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Font ResizeAfter about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller.
On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
On the other side of the aisle, nine school board members, only three of whom were on the board when it voted 6-3 to include a statement on intelligent design in biology classes, piled in behind lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center.
Assistant superintendent Michael Baksa and superintendent Richard Nilsen shared a bench with Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor expected to take the stand in defense of intelligent design.
The rest of the courtroom was packed with members of the public and the media, who spilled into a jury box where a courtroom artist studied the trial's front line.
Suit filed in December: Eleven parents filed the federal lawsuit against the school and its school board last December, about two months after the board voted to require the statement about intelligent design.
Intelligent design says living things are so complicated they had to have been created by a higher being, that life is too complex to have developed by evolution as described by biologist Charles Darwin.
The parents, along with the ACLU and AU, contend the board had religious motives for putting the policy in place.
The trial is expected to last about five weeks.
Pepper Hamilton attorney Eric Rothschild opened the proceedings, telling the judge the school board ignored scientific knowledge and the advice of its high school science department to put the policy in effect.
He said several board members wanted to teach creationism; on an overhead projector, he showed some documents and a news clip to support his claims.
Among the documents were Nilsen's notes from two board retreats that showed board member Alan Bonsell had brought up discussions about creationism.
Rothschild also presented a draft of the board's policy, on which Baksa listed creationism instead of intelligent design.
Video clip shown: The parents' attorney showed a video clip of former board member William Buckingham standing in front of the high school, saying alternatives to evolution, such as creationism, should be taught.
Rothschild said the board's action was religiously motivated and there is no scientific data that supports intelligent design, which he called the "tactical repackaging of creationism."
He said intelligent design is a good example of evolution: The people behind the creationism movement have adapted their presentation of the religious ideology to try to "wedge" it into mainstream science.
Thomas More attorney Patrick Gillen opened for the school district and its board, repeatedly emphasizing the reading of the four-paragraph statement about intelligent design was a "modest change to the curriculum," and students should have the right to hear alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
"This case is about freedom of education, not a religious agenda," he said.
The students are still taught evolution, not intelligent design or creationism. They are just made aware that Darwin's theory has competition, he said.
That awareness frees the students' mind and promotes curiosity, he said.
Gillen said that even the theory of gravity was once thought to be "supernatural."
He said scientists will testify to the science behind intelligent design, such as Behe and University of Idaho professor Scott Minnich.
Behe doesn't even believe in creationism, he said.
Textbook author testifies: Miller, whose resume is several pages long and includes a stint as a professor at Harvard University, was the first witness called for the parents.
Miller co-wrote the Prentice Hall textbook "Biology" with professor Joe Levine. The book is used by 35 percent of the high school students in the United States, Miller said.
His were some of the thousands of biology books in which school officials in Cobb County, Ga., ordered stickers to be placed, warning that evolution is only a theory, "not a fact."
Miller also testified in a lawsuit filed by Cobb County parents, and a judge later ordered that the stickers be removed.
Yesterday, the scientist's testimony was at times dominated by scientific terminology, though he jokingly told ACLU attorney Witold Walczak he would do his best to explain things in the layman's terms he uses with his mother.
Miller said intelligent design supporters think an intelligent designer must have been involved in the creation of life because science can't yet prove how everything evolved.
He said the intelligent design idea that birds were created with beaks, feathers and wings and fish were born with fins is a creationist argument.
'Irreducible complexity': Intelligent design supporters often cite "irreducible complexity" in their research, he said.
"Irreducible complexity" means that a living thing can't be reduced by any part or it won't work at all. So those living things could not have evolved in the way Darwin suggested; they had to be created with all of their existing parts, Miller said.
Intelligent design proponents often cite the bacterial flagellum, a bacterium with a tail that propels it, Miller said.
Behe and his colleagues claim bacterial flagellum had to be created with all of its parts because it couldn't function if any of them were taken away, Miller testified.
But scientists have proved that the bacterial flagellum can be reduced to a smaller being, a little organism that operates in a manner similar to a syringe, Miller said.
One of the biggest problems with the scientific viability of intelligent design is there is no way to experiment with the presence of a supernatural being because science only deals with the natural world and theories that are testable, Miller said.
Some people might suspect divine intervention last year when the Boston Red Sox came back to win the World Series after losing three games in a row to the New York Yankees in the playoffs. It may have been, but that's not science, he said.
And intelligent design proponents haven't named the "intelligent being" behind their supposition, Miller said.
They have suggested, among other things, that it could be aliens, he said.
He said there is no evidence to prove intelligent design, so its proponents just try to poke holes in the theory of evolution.
Cross examination starts: The ACLU's Walczak ended his line of questioning with Miller with about an hour and a half left in the day.
Robert Muise, attorney with the Thomas More Law Center, began his cross examination by suggesting that maybe there was evidence, "observable, empirical facts" to a greater hand's help in the Red Sox victory.
His next line of questions seemed to focus on the language used in the board's policy, which says there are "gaps" in Darwin's theory.
But Miller countered that no scientific theory is a fact: Even the theories of friction and gravity are not "fact" because in science, everything is subject to testing.
Bonsell said he thought the first day of the trial was successful for the school board. In his opinion, he said, Miller had not said that the language in the school board's policy was incorrect.
When asked for comment about Miller's evaluation of his work, Behe said his fellow scientist's comments were "vintage Miller," and that he would defend himself when he takes the stand later in the trial.
The trial continues today with more of Muise's cross-examination of Miller.
If time permits, the parents' attorneys plan to call parents Tammy Kitzmiller, Barrie Callahan and Bryan Rehm to testify about what happened at meetings and how the policy has affected them.
Reach Christina Kauffman at 505-5434 or ckauffman@yorkdispatch.com.
