, why are they also scientific evidence in support
of Christian Science?
A I don't know if I understand.
MR. CHILDS: I don't think you can expect
143
him, and I very rarely say anything, but I
really don't think you can expect him to tell
you what members of the Arkansas legislature
were thinking, and that's assuming they were
thinking about this. The Arkansas legisla-
ture, by our 1876 Constitution, can only meet
for 60 days every two days.
MS. FERBER: Yes.
MR. CHILDS: Except for, I think, they
can -- there's some way that the Arkansas
Supreme Court says they can have a 15 day or
a 30 day extension.
MS. FERBER: Right. Or a special session.
MR. CHILDS: Emergencies -- no, not for
a special session.
MS. FERBER: Okay.
MR. CHILDS: The Governor --
MS. FERBER: I'm sorry, I don't know
what that has to do with his opinion as to
the scientific evidences that Act 590 requires
to be taught.
MR. CHILDS: Well, you asked him why the
Act did not have panspermiogenesis.
MS. FERBER: No, I didn't. I asked him
why the scientific evidences that he taught
144
would have to be taught under Act 590, why
those were scientific evidences for Creation
Science, and not for something else. And my
next question would be, how are school children
to understand that?
MR. CHILDS: I'm sorry. I misunderstood
your question. I thought you asked why the
third theory was not being taught. I with-
draw that.
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Okay. If the only evidence
in support of Creation Science are the same evidences
which also support panspermiogenesis, or any other
Theory of Origin, other than evolution, how does the
school child understand that those are evidences in
support of Creation Science?
A The school child is going to experience a
considerable amount of confusion on these topics.
Q Thank you.
A May I add something?
Q Sure.
A But that is unrelated to this law.
Q Do you think confusion in school children is
a good thing?
A It depends on what we are talking -- what kind
of confusion we are talking about. I think it's obvious
145
to me in talking to students that come to Wofford
College, there are largely South Carolina students,
but they do come from outside the state, too, their
understanding of origins is rather muddled.
Q Why?
A Quite frankly, I think the teachers that
have taught it have been asked to teach something that
is most difficult and perhaps in perfectly misunderstood
at best, even by the experts in the field.
Q Isn't it likely that their understanding of
origins is muddled because not of what they learned in
the classroom, but because it conflicts with religious
teachers and origins?
A Not at all. I find the same type of muddle-
ness in understanding the American Economic System.
Q Act 590 states that Evolution Science is
contrary to the religious convictions or moral values
or philisophical belief of many students and parents,
including individuals of many different religious
faiths and with diverse moral values and philisophical
beliefs.
A It certainly can.
Q Does it hinder religious training and moral
training by parents?
A I think the dogmatic teaching of anything can
146
have that effect.
Q Will hinder religious training?
A I think the dogmatic training of anything can
have that effect, yes.
Q Does the presentation of evolution alone
produce hostility towards many religions?
A It can have that effect.
Q How?
A Students can be rather vunerable to what's
presented to them in a classroom, and a teacher has
an obligation to understand their intellectual vuner-
ability, and not to capitalize on it for, say, they're
teaching specifically philisophical purpose. A teacher
has to recognize that a balance is needed in many
things, and to teach students, perhaps, how to get to a
state where they can pick in a more unbiased way their
final understanding of things.
Q Is evolution a religion?
A It can be, and frequently I think it's taught
as if it's the equivalent of religion.
Q So that teaching of evolution underminds the
religious belief of fundamentalist students?
A It can, yes.
Q Does a presentation of Creation Science support
the belief of fundamentalist students?
147
A It can.
Q Is the desire to prevent the underminding of
religious belief one of the major reasons for requiring
that Creation Science be taught?
A It's not one of mine. Other people who are
in support of it would have to answer it in their own
way.
Q What's your major reason?
A I believe in openness and fairness in educa-
tion, and I believe that it makes good sense again to
teach, say, a multiplicity of explanations or models.
Q Do you expect that belief in literal interpre-
tation of Genesis would be --
A I doubt it. It would be exposed to arguments.
Q Have you ever taught in the elementary or
secondary level?
A No.
Q Okay. Are you familiar with Creation of
Science writings textbooks?
A To a certain extent.
Q Have you ever read any of that that don't
contain biblical references?
A Not that I can think of.
Q Are you aware of any Creation Science teaching
materials that would be available to implement Act 590
148
in public schools?
A It seems to me that the -- I will say I have
in my files enough material that I could put together
a cogent summation of Creation Science without --
without reference to scripture.
Q Okay. For your own teaching?
A Yes.
Q But not materials you would hand out to your
students?
A Oh, I would have to put these materials
together.
Q And this is material that would enable you
to present Creation Science on the college level?
A I would think so, yes.
Q Are you ever involved in training teachers?
A Well, once again I was involved in an in-
service effort, which was like a one day shot.
Q Okay.
A I have had an occasional student at Wofford
College who has gone on to high school teaching.
Q Do you believe that teachers are properly
trained to teach Creation Science?
A I would have to say that I have some reserva-
tion that teachers are properly trained or educated
today to teach most things, including all forms of
149
science.
Q Do you think that most teachers know how to
teach Creation Science without relying on the religious
tenements?
A I sort of answered that with my previous
statement. It would be a rather incompetent teacher
who has to lean on religious materials to teach Creation
Science.
Q So teachers would be incompetent to lean on
religious materials, or not know how to teach it?
A They would have to learn how to teach it.
They would have to sit down and study the topics rigor-
ously.
Q In your experience, do teachers sit down
rigorously and present them in a --
A Not as much as they should.
Q Are any unsettled areas, scientific disputes,
currently taught to school children?
A Yes -- wait a minute, unsettled areas in
scientific disputes?
Q Similar to the Creation Evolution controversy.
A Possibly the sociobiologist discussion, that's
at least controversial as Creationism and --
Q What is sociobiology?
A Again, it's the study of the evolution of
150
human behavior and culture.
Q Is that taught in high school biology courses,
as far as you know?
A It can be fashionable for teachers to intro-
duce a certain cutting edge of scientific inquiry, and
I would expect some sociobiology to be taught or
discussed, at least, in pre-college level work.
Q Okay.
A And then in a certain sense, if you are
dealing with the influence of science and technology
on human decision making and human civilization, that's
very controversial.
Q Can you think of any other scientific disputes
that you think are taught to pre-college level students?
A I can't think of any, but I really doubt that
the teachers in this level of instruction are that
knowledgeable in those disputes. I think they have
their hands full with a lot of other things.
Q So the Creation Evolution controversy would
be one of the first, or the first such dispute that
most teachers would be teaching in science courses?
A Could very well be, yes.
Q What does academic freedom mean to you?
A Well, let's see, the best answer to that, I
think I've already put that down in one of these documents.
151
Could I look at that document?
Q Which one?
A That affidavit that was circulating around
here someplace.
Q Certainly.
A Thank you.
(Pause.)
Now, what I said before was something like
this: A teacher should be able to present a scientific
topic that's under investigation in such a way the
teacher should not feel reservations about the accuracy
or the completeness of the material that was being
presented. Okay. Now, I think that -- that's a
pretty good idea there. I think it pretty much reflects
my feeling.
Q How does mandating that a teacher teach the
scientific evidences for Creation Science foster aca-
demic freedom as you have just defined it?
A Well, I would say that you are assuming that
the teacher has great reservations about the accuracy
and completeness of Creation Science, and I don't think
that evidence is available.
Q Would it surprise you if a lot of teachers
had reservations about the accuracy?
A No; it wouldn't surprise me.
152
Q If teachers had serious reservations about
the accuracy of the evidences they were required to
teach, in fact, serious Creation Science was, in fact,
science, wouldn't it violate their academic freedom
rights to require them to teach it?
A Academic freedom is not a Constitutional
right. It's an academic privilege. And such teachers
would be advised to seek alternative employment in an
alternative school system.
Q So if a teacher is true to their own belief
in academic freedom, a teacher who did not believe
that Creation Science was science, ought to seek
alternative employment that teaches science as a
science?
A Well, teachers should not attempt to teach
things that they are uncomfortable in teaching. If
they have severe intellectual reservations, they ought
to do something else.
///
153
Q Are you suggesting that in the face of
the Statute that a teacher who doesn't believe in
creationist science ought to find alternative employment?
A What I am suggesting is that if a teacher
cannot obey the law, they may very well find himself
looking for alternative employment, yes. That's a
common thing, school boards mandate all sorts of
teaching.
Q Do you know of any other subject area
where a Legislator has mandated specific contents
of courses?
A I don't know about direct legislative
mandating, but I would say in an indirect way, the
requirement for specific goal levels of achievement
in precollege work is the equivalent.
Q But what I asked is were there any other
indications where they mandate the specific subject
matter, content of a subject?
A Well, I guess I would have to say no.
Q I was just making sure I didn't miss any
laws.
A Okay.
Q do you believe that there is a concept of
academic freedom which attaches to students that
students have any academic freedom rights?
154
A To a certain extent.
Q Would you describe those?
A Well, fundamentally, I would reason from
the standpoint of who is paying for the endeavor.
Q Would it be easier if we started with
the question of whether parents have academic freedom
rights?
A I think parents have a very definite right
to govern the education of their children in a govern-
ment educational system.
Q How do they endorse that right?
A Ultimately, I guess, by the power of the
ballot.
Q All right. As a scientist or as a science
educator, do you have a definition of religion?
A Do you want me to give you a definition of
religion?
Q Yes.
A I thought I did that earlier. Now you
are asking me to come up with the same definition,
perhaps?
Q I'm sorry. What I am trying to know is
if religion is forbidden to be taught in the public
schools, how does a teacher know religion when they
see it?
155
A That's a good question.
Q Thank you.
A I guess I would say that something is
religious if there are no ways that we can deal
with it scientifically.
Q But it is okay if the only way we can
deal with it scientifically is to reject another
theory; that's scientific?
A I don't know if I understand what you mean
there. My concept of what could be called the
scientific fields are those things that can be studied
by the scientific method. It requires interest,
objective testability, and the doing of experiments.
Now, things that aren't able to be treated
that way may very well be religious. Certainly,
religious things fall to that category of things.
Q Is the reason that you believe Creation
Science is science -- if you believe that -- is that
because it's no less science than it is evolution?
A In many respects, I think that's correct.
Q It's no more religious than evolution
is religious?
A I think either of those models of origins
can be a religious or a scientific as the ability of
the person doing the talking to make it.
156
Q If a student asked you: Who is the
Creator, how would you respond?
A Who is the Creator?
Q Yes.
A I would simply say that I, of course,
don't know. I don't know how to find the answer.
But I don't mean by that to imply that there is one.
Let's include that.
Q I do not want to mischaracterize your
testimony, but I think you said earlier that Creation
Science can be taught without explicit discussion of
a Creator.
A In my opinion, yes.
Q I am trying to understand the differences
in the way you could teach on a college level and the
way that high school science is taught, and, therefore,
to understand how a teacher would implement the
actual requirement --
A Teach the corresponding evidences for
Creation Science without reference to a Creator.
How did we get to the college level? Unless they
are a publicly financed institution --
Q The bill applies only to the elementary
and secondary level which does not mean to imply
otherwise.
157
A How would you --
Q You indicated that you could teach it
without reference to a Creator. But you teach on a
college level, not on a high school level.
A I do, yes.
Q And I understand that your testimony
will center on an approach to teaching the two mouths
of origins in a nonreligious manner?
A Yes.
Q So what I am trying to --
A As far as the scientific aspect and the
teaching aspect, that's separate from me speaking as
a citizen and as a parent.
Q I understand that. What I am trying to
understand is whether your ability to teach two
mouths of origins in nonreligious manner can be
generalized to a high school teacher's ability to do
the same.
A I would certainly hope so.
Q Then I have to go back to what scientific
evidences for Creation Science a high school teacher
is going to present that are within the understandings
of a high school student?
A Well, I suppose we would have to do
something like this: It has been decided presumably
158
to teach topic X and presumably in the very beginning
of such an effort there's not a body of coherent
knowledge about topic X that allows us to pick up a
book, open it up, and there it is.
So you go to the learned individual in
the field that is related to topic X, you put together
-- if topic X is indeed controversial at all, you
go to the learned individuals on each side of the
question and ask them to accumulate or formulate the
evidence that can be used for and against their
specific feelings about the matter. And then you use
that.
Q How does a teacher know who are the
learned individuals to look to?
A I don't think there is any difficulty
in finding those people in the areas that we are
talking about. There is a significant number of
well-qualified scientific people who are studying
creation research as they see fit. And it is
certainly an equivalent number of people.
Q An equivalent number of qualified
scientists?
A Let me back up. There is enough people
available on both sides of this controversy with good
credentials to make those materials available.
159
Q Who are the scientists with good solid
credentials who are writing about or presenting
evidence in support of Creation Science?
A I think Dr. Gish, Dr. Morris, probably
Dr. Parker.
Q What are Dr. Gish's credentials?
A He has a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cal
Tech.
Q Dr. Morris?
A I don't know where Morris got his degree,
but I heard him lecture on evolution and creation.
Q Do you know what his field of specialization
is?
A Thermodynamics.
Q What about Dr. Parker?
A Parker, I don't know. I think he may be
a biologist.
Q If this bill had not been passed, do you
think Creation Science should be taught?
A I think so, yes.
Q Why?
A Well, we go back to this business of
teaching science as a way to find out about the
world and things and not just as a dogmatic endeavor
to present accepted theories and accepted facts and
160
also from the standpoint of basic American fairness.
Q But why Creation Science?
A Why not? That's the apparent antithesis
of noncreation science.
Q Creation Science to the exclusion of other
theories of origins?
A If theories of origin have a significant
body of scholarly opinions behind them, fine, bring
them in.
Q Are there other theories of origins
besides evolution which have an equivalent amount of
scholarly endeavors behind them?
A Not to my knowledge. However, you just
stated evolution.
Q Evolution and Creation Science.
A In other words, there is a theory of
the origin of the world, universe, and mankind that
the American Indians and Hindus have had and so on.
If, indeed, there is enough of an interest for all
of the Hindus to present, they ought to get their act
together and bring the scholarly material together
and bring it in.
Q Specifically, what writings of Dr. Gish
and Morris do you think are scientifically valuable?
A Well, I was impressed with two public
161
lectures and debates that I heard Morris involved in.
Q Can you identify those?
A Huh?
Q Can you identify those more specifically?
A When I was teaching up at Concord College,
Morris came twice.
Q When was this?
A Let's see. Between 1968 and 1970. And I
was unfamiliar with Morris in every way, shape, or
form up to that time. And on one occasion, if I
remember correctly, he debated on evolutionists --
wait a minute. I believe he debated the chairman of
my biology department. I was very much impressed
with the way Morris handled his topic and also evolution.
Q Is he a good debator?
A I think he is excellent.
Q And do you remember what kind of scientific
evidences he presented that impressed you?
A Again it has to do with resulting what
he thought were the insufficiencies of the fossil
record and the interpretations by the evolutionists.
Q Why were you impressed by what he said
that day?
A Well, I would have to say that he gave
a cogent argument that led me to conclude that he knew
162
what he was talking about, although I didn't neces-
sarily agree with it.
You can be impressed with someone's
ability to discuss and explain their point without
agreeing with them. And I came to the conclusion
that if I had to debate somebody, I would hate to
run into Morris.
Q Do you believe that all minority viewpoints
should be taught?
A If they are significant in the culture
and terms of the expression of public opinion, yes,
in a publicly-financed endeavor.
Q Are there any written works of Dr. Morris
that you find scientifically persuasive?
A There is some stuff that I got from Acts
and Facts that were pretty good where he sort of
summarized his criticisms of evolution and summarized
what he thought were the evidences for Creation
Science.
Q Any published works of Dr. Gish?
A I don't know that I can recall those
things by Gish. I have read extracts from debates
that Gish had. And it sounded, let's say, scholarly,
let's put it that way. It was good stuff, scholarly,
worth dealing with. If I am an evolutionist, okay.
163
It was worth dealing with.
Q Morris also had one book that I read when
I was at Concord College -- I forget the name of it.
But it had a good bit of scientific reasoning in it.
I forget the name of the book.
Q Could it have been the Genesis Flood?
A I think I read that, too, but I don't
know if that was the only thing that I looked at.
We taught evolution there from a controversial
standpoint.
Q What do you mean by that?
A Well, the fellow that I worked for was
the chairman of the department and he liked to teach
from the standpoint of a method of inquiry with respect
to science. You state a problem and then in a
discussion group, you separate -- the students would
sort of wrestle with how we would go about trying to
prove this pro or con. And the guy was more or less
fair with it.
The evolution argument was given in the
biology textbook that we used. And then he would
allow any discussion groups, anything else he wanted
to be brought in as sort of an antidote, if you want
to put it that way.
Q Who controls what you teach in a classroom?
164
A At Wofford College?
Q Yes.
A Well, Wofford is quite laissez faire about
it.
Q So you control what you teach in your
classroom?
A At Wofford College. If I really got out
of hand or did something that the kids were very much
opposed to, you can bet your sweet life that the dean
would hear about it.
Q Is there a process whereby scientific
theories gain acceptance in the scientific community?
A I think so.
Q And can you describe that process for me?
A I would say that in any given time, there
is probably a working general concensus of what is
acceptable in terms of scientific hypotheses or
principles in the whole body of scientific practitioner
Okay. It is sort of a concensus state of affairs.
Q Do scientists publish articles?
A Yes.
Q Is that part of the process whereby
theories get acceptance?
A That's right. And if you are very
persuasive and it looks pretty good, you achieve a
165
certain amount of popularity.
Q Do textbooks have significant influence
on what's taught in the classroom?
A They certainly can.
Q Is there a process whereby materials must
gain acceptance in the scientific community before
it is included in science textbooks?
A I have been told there was such a process.
As far as the actual mechanisms of it, I don't know.
Q Do you know of any textbooks that give
balance treatment to Creation Science?
A There is one that I had in my possession
for a short period of time, but I forgot who published
it.
Q Could it have been Biology, a Search for
Order and Complexity?
A It could have been, I don't remember the
name. This was quite a few years ago, and I remember
looking through some and it looked pretty balanced.
Q Why has Creation Science gained significant
acceptance in the scientific community?
A I will have to answer this in a couple of
different parts. First, I am not so certain that
there is that much opposition to it. I am unaware
that there has been really valid polls taken among
166
scientists with respect to the specific problem.
Okay. That's the first thing.
The second thing would be that there
has been a general development of evolutionary
explanation for things over about the last 50 years
or more. And people and scientists are included in
here, of course, and I think they tend to pretty
much believe what they have been taught. And I think
that, say, following the turn of the century an
increasing number of scientists -- shall we say --
believed in or felt that the evidences for evolution
were superior to the creationism that was more popular
than before.
And they taught people who taught other
people. There's been a gradual acquiescence or
acceptance of these revolutionary ideas.
Q Do you receive scientific journals?
A Do I receive them?
Q Yes, regularly.
A I subscribe to a couple of them.
Q Which ones do you subscribe to?
A To the Scientific American and Science
and also Chemical Engineering News.
Q Are there any other ones which you, in
the course of your employment, would review?
167
A When I read Biochemistry -- that's the
name of the journal. On sort of an irregular basis,
as I have time, as part of my research work, my
students and I do a continual literature search through
chemical abstracts. When we find abstracts of articles
that are of interest, we get photocopies sent to us
of the original documents and I read those.
Q Are these journals that you have just
identified scientific journals that you respect?
A Yes, very much so.
Q Have you found articles by creation
scientists?
A No, typically not, no.
Q Do you have an opinion as to why not?
A Well, to get something published, it is
necessary to get it past some type of review committee.
And generally speaking, if the ideas or topics or the
evidences that you have written about are unacceptable
to the review committee, you don't get published.
Q Are there criteria that those review
committees use?
A I have been led to believe that that's
the case.
Q Do you know what those criteria are?
A Not really. I would say in the last
168
analysis, the review committee would have to have a
sense of validity and appropriateness, you might say,
of the material.
Q Do you teach Creation Science?
A I do not now.
Q Have you ever?
A No.
Q Do you teach anything of the origins
of life, man, earth, or the universe?
A I touch on it peripherally in my biochemistry
course.
Q Do you teach any scientific evidences in
support of any creationists' explanation of the
origins of life or universe?
A That's not my mission at Wofford College.
I mean, that doesn't very well fit into teaching
general chemistry or something like that.
Q Do you teach about the origin of first
life?
A I touch on it as part of teaching a
course in science for nonscience students. But I
don't reach evolution, that's not in my job
classification, so to speak. That's in the biology
department. It would be fun to teach it there, I
would enjoy it.
169
Q What competing theories do you teach in
your own classes?
A What competing theories? Well, of course,
I have three different classes plus research. Now,
in my general science class, what I try to foster
is objective analysis. And essentially what would
qualify as competing theories would be alternative
ways to explain certain natural phenomenon or to
explain or predict the consequences of certain ways
of thinking.
Q Can you give me an example?
A To be specific, I take my general science
people out -- and none of these are science majors.
They would be poets and actors, most likely.
I take them out and we look at a proposed
extension to a highway. And we study the environmental
impact at the same time. So we trot them over the
area of the proposed highway and I try to point out
to them certain salient features of how the environment
will be changed if the highway is extended.
And then I ask them to think of consequences
beneficial and detrimental as a consequence of having
this highway.
Q Okay.
A For example, if they say -- well, students
170
have a tendency to say it would be a good idea to have
these highways because it facilitates transportation
from here to there. I try to have them also reason
to the fact that transportation may be hindered
because more traffic will be enticed to come into
this area since the extension of the highway is
available. You might still have the problems that
you thought you were going to cure by building the
highway.
Q I understand that. That's a kind of
controversy.
A Yes.
Q But that is a different kind of controversy
than the creation of evolution controversy.
A All right.
Q Are there any controversies of the
creation evolution type that you teach in your course?
A If I have an opportunity, if things
develop properly in the course, I get to the biological
kinds of things. And we discuss current models --
how life originated on the planet. And then I try to
take off the evidences for and against or the
insufficiencies or the advantages of specific
explanations of how life got here on this planet.
Q So you have taught Creation Science?
171
A To a certain extent, not as a topic.
But insofar as how it might come into the subject of
teaching kids about science because I like to teach
from an argumentative standpoint, let's put it that
way. If you read my resume, I think I said that.
Q Why not be satisfied with just teaching
the evidence for and against evolution?
A I don't think that gives a complete
picture. I don't think it gives it a complete
intellectual experience of the kind we ought to foster.
Q If you tell me that you are doing more
than just teaching the evidence for and against
evolution when you teach Creation Science, what
additional evidence are you teaching?
A What I do in my class?
Q Uh-huh.
A Essentially, I try to turn it back and
hand it to the students and say: Okay. What do you
think we would have to do to support this hypothesis?
Q What kind of scientific evidences do you
come up with to support --
A We try to envision by sitting down and
thinking about it, the kinds of experiments or studies
or observations that would be needed.
Q So you are not teaching actual scientific
172
evidences but rather determining what kind of
proof, if discovered by scientists, would support
a Creation Science model?
A That's part of it. I try to teach the
closest proximation of the scientific method whenever
controversial-type things could be imagined.
Q Were any additional scientific evidences
that you teach in support of Creation Science that
you wouldn't teach merely by teaching the evidences
more for and against evolution?
A It seems to me they fall in the same
category. Some set of facts that stands in opposition
to evolutionary theory may or may not fit into
creationists theory. Okay.
Q Do you hold a personal belief as to
the scientific validity of Creation Science?
A The scientific validity of it, I think,
it is weaker than evolutionary science which means
to say that I find more acceptable or stronger the
evolutionary model.
Q When you teach, to you express an
opinion as to the scientific validity of evolution?
A When I teach anything for which there is
a controversial component, I always tell the students
where I stand; I always try to present more than one
173
explanation. I do this as a principle of teaching.
Even, for example, in my biochemistry,
there is a controversy about the origin of the
mitochondria, and I have a personal opinion. However,
there are at least two schools of thought on this.
Q Have you expressed to your students the
environmental validity of Creation Science?
A Yes, I told them substantially what I
told you. I think that the arguments are interesting,
they have a certain amount of consistency. But they
do not persuade me that that is the preferable model.
Q I believe that you told me that you have
read Act 590.
A If that's the thing in front of me.
Q It is, that thing.
A Okay.
Q And you understand that Act 590 requires
balanced treatment of Creation Science and Evolution
Science?
A Uh-huh.
Q Is a teacher under Act 590 frre to express
an opinion as to the scientific validity of Creation
Science?
A I would imagine so. I don't see anything
specifically in here that makes a teacher teach
174
something or not -- at least say what the teacher
believes in.
Q So the teacher who doesn't think that
Creation Science is science could give some token
balance treatment, teach some scientific evidence
of scientificness and say; Oh, I think that's all
hog wash?
A I think expressing it that way would
be inappropriate.
MR. CHILDS: It certainly wouldn't
be professional.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MS. FERBER: Thank you.
MR. KLASFELD: I think it would be
less than professional to do anything else
but.
MR. CHILDS: I agree with you fully,
David.
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Could a teacher say:
Some author has presented these scientific evidences
for Creation Science, but I am unpersuaded or I don't
think that they are, in fact, scientific evidences
in support of Creation Science?
A I don't see any problem with that -- I
think a teacher should essentially tell the students
175
where he is coming from. I think of myself as a
can of beans and you tell them what's on the label.
Q What does it do to a student who has a
teacher all year long and who respects that teacher --
this is a teacher who teaches them what science is --
and then this teacher stands up there and says: This
is what some people think are scientific evidences
and I have to teach them to you, but I don't believe
them?
A What does it do to the student? I would
like to think that it decreases, reduces the degree
of respect that the student has for the teacher.
And it would also indicate that the teacher is
intellectually incapable of dealing with things in
an intellectual way.
I would be very suspicious of a teacher
who didn't have that much intellectual flexibility.
You could extend this other criticism of literature,
the analysis of economic positions, and the political
science class, many things.
Q Do you think that evolution which is
thought of in public schools denies the existence of
God?
A I suppose it can lead to that conclusion.
Q Does the teaching of evolution reinforce
176
any negative values or beliefs in children?
A It certainly can.
Q Raises them?
A Well, see, you could essentially take
practically anything that's taught and end up with
all sorts of negative and unpleasant and undesirable
consequences on how it is taught.
Q How about belief in abortion?
A I suppose so. I will have to stretch
my imagination to see how you could get to that
state of affairs.
Q What input should an educator have to
the development of science curriculum?
A What input? Well, it depends on what
aspect of the educational enterprise they are teaching.
Now, if we are in a public school system, the educators
ideally would make their views known as to what is
appropriate to be taught in a specific class under a
specific topic.
Then presumably, the people who would
have the children in the school should make their
views known again at the ballot box, indirectly through
the election of the school board.
And then there has to be achieved some
sense of agreement between -- shall we say -- what
177
the customers want to be taught to their children and
what the practitioners are willing to teach.
Q Would you agree, though, that most
curriculum is determined outside of the ballot box
process?
A As a matter of fact, far too much is
determined that way. Parents in general pay very little
attention to what's taught to their children and, of
course, they are surprised at the consequences.
Q Isn't our American educational system
basically built on a system whereby, for instance,
practicing scientists and educators jointly determine
what should be taught in a science curriculum?
A I think this is true. But what you are
also saying is that the American public, by and large,
has indicated the sublime indifference in most respects
to what's being taught.
///
178
Q What credentials does a parent have that
enables them as to what to be taught to a student in
a science class?
A It is their children and that is a credential.
Q Because it is their children, they are
capable of determining what is science?
A Because it is their children that are recip-
ients of education, they are qualified to pass judge-
ment on whether the things should be taught or not.
Q Is there a difference between deciding what
should be taught and deciding what should be taught as
science?
A I would say fundamentally, no.
Q Do you believe Flat Earth Theory?
A The Flat Earth Theory, I am unaware that
there is strong scientific evidence in support of the
Flat Earth.
Q Does support for the Flat Earth even fall
into the category of science, as far as you know?
A I would say essentially, no. However, if
there were enough people out there that wanted a Flat
Earth Theory presented in a public institution and
their kids were there, we would present the Flat Earth
Theory.
Q As science in a science classroom?
179
A Wait a minute. We would deal with the topic
as fairly and -- you might say -- benignly. We would
try to deal with it in a sensible scholarly way.
Q The legislature could pass a Statute that
required the teacher to give balance treatment to the
scientific evidence in support of the Flat Earth
Theory and the scientific evidence in support of the
theory that the Earth is round.
A The legislature could, indeed, pass such a
law. And I doubt that it would be unconstitutional.
And it would stand as long as the people in that state
wanted it.
Q Would it offend you as an educator?
A It would bother me, yes.
Q Would it offend you as a scientist?
A Yes.
Q Okay.
A Because I don't think the evidences are worth
bringing in.
Q Okay.
(Thereupon, a short break was held.)
MS. FERBER: I would like to mark as
Plaintiff's 5 a two-page letter stamped
with Paul Ellwanger's name and address at
the top. It is a letter to Dr. Morrow from
180
Paul Ellwanger.
(Thereupon, Plaintiff's Exhibit
No. 5 was marked for identifi-
cation.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Doctor, is this a copy of
the letter that you produced to us today?
A I think so. I remember some little note
like this; I think that's correct.
MS. FERBER: I would like to mark as
Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 6 a two-page docu-
ment on stationery headed Citizens for Fair-
ness in Education. It is to state legislators
and others who support academic freedom on
the subject of origins and public schools;
from Paul Ellwanger; dated October 1981;
re revised model (uniform) bill, now entitled
"Unbiased Presentation of Creation Science and
Evolution Science Act."
(Thereupon, Plaintiff's Exhibit
No. 6 was marked for
identification.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Doctor Morrow, is this a
document which you previously produced to us today?
A Probably.
Q Okay.
MS. FERBER: I would like those marked
as Plaintiff's 7 and 8.
181
(Thereupon, Plaintiff's Exhibit
Nos. 7 and 8 were marked for
identification.)
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Plaintiff's Exhibit No. 7
in a one-page letter to Dr. Morrow from Tim Humphries
of the Office of the Attorney General, State of Arkansas.
Dr. Morrow, is this a letter which you received --
A Yes.
Q -- requesting that you produce documents at
this deposition?
A Yes, I remember that.
Q Plaintiff's Exhibit 8 is an article from
the October 28th, 1981, edition of the Spartanburg
Herald, entitled Creationists Vs. Evolutionists, Local
Professor may testified on his views.
Dr. Morrow, have you seen this article?
A Yes.
Q Does it accurately reflect an interview which
you had with the author of the article?
A Pretty much so, yes.
Q Are there any inaccuracies in it?
A Well, I did not look over the notes that the
fellow put together and I did look over his final com-
position before it was published.
Q But is there anything that is inaccurate as
to your statements or beliefs?
182
A I would have to look through it here.
Q Please, sir.
A Oh, he quotes me as saying: As far as I
know, I am the only one with my beliefs, that is, a
biochemist who is in favor of the Creationist Theory
being taught. He forgot that I told him that Gish,
for example, was a biochemist with similar views.
There is a part where he quotes me as saying:
I feel that the Creationists are a functional minority
in their degree of influence. Okay. I think that's
what I said.
He also said, "It is possible that most
people in this country are Creationists, but you
wouldn't know it by the biology that's being taught.
I suppose I said that to him, although that was not
one of the three reasons for my viewpoint.
Q But is your viewpoint otherwise accurately
reflected?
A Pretty much so; about as far as you would
expect a reporter with limited scientific background
to put together.
Q Are there any statements attributed to this
which you would want to at this time retract?
A Let's see. I think that's pretty fair.
Q Should religious implications be considered
183
along with deciding whether Creation Science is taught?
A I would say yes.
Q Have you ever read anything by Richard Bliss
on his two mile approach to teaching of origins?
A The name is familiar. I may have read
something, but I don't recall specifically.
Q You are not familiar with it?
A Way back, I think I have read something by
Bliss on this, but I don't remember.
Q Have you ever been involved in writing text-
books?
A In writing textbooks?
Q Or other teaching materials.
A I don't think so. It made very little
impression on me at the time.
Q Is evolution currently approved by all of
the textbooks?
A The ones that I have used or read, yes.
Q Act 590, as you have explained it, gives
teachers the option of either giving balance treatment
to evolution and Creation Science or ceasing to teach
evolution.
A All right.
Q How much of biology curriculum would this
cut out?
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A Very little of real importance at that level
of education.
Q By that level, you are referring to --
A At the pre-college level anyway.
Q Evolution is a small portion of pre-college
biology?
A It can be as important as you want to make
it, I will put it that way.
Q Is evolution a uniform think in biological
forces?
A Yes.
Q But cutting it out would only destroy a small
portion of a curriculum?
A It depends on what you are teaching. There
is a great deal that you can teach in terms of anatomy,
physiology, and there's a great deal of biology taught
without dealing with evolution.
Q Is the idea of unifying concepts important
in education?
A It can be.
Q Do they aid students to understand and remember
information?
A Properly used and properly presented, yes.
Q Is evolution an important unifying concept
in biology?
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A It can be, again, if properly used.
Q Do you think that modern biology makes sense
to a student in the absence of evolution as a unifying
theme?
A It is very difficult to find out how much of
biology, modern or otherwise, makes sense to students
if you objectively try to test them all.
Advanced students, very capable, high-achieving
students, I believe, can typically grasp a lot of con-
cepts. However, it can be very difficult with the
other students.
Q Do you think it is professionally proper to
teach theories for information as science which have
not gained acceptance in a scientific community?
A Sometimes, yes.
Q Given the limited number of hours that you
have to teach a student?
A Of course, you can't buy off more than you
can chew. But I would like to think that teachers are
willing to teach things that are not necessarily
commonly-accepted if, indeed, the teacher feels that
that topic merits consideration.
Q Do you want accountability based education is?
A I would have to guess what it means.
Q What do you think it means?
186
MR. CHILDS: Don't guess.
Q (By Ms. Ferber) Do you have an opinion as to
what it means? You are free to answer.
A Well, he just said don't answer it.
MR. CHILDS: I'm sorry. If you want to
guess, just say that you are guessing.
A I would guess. I would assume that what you
are driving at would be there would be some way to
examine the students on what was taught and how well
it was taught. And then to hold the teacher responsible
for those achievements be they beneficial or detrimental.
Q Do you have any existing biological textbooks
to teach without teaching evolution?
A I can't think of one right now.
Q Do students have the academic background to
weight the relative merits of evolution and Creation
Science and to make a judgment as to each?
A It depends on what level they got through
their education.
Q High school biology students.
A High school biology students again I find
that they have difficulty grasping all sorts of concepts
quite separate from these. The job of the teacher
would be to facilitate achieving that level --
Q The job of the teachers who don't know how to
187
teach it is to facilitate --
A If they wanted to teach biology, they have
to get their act and learn enough to teach it. I don't
care if it is mathematics, biology, or economics, they
have to be stronger scholars.
Q This is a new concept to teach --
A Science is a growing body of knowledge, and
you have to keep up with this stuff.
Q As I understand it -- I have not taken science
in some 15 years -- the formation of oil or coal, as
it is conventionally understood and taught, requires
that the Earth be very old or requires that a great
number of years have passed for these minerals to
form?
A Yes.
Q How does a student who learns that the Earth
is relatively young, six to ten thousand years old,
learn to explore for oil or understand where coal would
be formed and found?
A How do they do this? I would suspect they
would find several inconsistencies between the young
Earth and those requirements that are needed to look
for oil.
Q What happens to the student who is taught
Creation Science, believes Creation Science, and wants
188
to grow up and work for Mobile and/or Exxon?
A They probably won't be very good working
for Mobile and Exxon drilling for oil.
Q What does the term "model" mean to you as
an educator?
A What term?
Q Model.
A Model, it is an intellectual construction
that makes it possible to mentally visualize processes
or concepts in your mind requisite to a certain end.
It's an intellectual construction.
Q In your teaching, have you ever used any
materials that came from Creationists' Organizations?
A Well, off hand, I have referred to them like
in my general science classes again when I try to be
talking about the evidences for or against these two
models. I would use those. But I haven't photocopied
them or distributed them.
Q But you have consulted them?
A Yes, I consulted them, sure.
Q Do you know which materials?
A Right off, no, to be very frank. I would
simply take most of the stuff that you saw that I had
in the bag there plus Acts and Facts all the way back.
Q So Acts and Facts are among the materials
189
that you did not produce today that might be within
the document request?
A Did you want me to bring Acts and Facts?
Q What I would have liked is all of the docu-
ments in your possession and that would fit within the
document request.
A I don't have a whole set of them. You could
get them better from Gish or Morris.
Q The document request --
A It also said convenient.
Q No, no. The Attorney General's cover letter
said convenient; the document request asked you --
A I didn't deliberately mean to withhold any-
thing.
Q I don't mean to imply that you did. But I
would like to understand what other materials you have
in your possession, custody or control that would fall
within the document request.
A Would I have given you today. I don't think
there is anything I haven't given you today that would
be bear substantially on what I would say.
There could be one Acts and Facts some place
back in some notes that I may have used, but I don't
think it is a substantial thing.
Q I would request that if at any time you
190
determine that the facts or opinions which you will
state at trial will be based on any of the materials
in your possession that you notify the Attorney
General's Office and us of that.
A Find, that's fine. I would do that anyway.
Q Okay. Are you familiar with a writing of
Tim LaHaye; have you ever heard of him?
A No.
Q Are you familiar with the writings of Henry
Morris?
A To a certain extent.
///
191
Q Are there any goals for Christian funda-
mentalist education?
A Any goals? Well, I'm not a Christian
fundamentalist. I would suppose that -- and I'm
guessing at this, but the -- a goal would be the
reinforcement of fundamentalists' belief and the
general development of the individual toward helping
them stand against a rather -- a world that can be
rather alien.
Q Do you think that Act 590 promotes
those two goals that you've just articulated?
A Not necessarily. I mean, I think it
gives a better opportunity for a kid to feel that
there's a sense of fairness going on in the classroom.
Q Earlier today, you testified regarding
the South Carolina Statute that sought balance
treatment for Creation Science and evolution.
A Right.
Q And you testified that you foresaw no
difficulty teaching modern biology under that Statute.
A I doubt it; no.
Q But, in other words, you would have
testified that you wouldn't foresee a difficulty in
teaching --
A I think I testified to -- to something to
192
the effect that if I were in the public school system
and if I were trying to teach modern biology, I would --
I believe I would comply with that bill. I'm in a
private school, by the way.
Q And do you teach biology?
A No. I teach chemistry. You know, if
they ask me to teach biology, I would do that.
MR. FERBER: I have no further
questions. Thank you very much.
(Deposition concluded.)
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