Creation and the Courts (With Never Before Published Testimony from the 'Scopes II' Trial) (eBook)

Preface

Wayne Frair1

Geisler on the Stand

In McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (1982) the court considered an Arkansas statute that required balanced teaching of both evolution and creation when the subject of origins was discussed. After a two-week trial, December 7–17, 1981, the court ruled on January 5, 1982 that the statute was unconstitutional because it essentially would promote a biblical religious view. This Arkansas statute was a forerunner of the subsequent one in the state of Louisiana.

The December 1981 trial effectively was a travesty of justice, as is made clear in the only book by a person who was there for the entire trial (Norman Geisler, The Creator in the Courtroom, 1982). The federal court judge, William Overton, was from the start biased against the defense.

I personally arrived in the courtroom on Friday, December 11, the final of five days of testimony by the plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The first witness for the defense, Dr. Geisler, was on the witness stand in the afternoon of December 11. At that time I was sitting next to Dr. Duane Gish, who was known as a leading creationist and an unexcelled debater in the modern creationist movement.2 Geisler’s presentation was superb (see chapter 4), and at its end Gish was absolutely exuberant (see foreword). In no uncertain words he declared to me that Geisler successfully had demolished every one of the arguments presented by ACLU witnesses during their preceding five days of testimony.

Then in the cross-examination (see appendix 4), ACLU lawyer Anthony Siano began to mock Dr. Geisler based not on his court testimony but rather on some comments dealing with spaceships that Geisler had made in a pretrial deposition. Geisler tried in vain to be straightforward and honest as the cunning lawyer goaded him with superfluous mockery—a pitiful miscarriage of justice that was not opposed by Judge Overton.

My Testimony

On the following Monday I had the opportunity to be on the witness stand for about one and a half hours. Coverage of my testimony is given in chapter 7 of The Creator in the Courtroom. I said that Arkansas was “on the very cutting edge of an educational movement” that would improve the quality of U.S. education. Without hesitation I added that if Charles Darwin were alive today he would be a creationist. I backed up that statement with quotations from L. S. Berg, A. H. Clark, H. Nilsson, G. A. Kerkut, and S. Lovtrup. These date back to the 1920s.

The final material I used was from the famous British paleontologist Colin Patterson, who had spoken about a month earlier (November 5, 1981) in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Patterson had expressed strong feelings against evolution, and I quoted from his talk. The ACLU lawyer objected, but fortunately 13 Judge Overton overruled because I had been there for that AMNH presentation.

I felt that my testimony would have a positive impact for truth in opposition to what had been heard from the plaintiffs and their witnesses. They all had been coached thoroughly to stress two issues. These were (1) there is no science supporting a creation position, and (2) creation is religion, which should not be intruded into science. They said this repeatedly, even though the Arkansas law at issue in the trial prohibited religious instruction and clearly defines “creation science” as “the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from these scientific evidences.”

Newspapers and magazines across the country thrived on articles about the trial—some very fair and others misleading (see appendices 1 and 2). A generally quite accurate newspaper coverage of the whole trial was written by reporter Cal Beisner and appeared in the weekly Pea Ridge (Arkansas) County Times, Wednesday, December 30, 1981. One very biased and inaccurate report was written by Roger Lewin and was published in the January 8, 1982 issue of Science,3 arguably the world’s leading weekly publication of scientific information. A major portion of the report was a gross misrepresentation of my testimony. After reading Lewin’s article I wrote a letter to the magazine, from which I quote:

Roger Lewin’s treatment (Science 215:142) . . . of the Little Rock creation trial falls somewhat short of the quality of reporting I would consider the readers of Science should expect....

My presentation until cross-examination emphasized scientific data; and among other things I endeavored to make clear that from literature dating back into the 1920’s and up to the present time there is a body of information published by respected scientists who have theorized and speculated in ways more consistent with a creation model than a macroevolutionary model. A Russian book, Nomogenesis or Evolution Determined by Law by Leo S. Berg (original edition 1922), was republished by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press in 1969. The [foreword] to the recent edition was written by Theodosius Dob­3. zhansky, who described Berg as “one of the outstanding intellects among Russian scientists” and further that “the depth as well as the amplitude of his scholarship were remarkable.” (p. xi) In this 477-page book Berg demonstrates that living things have developed polyphyletically.

There have been other scientific (and “non-religious”) writings including [British] Kerkut’s Implications of Evolution, Pergamon Press, 1960, which have cast doubt upon a monophyletic model. I quoted from this book at the trial because much of what Kerkut says currently is very pertinent. For instance:

Most students become acquainted with many of the current concepts in biology whilst still at school and at an age when most people are, on the whole, uncritical. Then when they come to study the subject in more detail they have in their minds several half-truths and misconceptions which tend to prevent them from coming to a fresh appraisal of the situation. In addition, with a uniform pattern of education most students tend to have the same sort of educational background and so in conversation and discussion they accept common fallacies and agree on matters based on these fallacies.

It would seem a good principle to encourage the study of “scientific heresies.” There is always the danger that a reader might be seduced by one of these heresies but the danger is neither as great nor as serious as the danger of having scientists brought up in a type of mental strait-jacket or of taking them so quickly through a subject that they have no time to analyze and digest the material they have “studied.” A careful perusal of the heresies will also indicate the facts in favour of the currently accepted doctrines, and if the evidence against a theory is overwhelming and if there is no other satisfactory theory to take its place we shall just have to say that we do not yet know the answer.

There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the “Special Theory of Evolution” and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the “General Theory 15 of Evolution” and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis. It is not clear whether the changes that bring about speciation are of the same nature as those that brought about the development of new phyla. The answer will be found by future experimental work and not by dogmatic assertions that the General Theory of Evolution must be correct because there is nothing else that will satisfactorily take its place. (156–157).

It certainly is true that there are differences of opinion among creationists as there are among evolutionists, but both creation and evolution models can be presented in a broad sense within biology classes without this being a “religious” exercise. Neither evolutionists nor creationists need be paranoid regarding this issue, but we should realize that in our country we enjoy freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The causes of science education will not be served well by namecalling and misrepresentation or distortion of the ideas being presented by those with whom we disagree. It is true that most scientists today believe that macroevolution is a well-established concept; however, for improving scholarship and understanding, especially those promoting only macroevolution probably will profit from perceptively heeding what responsible creationists are trying to say.

The editors of Science did not print any portion of my letter or even acknowledge having received it. Their published write-up of my testimony at the Arkansas trial was so inaccurate that I wondered if the author, Roger Lewin, even was in the courtroom when I gave testimony.

I had written the letter to Science rather quickly and soon realized that there was a lot more I could have said; so I composed the following to present a more accurate account of what I actually had said during the trial:

I have been researching in biochemical taxonomy of reptiles since 1960, and did discuss some of my research from the witness stand. This write-up mentions three books which were earlier ones referred to; however I also quoted from a 1960 book, a 1969 book and other literature reaching into the 70’s. These authors basically did not just have some misgivings about some...