The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board case provided a famous courtroom demonstration of how fundamentalist “Christians” systematically and deliberately lied to try and impose a higher “truth” on the general public.
These creationists were so intent on teaching “Intelligent Design” in public schools that they lied multiple times in order to support “The Truth.” Examples: 1) After swearing they had no idea how a creationist book got into the schools, a cancelled check paying for the books, signed by creationist Bill Buckingham, and channeled through two other creationists was produced; 2) after swearing they weren’t trying to introduce religious dogma into the schools, they were caught on video tapes saying the opposite; 3) after swearing that Intelligent Design was not Creationsism, their own books proved that they’d sloppily done a find and replace edit creating the nonsense word “cdesign proponentsists” by conflating “creationists” with “design proponents.”
The Dover Area School Board of Pennsylvania, which had been taken over by creationists such as Bill Buckingham, was sued by those objecting to religion parading as science in high-school education. Bill Buckingham was a school board member, chair of the curriculum committee, and he (along with some other board members) were relentless in insisting that creationism be taught as science. Paradoxically, while many fundamentalists explicitly claim that they disdain any science as being necessary to support their Sola Scriptura, anti-Darwin stance, foot-soldiers like Buckingham were convinced that a marketing device they labeled the science of “Intelligent Design” (ID) could get their faith-based religion into the local high-school’s science curriculum. Given the fact that the Supreme Court prohibited creationism from being taught under the guise of science, they colluded in denyin that it was their religious belief that motivated them to attempt to introduce creationism into public school science. They denied that ID was creationism. The trial would show that intelligent design was indeed creationism; that the only difference in the two was a new marketing label.
Minister Bill Buckingham perjured himself multiple times during the trial. He denied having any religious intent in promoting ID as science. Yet he was documented on video-tape with proof to the contrary. There were contemporaneous multiple local newspaper accounts that he had pushed hard for ID because of his religious presuppositions and concerns. At trial, he testified that the newspapers got it all wrong. Eye-witness testimony also indicated that he had mixed religion and science in his advocacy for ID. Again, everybody but him remembered events incorrectly. His own parishioners knew he was lying because they knew how much he harped about critical it was to get God back into public school science. However, in order for ID to masquerade as science, a legal fiction had to be maintained. He also lied when he stated that he had no idea how 60 copies of an ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, had arrived at the high-school. It turned out that their conception had not been so immaculate after all. “Lawyers for the plaintiffs got hold of the check that had paid for the books and found—lo and behold!—that it had been written by Bill Buckingham, who had raised the money from his congregation one Sunday morning at Harmony Grove Community Church.” “The check was made out to Donald Bonsell, father of school board president Alan Bonsell. . . . Remember, in his deposition Buckingham had denied any knowledge of where the books had come from. The money was surreptitiously raised in a church by a member of the board, laundered through the board president, and given to a former board president, himself known for his activism in bringing religion into the schools, who secretly bought the books. If you were trying to prove a covert religious intent, you couldn’t find a better story than this one to illustrate it.”[i]
Alan Bonsell, the school board chairman, lied through his teeth in denying any knowledge of how 60 anonymous copies of the creationist text, Of Pandas and People, arrived at the high-school.[ii] He very well knew that he had solicited church member donations to purchase the books; As judge Jones observed: “They deliberately, in my view, lied.” Yet, even after being caught red-handed in the lie, these believers in “the Truth” did not repent of their sin. The intellectual father of the Dominist movement, Reverend R. J. Rushdoony, had justified deliberate deceit, after all.[iii] They were indignant that a George W. Bush appointed Republican judge should have the audacity to point out that they had lied. Media shills, like Bill O’Reilly and Pat Robertson, called the Republican judge “fascist” and “absurd,” respectively. The threadbare charge of “activist judge” was trotted out, emptying it of any other meaning than a judge whose reasoned, constitutional application of the law some crank disagrees with. Their hangers-on even sent Judge Jones death-threats for his Dare to be a Daniel integrity. U.S. Marshalls had to put Jones and his wife under twenty-four hour protection. The Christians had decided to turn the tables on the lions. Ben Stein, a Nixon speech-writer and economist, produced a movie critical of Judge Jones entitled “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” In it he let viewers know that whereas ID led to “Love of God and compassion,” “science leads you to killing people.” His allies’ death-threats he did not explain. It was just part of a greater media circus wherein unremitting misinformation is churned out trying to link science and the bogeyman of “secular humanism” to Nazi death camps when there is actually massive proof of Christian anti-Semitism being foundational for Nazi death camps.
The total lack of honesty honey-combed the ID ranks. The Discovery Institute was a major player in the game of charades. They were in league with Bonsell and Minister Bill Buckingham. They claimed that ID had nothing to do with creationism and the book Of Pandas and People which they had provided the local zealots. They prevaricated about the relation between creationism and ID because legal precedent had banned creationism from being taught as science; since it was clearly religion and non-science, and since the Supreme Court had established the precedent that religion could not be taught under the guise of science. The stunning proof of this bold-faced lie was almost miraculous. The previous creationist version Of Pandas and People was saturated with religious creation terminology. When the Discovery Institute decided to re-label their book as ID to evade the Supreme Court’s strictures, they used a find and replace software program trying to eliminate creationist finger-prints. They revisers did such a sloppy job that when they meant to replace “creationists” with “design proponents” they created the chimera “cdesign proponentsists.”[iv] Judge Jones characterized their shenanigans as “breathtaking inanity,” “a mere re-labelling of creationism.”
Thus, there is proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that the local foot-soldiers, the local clerical leaders, and the institutional backers and publishers of the ID material all engaged in, not just a dishonest conspiracy to lie to the court and defraud the public, but in a clumsy, third-rate cabal of conning the public.[v] When this was painfully obvious to both them and their media echo-chambers, they did not retreat an inch from their brazen dishonesty. Their religious faith gave them the absolute certainty that they were fighting in the Lord’s cause; therefore, any means was justified in achieving their noble end—saving high-school students from evolution and thereby saving America from dastardly secular humanists.
A common epistemological debating strategy/tactic that ID practitioners use is to say that “there is no way to achieve objectivity.” Therefore, empirical evidence which is not consistent with their view of Sola Scriptura can be totally disregarded. Says Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis: “You’ve either got on God’s word glasses, or man’s word.”[vi] Thus, all empirical or scientific facts are merely “man’s word” and have zero probative value if they conflict with “God’s word glasses.” Knowing that they have God’s Truth, Intelligent Design proponents like Minister Buckingham or the Discovery Institute have no scruples about committing perjury to maintain the truth. Ironically, while obsessed with a very particular religious view of biology, the whole point of their efforts in this law case and in the entire Intelligent Design project is to deny that their obsession has anything to do with religion. It’s merely the best Science!
The extreme contempt for the truth and for facts that the vanguard of the Christian Right exhibit in their crusade to make the United States a Christian Nation is shocking. Yet those most zealous in telling lies on behalf of the truth make no apologies. Some of their thought leaders have expressly justified deceit in behalf of a “good cause.” That good cause is taking “Dominion” over a corrupted, secular society. Most just unconsciously hold that one need not keep faith with the devil. Unfortunately, there are multiple, well-documented cases illustrate this disturbing phenomenon. This phenomenon permeates many other cause célèbre in the culture wars. I have documented other examples in previous blogs (see those regarding Rick Santorum). More examples will be forthcoming in future blogs.
The questions is: Why do such “Christians” believe they MUST lie to uphold “The Truth?” Do they lack faith in the truthfulness of their own dogmas?
[i] Gordy Slack, The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything : Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA (Jossey-Bass, 2008), 152-159. Buckingham’s and Bonsell’s transparent religious ax to grind was also documented by Slack: At a board’s annual retreat in 2002, Bonsell said his highest priority was “creationism” and his second highest “school prayer.
[ii] Pandas and People’s copyright is held by a Texas religious foundation headed by a minister whose articles of incorporation describe its mission as “proclaiming, publishing, preaching [and] teaching . . . the Christian Gospel and understanding of the Bible and the light it sheds on the academic and social issues of the day.” Yet all the people associated with it would claim that they had no religious mission in promoting the book in high-school science classes; a claim absurd on its face. On online ad for the book enthusiastically describes its hybrid character in that it 1) “has no Biblical content, yet [2] contains creationists’ interpretations and refutations for evidences [sic] usually found in standard textbooks supporting evolution.” See Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 89.
[iii] Millionaire Howard Ahmanson bank-rolled both the Chalcedon Foundation of Rushdoony and the Discovery Institute which backed the Buckingham faction on the Dover school board.
[iv] Given their skill and integrity in creating this counterfeit reality, one can only imagine the science that they conjure up as a replacement for well established biology, chemistry, and physics.
[v] The whole cabal reminds me of the utter gullibility of some people’s faith. I recently received a breathless, ecstatic email from a relative concerning amazing proof of the biblical flood and Bible history in general. Attached were purported photographs of archaeological specimens of the Nephilim. Nephilim, for the uninitiated, are said to be the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" referred to in Genesis 6:4. Giants, demi-gods, great warriors, mythical mysteries of some sort according to various religiously inclined speculators. In any case, crudely doctored photographs using a distorted perspective were offered as stunning proof of 21st century archaeological proof of salvation history. I have personally received numerous such reflexive acts of joy where persons were so enamored of “concrete proof” of something that disproved secular humanist’s world view that they forwarded the amazing facts to all and sundry on their email address book without taking two seconds to consider the complete absurdity of the hoax which they were perpetuating. On some occasions when I gently pointed out the hopeless inaccuracy of such tales I got the response: “It never bother to verify the veracity of such things, I just pass them along.”
[vi] This is the position of Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis as quoted in Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism ( New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 95-97.
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