REPORTER: Olivia Rousset
In science classrooms across Kansas teachers will soon be expected to tell their students that evolution is not the only theory for the origin of life.
LISA VOLLAND, BIOLOGY TEACHER: For those of you that attend church, do you feel conflicting reports...
Intelligent design is the latest challenge to evolution. It holds that some kind of designer or higher being is responsible for the creation of life on Earth. Steve Abrams is the chairman of the Kansas Board of Education.
REPORTER: Do you personally believe that man evolved from apes?
STEVE ABRAMS, CHAIRMAN OF KANSAS BOARD OF EDUCATION: I believe there is no empirical evidence to support that, no.
REPORTER: So do you personally believe that the origin of life was created as in the book of Genesis in the Bible?
STEVE ABRAMS: Oh, absolutely.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS: Scientists aren't threatened by Intelligent design, scientists are bored by intelligent design, much like scientists would be bored by notions of a flat Earth or by the stork theory of sex.
Lisa Volland has been teaching biology for 19 years and she would rather leave the state than teach intelligent design.
LISA VOLLAND: The subject matter itself keeps it from being scientific, and so I read in the editorials where it'll say, "Well, why not just teach both?" And certainly I think we can certainly mention both, but I don't think that any biology teacher, a good biology teacher should be saying that intelligent design is a valid theory within science because it is not.
This debate is certainly not new in the US. In 1925 in the famous Monkey Trial, Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes was charged for teaching evolution instead of creationism.
MOVIE SCENE:
LAWYER IN MOVIE SCENE, ‘INHERIT THE WIND”: How can you be so cocksure that the body of scientific knowledge, systematised in the writings of Charles Darwin is in any way irreconcilable with the book of Genesis?
JOHN SCOPES, MOVIE: Would you state that question again please?
The trial gained international attention. Scopes lost his case but won the debate and evolution became the accepted explanation for life on Earth.
This film, 'Inherit the Wind', shows how creationism was held up to ridicule in the courtroom.
MOVIE SCENE:
JOHN SCOPES, MOVIE: The Bible says it was a day.
LAWYER: But was it a normal day, a literal day, a 24-hour day?
JOHN: I don't know.
LAWYER: What do you think?
JOHN: I do not think about things I do not think about.
It was a long time before another push was made to get the Bible into science class.
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER US PRESIDENT: Thank you and God bless you.
In 1987, under President Reagan, creationists again lobbied to get their ideas taught as science. In a landmark case the Supreme Court ruled that it breached the separation of church and state and was therefore unconstitutional. But now with the religious right in the political ascendancy intelligent design is getting a foothold across the US.
JOHN CALVERT, INTELLIGENT DESIGN NETWORK: All evolutionary biologists will admit that living systems look designed.
John Calvert is the front man for intelligent design in Kansas. Today his audience is a Presbyterian church group.
JOHN CALVERT: Here is an example of the dichotomy. Here is the apostle Paul in Romans 1:20...
Despite his religious rhetoric Calvert is desperate to prove that intelligent design is based in science and has nothing to do with creationism.
JOHN CALVERT: He is essentially saying we can look at nature and from that we can infer design and therefore, essentially, infer the existence of God. I sometimes wonder why anybody talks about anything else because this is the most interesting topic...
His main tool is this slickly produced film, distributed by the well-funded think tank the Discovery Institute.
JOHN CALVERT, FILM: You look at the incredible diversity and complexity of life and inevitably the question arises, "What brought all this into existence? Is there a purpose, a plan, a design a design due to an intelligent cause?"
The core argument of this film is that life, even at the level of the cell, is so complex and interrelated that it can't be explained by the incremental changes proposed by natural selection.
MAN: I looked at that and I said, "That's an outboard motor. That's designed, that is no chance assemblage of parts."
For a film that purports to overthrow the most established theory in biology there is little evidence of scientific method. The controversial idea is not challenged by anyone and no scientific data to support design is put forward. This theory is dismissed completely by nearly all scientists.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: Well, this is playing fast and loose with science. If scientists attempted to do this, if we only published the results we liked and did not publish the results we didn't like because they didn't fit our theories, or because they wouldn't make us a lot of money in, say, pharmaceutical products, that would be called scientific fraud.
JOHN CALVERT: And I am open for questions.
MAN: Why don't you people just realise that you are trying to get creationism into the public schools and admit that the courts ruled it illegal and you just came up with a new name.
JOHN CALVERT: What we are trying to do is get...
MAN: I have no problem with...
JOHN CALVERT: What we are trying to do is get a religion out of science.
Since 2001 at least 43 states have seen challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools. In Dover, Pennsylvania the challenges resulted in a landmark court case where Judge John Jones ruled definitively that intelligent design was religion and so could not be taught as science.
JUDGE JOHN JONES: The boards actions reflected breathtaking inanity and were unconstitutional, apparently mocking intelligent design and although the theory's proponents sometimes suggest that life could have been designed by a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed.
Leonard Krishtalka is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Kansas University.
TEACHER: Look at one of the chimpanzees, now look at yourself in the mirror - what makes you look different?
Krishtalka thinks the Dover court decision is important as it strips away the veneer of science from intelligent design.
REPORTER: People who are pushing intelligent design say that it is not creationism, that it could be any other being, not just God, who is the intelligent designer.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: Yes, as Judge Jones found out from the weeks of testimony in the Dover, Pennsylvania trial, that is also all a camouflage, that's advertising, it's a euphemism. It is about God but it doesn't matter. As soon as any supernatural explanation, call it God or call it Yoda, it doesn't matter - it is out of the realm of science. Science is just not interested any longer.
REPORTER: The majority of scientists in the world disagree with intelligent design. The court in Dover, Pennsylvania recently ruled that it is not a science and it shouldn't be taught in science classroom. What is your response to that?
JOHN CALVERT: Well, the Dover court did not consider...obviously the Dover court does not understand intelligent design.
REPORTER: After weeks of expert testimony from both sides you are saying Judge Jones is wrong?
JOHN CALVERT: Yes, Oh, for sure. You can read the opinion and you can see that he does not understand intelligent design because his description of intelligent design in he opinion is not what intelligent design is. He treats intelligent design as being derived from a scripture and it is not, it is an inference from the data.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: This is political. This is the attempt to make society, culture, education and other activities have a stronger theistic basis. That is how it's come so far. Also, a second reason, is that science is difficult to explain, whereas simple stories, like "God did it", is very easy to explain.
NEWSREADER: A conservative majority of school board members approved new science standards critical of evolution...
In Kansas the Board of Education passed its new science standards in November last year. They were careful not to mention intelligent design at all but simply to include "challenges to evolution" - but this didn't satisfy the opponents.
JANET WAUGH, BOARD MEMBER: We're becoming a laughing stock, not only of the nation but of the world and I hate that. I think we are going to do - hopefully not irreparable damage to Kansas but certainly damage to our image.
Board member Janet Waugh has a strong Christian faith but is one of the few who voted against the changes.
JANET WAUGH: I think my faith can coexist with science, I have no problem with that. But to be honest I am not an expert in science, nor is anyone on this board. I feel, as a lay member of the board, that we should support the experts from the science community who tell us what good science is, and I see no problem whatsoever in teaching intelligent design, creationism, or any other faith-based issue but not in a science class.
Janet is fed up with intelligent design. This is the second time in the last six years that the science standards have been rewritten with evolution as the central issue.
JANET WAUGH: Back in '99 it was really more of a creationism movement, and then I think they found out that creationism was considered religion and so they couldn't do that, and so intelligent design came out and to me it is nothing but creationism in a tuxedo.
Last year Education Board Chairman Steve Abrams said it's a choice between evolution and the Bible, yet he still claims the Kansas changes have nothing to do with religion.
STEVE ABRAMS: From a practical application what it does is basically allow the critical analysis of new Darwinian biological evolution, based upon empirical scientific evidence which is defined as observable, measurable, testable, repeatable and falsifiable from peer-reviewed journals, articles and books.
REPORTER: Can you name some peer-reviewed challenges to evolution that are accepted by the mainstream scientific community?
STEVE ABRAMS: Well, there are a lot of things. I wish I could just list the titles of them and authors right now but you can look in several of the, of the - 'Journal of Microbiology' is one that has had some articles in it in the past.
Oh, my, you have caught me off guard. There are some that I have read but I can't recall them right now.
What is extraordinary about the Kansas board decision is that to get around the constitutional ban on teaching religion as science the board has changed the very definition of science. The changes allow supernatural explanations for the origin of life.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: In changing the definition of science to include supernatural causes then they might as well have said that, "The Grand Canyon was formed 8 million years ago by geological erosion - or by the Wizard of Oz." And this raises a darker issue.
When you change the meaning of words willy-nilly to accommodate a particular ideology or a particular political agenda, then this starts smacking of '1984' where Big Brother redefined war as peace, ignorance as power, freedom as slavery.
Even for committed Christians like Janet Waugh, the debate about life's origins has become absurd. She thinks the addition to the new science standards of supernatural causes through logical inference opens the state's education to ridicule.
JANET WAUGH: Science is a study of the natural world using 'natural' causes, 'natural' explanations. They have changed that to 'logical' explanations. 'Natural' has been removed, 'logical' has been inserted. Logical is not necessarily natural. Logic can be, "God did it". "The flying spaghetti monster did it." "The alien did it." Maybe Muffin did it! My dog!
In science classrooms across Kansas teachers will soon be expected to tell their students that evolution is not the only theory for the origin of life.
LISA VOLLAND, BIOLOGY TEACHER: For those of you that attend church, do you feel conflicting reports...
Intelligent design is the latest challenge to evolution. It holds that some kind of designer or higher being is responsible for the creation of life on Earth. Steve Abrams is the chairman of the Kansas Board of Education.
REPORTER: Do you personally believe that man evolved from apes?
STEVE ABRAMS, CHAIRMAN OF KANSAS BOARD OF EDUCATION: I believe there is no empirical evidence to support that, no.
REPORTER: So do you personally believe that the origin of life was created as in the book of Genesis in the Bible?
STEVE ABRAMS: Oh, absolutely.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS: Scientists aren't threatened by Intelligent design, scientists are bored by intelligent design, much like scientists would be bored by notions of a flat Earth or by the stork theory of sex.
Lisa Volland has been teaching biology for 19 years and she would rather leave the state than teach intelligent design.
LISA VOLLAND: The subject matter itself keeps it from being scientific, and so I read in the editorials where it'll say, "Well, why not just teach both?" And certainly I think we can certainly mention both, but I don't think that any biology teacher, a good biology teacher should be saying that intelligent design is a valid theory within science because it is not.
This debate is certainly not new in the US. In 1925 in the famous Monkey Trial, Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes was charged for teaching evolution instead of creationism.
MOVIE SCENE:
LAWYER IN MOVIE SCENE, ‘INHERIT THE WIND”: How can you be so cocksure that the body of scientific knowledge, systematised in the writings of Charles Darwin is in any way irreconcilable with the book of Genesis?
JOHN SCOPES, MOVIE: Would you state that question again please?
The trial gained international attention. Scopes lost his case but won the debate and evolution became the accepted explanation for life on Earth.
This film, 'Inherit the Wind', shows how creationism was held up to ridicule in the courtroom.
MOVIE SCENE:
JOHN SCOPES, MOVIE: The Bible says it was a day.
LAWYER: But was it a normal day, a literal day, a 24-hour day?
JOHN: I don't know.
LAWYER: What do you think?
JOHN: I do not think about things I do not think about.
It was a long time before another push was made to get the Bible into science class.
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER US PRESIDENT: Thank you and God bless you.
In 1987, under President Reagan, creationists again lobbied to get their ideas taught as science. In a landmark case the Supreme Court ruled that it breached the separation of church and state and was therefore unconstitutional. But now with the religious right in the political ascendancy intelligent design is getting a foothold across the US.
JOHN CALVERT, INTELLIGENT DESIGN NETWORK: All evolutionary biologists will admit that living systems look designed.
John Calvert is the front man for intelligent design in Kansas. Today his audience is a Presbyterian church group.
JOHN CALVERT: Here is an example of the dichotomy. Here is the apostle Paul in Romans 1:20...
Despite his religious rhetoric Calvert is desperate to prove that intelligent design is based in science and has nothing to do with creationism.
JOHN CALVERT: He is essentially saying we can look at nature and from that we can infer design and therefore, essentially, infer the existence of God. I sometimes wonder why anybody talks about anything else because this is the most interesting topic...
His main tool is this slickly produced film, distributed by the well-funded think tank the Discovery Institute.
JOHN CALVERT, FILM: You look at the incredible diversity and complexity of life and inevitably the question arises, "What brought all this into existence? Is there a purpose, a plan, a design a design due to an intelligent cause?"
The core argument of this film is that life, even at the level of the cell, is so complex and interrelated that it can't be explained by the incremental changes proposed by natural selection.
MAN: I looked at that and I said, "That's an outboard motor. That's designed, that is no chance assemblage of parts."
For a film that purports to overthrow the most established theory in biology there is little evidence of scientific method. The controversial idea is not challenged by anyone and no scientific data to support design is put forward. This theory is dismissed completely by nearly all scientists.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: Well, this is playing fast and loose with science. If scientists attempted to do this, if we only published the results we liked and did not publish the results we didn't like because they didn't fit our theories, or because they wouldn't make us a lot of money in, say, pharmaceutical products, that would be called scientific fraud.
JOHN CALVERT: And I am open for questions.
MAN: Why don't you people just realise that you are trying to get creationism into the public schools and admit that the courts ruled it illegal and you just came up with a new name.
JOHN CALVERT: What we are trying to do is get...
MAN: I have no problem with...
JOHN CALVERT: What we are trying to do is get a religion out of science.
Since 2001 at least 43 states have seen challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools. In Dover, Pennsylvania the challenges resulted in a landmark court case where Judge John Jones ruled definitively that intelligent design was religion and so could not be taught as science.
JUDGE JOHN JONES: The boards actions reflected breathtaking inanity and were unconstitutional, apparently mocking intelligent design and although the theory's proponents sometimes suggest that life could have been designed by a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed.
Leonard Krishtalka is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Kansas University.
TEACHER: Look at one of the chimpanzees, now look at yourself in the mirror - what makes you look different?
Krishtalka thinks the Dover court decision is important as it strips away the veneer of science from intelligent design.
REPORTER: People who are pushing intelligent design say that it is not creationism, that it could be any other being, not just God, who is the intelligent designer.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: Yes, as Judge Jones found out from the weeks of testimony in the Dover, Pennsylvania trial, that is also all a camouflage, that's advertising, it's a euphemism. It is about God but it doesn't matter. As soon as any supernatural explanation, call it God or call it Yoda, it doesn't matter - it is out of the realm of science. Science is just not interested any longer.
REPORTER: The majority of scientists in the world disagree with intelligent design. The court in Dover, Pennsylvania recently ruled that it is not a science and it shouldn't be taught in science classroom. What is your response to that?
JOHN CALVERT: Well, the Dover court did not consider...obviously the Dover court does not understand intelligent design.
REPORTER: After weeks of expert testimony from both sides you are saying Judge Jones is wrong?
JOHN CALVERT: Yes, Oh, for sure. You can read the opinion and you can see that he does not understand intelligent design because his description of intelligent design in he opinion is not what intelligent design is. He treats intelligent design as being derived from a scripture and it is not, it is an inference from the data.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: This is political. This is the attempt to make society, culture, education and other activities have a stronger theistic basis. That is how it's come so far. Also, a second reason, is that science is difficult to explain, whereas simple stories, like "God did it", is very easy to explain.
NEWSREADER: A conservative majority of school board members approved new science standards critical of evolution...
In Kansas the Board of Education passed its new science standards in November last year. They were careful not to mention intelligent design at all but simply to include "challenges to evolution" - but this didn't satisfy the opponents.
JANET WAUGH, BOARD MEMBER: We're becoming a laughing stock, not only of the nation but of the world and I hate that. I think we are going to do - hopefully not irreparable damage to Kansas but certainly damage to our image.
Board member Janet Waugh has a strong Christian faith but is one of the few who voted against the changes.
JANET WAUGH: I think my faith can coexist with science, I have no problem with that. But to be honest I am not an expert in science, nor is anyone on this board. I feel, as a lay member of the board, that we should support the experts from the science community who tell us what good science is, and I see no problem whatsoever in teaching intelligent design, creationism, or any other faith-based issue but not in a science class.
Janet is fed up with intelligent design. This is the second time in the last six years that the science standards have been rewritten with evolution as the central issue.
JANET WAUGH: Back in '99 it was really more of a creationism movement, and then I think they found out that creationism was considered religion and so they couldn't do that, and so intelligent design came out and to me it is nothing but creationism in a tuxedo.
Last year Education Board Chairman Steve Abrams said it's a choice between evolution and the Bible, yet he still claims the Kansas changes have nothing to do with religion.
STEVE ABRAMS: From a practical application what it does is basically allow the critical analysis of new Darwinian biological evolution, based upon empirical scientific evidence which is defined as observable, measurable, testable, repeatable and falsifiable from peer-reviewed journals, articles and books.
REPORTER: Can you name some peer-reviewed challenges to evolution that are accepted by the mainstream scientific community?
STEVE ABRAMS: Well, there are a lot of things. I wish I could just list the titles of them and authors right now but you can look in several of the, of the - 'Journal of Microbiology' is one that has had some articles in it in the past.
Oh, my, you have caught me off guard. There are some that I have read but I can't recall them right now.
What is extraordinary about the Kansas board decision is that to get around the constitutional ban on teaching religion as science the board has changed the very definition of science. The changes allow supernatural explanations for the origin of life.
PROFESSOR LEONARD KRISHTALKA: In changing the definition of science to include supernatural causes then they might as well have said that, "The Grand Canyon was formed 8 million years ago by geological erosion - or by the Wizard of Oz." And this raises a darker issue.
When you change the meaning of words willy-nilly to accommodate a particular ideology or a particular political agenda, then this starts smacking of '1984' where Big Brother redefined war as peace, ignorance as power, freedom as slavery.
Even for committed Christians like Janet Waugh, the debate about life's origins has become absurd. She thinks the addition to the new science standards of supernatural causes through logical inference opens the state's education to ridicule.
JANET WAUGH: Science is a study of the natural world using 'natural' causes, 'natural' explanations. They have changed that to 'logical' explanations. 'Natural' has been removed, 'logical' has been inserted. Logical is not necessarily natural. Logic can be, "God did it". "The flying spaghetti monster did it." "The alien did it." Maybe Muffin did it! My dog!