IS IT BY DESIGN, OR THROUGH CONVERGENT EVOLUTION? One way or the other, Evolution News and Views, the blogging arm of the Discovery Institute, has clearly adopted the proven survival technique of wildebeest on the Serengeti: form a herd, and stampede past the predators!

Just as the superabundance of galloping wildebeest ensures only a few are lost to the lionesses, so the sheer volume of blog pieces hurtling out of the Discovery Institute enables many otherwise unsustainable contentions amongst the galloping gallimaufry to survive and even propagate in the blogsphere. Given that most of the writers for Panda’s Thumb and other sites have day jobs actually doing science, it’s commendable that they pick off the few DI blog pieces that actually attempt to discuss a morsel of science and make thereof a reasonable snack.

So I had to count myself lucky last month when I stumbled across, at the Discovery Institute’s website, Dr. Michael Egnor’s article, Dunford, Darwinism, and the Paranoid Style, a whole herd of frantic claims limping across the virtual veldt of the internet with no visible means of support. Had the big predators somehow missed this easy meat, or simply turned up their noses at so sickly a herd? Or perhaps had even left it for an inexperienced cub such as myself to bring back alive to the lair to ‘play’ with as an induction to true hunting?

Dr. Egnor had lumped the very frailest of his arguments into a central paragraph, but even in that damaged group one particular assertion was, literally, staggering (emphasis, please note, is in the original):

It’s a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school.

Whoa! Never mind the surrounding claims about “evolutionary-thought-police”, this was the weakest straggler of a weakened herd. But how does one actually go about challenging the DI over such an absurd assertion? There’s no facility for posting comments on their blog, so there was nothing for it but to write to their general e-mail address, which I did as follows:

Dear Evolution News and Views;

I have just read with great interest an article published on your website, “Durnford, Darwinism, and the Paranoid Style” by Michael Egnor (6 August 2007).

I was particularly alarmed by the following statement, “It’s a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school.” I am writing to you from England, where there was some press coverage of a legal case involving the teaching of Intelligent Design in American schools, but I was entirely unaware of legislation which actually criminalised the act of even questioning Darwin’s theory. That is a truly reprehensible piece of legislation which can only be described as ‘thought crime.’

However, I have been unable to find details of this legislation (I confess my search is confined to using Google), and would be most grateful if you could send me a reference to the particular legislation, or indeed the full text. I am very interested to see how such an Orwellian law has been framed.

Also, I would be very interested to know how many prosecutions there have already been using this legislation.

Surprisingly, although I received an automated receipt for my e-mail, I received no reply. After two days of my own failed efforts at Googling for this elusive legislation (assisted by some of my Brothers and Sisters in Pondscum at Darwin Central), I wrote again to the DI. Perhaps, I reflected, I hadn’t displayed enough apocalyptic fervour in my first note, so I beefed things up a bit, including the following elaboration, in my next e-mail:

…I would be extremely grateful for your assistance in identifying the particular statue referred to in Michael Egnor’s article, which is a clear and most worrying instance of a genuine ‘thought crime.’ I have, as a result of reading Mr. Egnor’s article, become embroiled in a somewhat heated dispute with several colleagues (whom I suspect to be devout Darwinists), and have entered into a formal wager with them. They claim no such legislation exists in the United States, and have challenged me to produce the following:

1. the reference, date, and text of the law
2. the penalties which can potentially be incurred by violators of this law
3. any instances of any prosecutions (whether successful or no) for this federal offence

The stake of this wager, which is to be settled this Friday 10 August at 18:00 British Summer Time, is the sum of £25, a figure I specified as it corresponds (at current exchange rate) to the $50 Annual Membership subscription I will then take out with the Discovery Institute.

Well, though the terms of the wager were altogether fanciful, my commitment to send the DI 50 bucks annual membership if they could provide the reference to the law making it a “federal crime to question Darwin’s theory” was entirely genuine. Or would have been, had I thought there was any actual risk that the DI had been honest in their declaration of this ‘fact.’

But alas, another day passed without a reply from the DI. With only another 24 hours remaining before the ‘wager’ must be settled, the matter was growing desperate. So I wrote yet again to the Discovery Institute, endeavouring to sound as hysterical as I could, further explaining my concern about the “federal crime of questioning Darwin” as follows:

…[Dr. Egnor's article] was the very first I had heard of such draconian legislation (a blatant and chilling instance of a ‘thought-crime’) but – alas! – I cannot say that the silence on this matter by the BBC (a Godless organisation) surprises me one iota. There has clearly been a well-orchestrated reporting ‘black-out’ on this issue, so that we in England (who proudly count ourselves the staunchest of allies of the United States) have been kept in the dark about this dreadful law, and about the pogrom of persecutions in its wake. We have had no reporting whatsoever about when this legislation came into effect, nor have we heard how many God-fearing American teachers may, even as I write, be languishing in your notorious Alcatraz and Shawshank prisons.

As I explained in my previous missive (which I have appended below as an aide memoire), when I pointed out this article and your website to certain of my colleagues, I was unaccountably met with incredulity and outright ridicule. Despite my own utmost forbearance, the ensuing discussion grew, first animated, then heated, and finally resolved itself into a formal written wager.

Now, I would not have you think I am habituated to the vice of gambling (I except my annual £1 ‘each-way’ stake on the Grand National), but the opportunity on this occasion was too golden to let pass. Under the terms of the wager, which must be settled tomorrow (Friday) evening 18:00 at the Coach & Horses, Rickmansworth, all I need produce is the date and reference of the US legislation whereby it was made a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in schools. When I do so, my adversaries in this dispute will be obliged, by the clear terms of our written wager, to purchase on my behalf an annual membership in the Discovery Institute (value: US $50.00).

I also appreciate that US $50.00 may seem a trifle to many, but from the modest means of an honest working man such as myself it represents a sum not to be sniffed at! And, if I cannot provide the information I need by tomorrow at 18:00, it is a sum which honour will compel me to place in the undeserving hands of my adversaries – two of whom, I am sorry to report, have even confessed under my questioning to being ‘neo-Darwinists’, which I believe is the very worst sort.

And as if in demonstration of that fact, they are currently threatening – in expectation of ‘winning’ our wager – to donate my $50 to the British Humanist Association, a despicable organisation actively promoting the brutal slaughter of innocent unborn babes and ripping from the tiny defiled corpses their still-beating stem-cells for diabolical use in Nazi eugenic ‘medical experiments.’

Friday morning brought a flutter of excitement when I found one item in my email in-box, but alas, this turned out to be a generous offer from a Joshua Nkombo of the First Bank of Lagos, a gentleman I can’t recall ever having met. But the vast riches Mr. Nkombo had promised would have to wait: I had barely 12 hours left before my wager would be settled, and I needed to send a final e-mail to the Discovery Institute, this time directly to Robert L. Crowther (Director of Media and Public Relations) and Casey Luskin (Program Officer, Public Policy & Legal Affairs).

And lo! I was within the hour favoured with not only a reply from Mr. Luskin, but a link to the latest blog piece which Dr. Michael Egnor had penned in response to my query! Entitled Questioning Darwin’s Theory in Your Child’s School: You Have the Right to Remain Silent, Dr. Egnor began:

We’ve gotten a couple of e-mails challenging my observation in a recent post that questioning Darwin’s theory in a public school is a federal crime. The reader implied that, because there is no federal statute explicitly censoring criticism of Darwin’s theory in public schools, it wasn’t a federal crime to do so. The issue of censorship in science classes in public schools is worth examining more closely.

Indeed it is – and I read on with high excitement (my emphasis added below):

Is it a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school? In some public schools it certainly is. It’s a federal crime to violate a federal court ruling, such as the ruling by federal judge John E. Jones banning criticism of Darwin’s theory in the curriculum of biology classes in Dover, Pennsylvania public schools. Disobeying Judge Jones’ ruling would be a violation of U.S. Code Title 18, Part1, Chapter 21, section 401.

…What? That’s what has got Dr. Egnor’s knickers in a twist, the Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District case? An attempt by a school board to introduce an unscientific, religious doctrine into secondary school biology classroom is found to be unconstitutional, and an injunction placed on the board to cease the policy (Judge Jones’ ruling):

“Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause …. [W]e do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom”.

In other words, Intelligent Design may of course be considered in other areas of the curriculum (philosophy courses, perhaps), but in Dr. Egnor’s hysterical view, this ruling makes it “a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school.”

No, Dr. Egnor, it flat-out does not.

One can neither teach nor practise any scientific discipline without questioning the theories, and no Federal Court has or could change this simple fact. Kitzmiller v. Dover merely affirms the Constitutional protection against the imposition of a particular religion by state-funded bodies such as public schools.

There is more to Dr. Egnor’s follow up blog – it’s the old wildebeest stampede approach again – but his other arguments are even less compelling than his idiosyncratic take on the Dover decision. He even cites last year’s El Tejon fracas, a matter settled out of court and of which the Discovery Institute’s own John West said “was misconceived. It was almost all about Biblical creationism, not intelligent design, and it also seemed lopsided.”

Dr. Egnor, in his closing paragraph, does concede the main point:

It’s not now a federal crime to question Darwinism in all public schools, but that’s a technicality.

Indeed it is a “technicality”. And the technical name for this variety of technicality is a fact, the sort of thing science determines no matter how inconvenient such may be for the advocates of specific programmes of religious indoctrination.

…And as for my $50? Donated to Darwin Central, the Conspiracy that Cares.