Louisiana Coalition for Science

By Barbara Forrest

As promised in the July 23 post featuring Dr. Holly Wilson’s 1/25/09 letter to the Monroe News Star, in response to which DeWolf wrote a February 3 op-ed, below is my response (without commentary) to DeWolf’s op-ed. Monroe [LA] News-Star

DeWolf misled readers

Barbara Forrest February 8, 2009 In his Feb. 3 News-Star op-ed, David DeWolf misled readers, who should know the truth about him. I wrote about him and his creationist colleagues in my book, Creationism’s Trojan Horse, which was a resource in the first legal case involving intelligent design creationism, Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover [Pennsylvania] School District 2005. I was an expert witness for the plaintiffs.

Holly Wilson is correct that ID creationism is inconsistent with Catholic theology. It is essentially a Protestant evangelical movement that includes a few Catholics who are at odds with their church regarding evolution. DeWolf, a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a creationist think tank in Seattle, is an example. His op-ed and the online comments of DI’s president, Bruce Chapman, responding to Wilson’s Jan. 25 letter, proves that they are monitoring Louisiana closely.

Working on behalf of “academic freedom” with the Louisiana Family Forum, which wrote Ouachita Parish’s creationist “Science Curriculum Policy,” [pdf] DeWolf helped write the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act. DeWolf’s portrayal of ID as scientific is falsified by his defining it as involving the “actions of an intelligent agent as the cause of phenomena that natural processes are unlikely to produce.” If phenomena are not naturally caused, they are supernaturally caused. There is no other alternative. His DI colleague William Dembski admits that “the Designer of intelligent design is … the Christian God.”

ID is religion, as I demonstrated in the Kitzmiller case (from which lawyer DeWolf was conspicuously absent, although two of his DI colleagues testified for the creationist school board, which lost the case). DeWolf’s op-ed talking points have been repeatedly debunked. He pretends to be concerned that Louisiana students cannot “question the materialist dogma … peddled in the guise of science instruction.”

Let’s examine what DeWolf is peddling. DeWolf falsely stated DI “has never advocated mandating the teaching of intelligent design” but encourages students to learn “the strengths and weaknesses of … evolutionary theory.” However, in his 1999 booklet for school administrators, Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook, he wrote otherwise while discussing a Supreme Court case that began in Louisiana: “In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Edwards vs. Aguillard that ‘teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.’ As this guidebook will show, teachers and school boards who … tell students about the evidence and arguments for intelligent design actually fulfill this Supreme Court mandate.” In its strategy document, “The Wedge,” DI vows to “pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula.”

DeWolf’s op-ed also mentioned “irreducible complexity,” the creationist concept of Michael Behe, a “distinguished Catholic scholar from Lehigh University.” However, the Web site of Behe’s own biology department at Lehigh features a disclaimer saying that his views are “in no way endorsed by the department” because “intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally and should not be regarded as scientific.” Behe admitted under oath in the Kitzmiller trial that under his definition of science, which he loosens to include ID, astrology is a scientific theory. So much for distinguished scholar status.

Ouachita children are being used as potential legal guinea pigs by DeWolf and his creationist friends, not to mention the LFF. If anyone doubts this, consider that in 2002, when DI attacked Ohio’s science standards, its spokesman announced, “All we need is one state to stand up and say we are going to permit academic freedom on this issue, a test case.” But I guarantee the people of Ouachita Parish that these folks will not be around when your children get to college and realize that their elders permitted them to be wrongly educated about a subject as vital as science.

Barbara Forrest of the Louisiana Coalition for Science is on the board of directors for the National Center for Science Education.

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