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[00:00:43] Speaker B: We've always believed that at the end of the day, science is what is going to settle the debate over intelligent design. It's not going to be settled by court rulings or, you know, politics or legal stuff. It's going to be settled by science.
And the best way to have ID advance is to allow ID friendly scientists to be able to do research and develop the scientific case for ID in the academy, Idaho the Future A Podcast about Evolution and Intelligent Design.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Over After Dover that was the hopeful mantra of many ID critics after the Dover trial in 2005. They were hoping a federal judge could issue a decree from on high that would stop the intelligent design movement cold in its tracks and the standard evolutionary view could go back to being unquestioned, unchallenged orthodoxy. But was it over after Dover? Not even close, as we're going to find out in today's discussion. Welcome to Idea of the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott, and today I have the privilege of welcoming Dr. Casey Luskin to the show to review the basics of the Dover case with us and show us where things stand on the 20th anniversary of Dover.
Now, for the few who may not know him yet, let me give you a few details on Casey's background. Cayce is Associate director of Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. He holds a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg. This makes him a scientific expert on the topic of origins, but it's not always appreciated that Casey's also one of the top legal experts on this issue. He holds a law degree from the University of San Diego and has been a California licensed attorney since 2005.
In fact, since 2005, Casey might be the only attorney in the USA whose primary and near exclusive area of practice has been the teaching of origins in public schools. He has traveled all around America advising teachers, school board members, and legislators on how to teach evolution and intelligent design. He has also worked on many cases defending academic freedom for scientists and scholars who face persecution due to their descent from the evolutionary consensus. He has commented on the teaching of evolution in public schools in numerous major media outlets, including CNN, the New York Times, LA Times, Science, Nature, and many others.
Now, Casey is also a scholar in the area of the law. He's authored or co authored seven articles in technical legal journals, including the Journal of Church and State, Montana University Law Review, Hamline Law Review, and The University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Some of these articles represent the most detailed and exhaustive reviews of the case law regarding the teaching of origins in public schools.
And finally, Casey is also an expert on this particular issue. We're going to talk about today, the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial, which has its 20th anniversary right now in 2025.
Not only did he attend a third of the trial in person back in 2005, but he's also co author of the book Traipsing into Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision, which is the definitive response to the Dover ruling, and also co author of the most prominent technical law review article critiquing the Dover Ruling, which was published in 2007 in the Montana Law Review.
Credentials galore, Casey, and lots of experience to bring to our conversation today. Hey, welcome to the show.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Andrew, and thanks for that way too long introduction there. Appreciate it.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Hey, it's great for people to know your background in the legal dimensions of the debate. It's awesome. Well, let's start with, you know, because there might be some listening watching today. They're like, dover what? Why do they keep talking about Dover? You know? So let's start with what the Dover case was and why we're talking about it right now.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: So the Dover case, or the Kitzmuller vs Dover case as it's known, is the only case or trial to squarely deal with the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. And the decision in this case is the only one that has directly addressed the question of whether it is constitutional to teach ID in public schools. And this case took place, the trial took place in the fall of 2005. The ruling came out December 20, 2005. So this December of 2025, we are sort of remembering the 20th anniversary of the Dover ruling, and that's why we're talking about this today.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Okay. Wow. So were you personally involved or not? Involved with the case. What was your experience with it directly?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so I was not involved with any of the events that led up to the trial itself. I was actually still in law school.
The Dover school district passed its intelligent design policy in I think around the fall of 2004. At that time I was still in law school, finishing up my last, or actually just starting my last year of law school. And a lot of the other events that happened that, you know, basically what led up to this trial took place in 04, when I was very much still immersed in law school. Not even had a clue at that point that I was going to be working at Discovery Institute after law school. I didn't even get the sort of offer to work at Discovery until the spring of 2005. And I was planning on actually working at a law firm in Southern California that sort of did environmental law work. That was my plan. So I had nothing to do with the events that led up to the Dover trial, but I was involved with intelligent design back in those days, just not at all from like a legal angle. I was part of the Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness Center. Helped to co found that nonprofit which was just helping students to start extracurricular student clubs on college and high school campuses. Nothing to do with, you know, public school curricula or anything like that.
However, I got the call to work at Discovery Institute in sort of the spring of 2005. Started working at Discovery. I believe my start date was, was September 1st of 2005. So actually just a few months ago, had the 20th anniversary of my first day of discovery. Haven't been there for a full 20 years because I left for about four and a half or so years while I did my PhD.
But that was my start date, September 1, 2005. And one of my very first assignments, Andrew, was to actually go and attend the Dover trial in person. The Dover trial began in sort of mid to late September of 2005. I don't remember the exact date offhand, but yeah, one of my first assignments was to actually go and just sit there and observe the Dover trial in person.
You know, anybody who's watched Court TV or whatever, you know that you can have people in the audience, you know, watching a trial. And the Dover trial was open to the public. You could just go and sit in sort of the, you know, the benches at the back of the courtroom and the public was allowed to sit there. And I remember actually sitting there sitting next to Ted Davis, who's sort of a scholar in the theistic evolution camp. We had Some friendly conversations and got to know each other during the Dover trial. Sat there with Jonathan Witt, who was working at Discovery Institute even back then, and Rob Crowther at Discovery. And we were just sitting there basically observing the Dover trial and then reporting on it for what was then Evolution News, what we now call science and culture today.
Just recently changed the name, actually. So I was there as an observer. But I did get to watch about a third of the trial in person.
And I also then came back later in the trial as well. I believe it was when Scott Minick did some of his testimony that might have been in November of 2005. And so I got to watch about a third of the trial in person, in my opinion. Got to watch some of the more interesting parts. Got to see Ken Miller's opening testimony on the first couple days. Got to see Scott Minick, one of the pro ID biologists who testified in support of the school district as an expert witness. And then actually also got to help write some amicus briefs that were drafted during the case. For those folks who don't know what an amicus brief is, that basically means friend of the court brief. And it allows groups that are not an actual party to a lawsuit to still submit a brief to the court so the court can consider their perspective. Often trials and cases will affect people outside of the specific parties in a case. And if you're an outside party, you know, when I say party, you know, that would be like the plaintiff or the defendant. If you're neither of those two, but you still have an interest and you want to let the court know your take on things, you can submit an amicus brief. And so I was involved in writing three amicus briefs, drafting them during the Dover trial. Now, my name did not go on these briefs. The reason why is. And so I'm kind of just telling my life, you know, I'm going back on a trip down memory lane here. I took the bar exam. This is my life in 2005, right? May of 05. Graduated law school, immediately studied for the bar exam. And basically that consumed my life. It was like being in a prison without walls for about two months. Took the bar exam at the end of July 05.
Worst season of my life, hands down, academically speaking.
And got through the bar exam and then went on a backpacking trip with a buddy through Europe. This was a long standing dream. Went backpack through Switzerland and France and Spain and the Netherlands and other places with a buddy of mine. Got back, moved to Seattle, started a discovery September 1, and was waiting for my bar exam results, you know, all that time was trying not to think about, did I pass the bar, did I pass the bar, did I pass the bar? I didn't actually find out if I passed the bar until late November of 2005. By God's miraculous grace, I did pass the bar on my first try. And boy, was I relieved because taking the California bar is not something you want to do twice. And I have friends who are much smarter than I who did have to take it, you know, a couple times before they passed. So anyway, but when I was submitting these amicus or drafting these amicus briefs, or I should say co writing them, I was not yet an attorney. So I was not able to, you know, represent anybody or have my name on something filed to a court brief. So other folks who also attorneys that we worked with who helped to drop those briefs, they put their names on it. One of the scholars that we worked with very closely also in drafting those briefs would have been Professor David De Wolfe, who at that time was a law professor at Gonzaga University Law School. Also a senior fellow at Discovery has done a lot to develop some of the legal policy approaches of Discovery Institute over the years. So David, myself, others, John west, other legal scholars, we worked together on drafting amicus briefs. One amicus brief that was submitted by Discovery Institute, another amicus brief that was submitted on behalf of a few dozen scientists who supported Academic Freedom for Intelligent Design, and another Academic freedom, sorry, another MX brief that was submitted by the foundation for Thought and Ethics, although they had their own attorneys who really took the lead on that one. So anyway, I've got to have a lot of behind the scenes involvement. And I'll just say one last thing.
When I was in law school taking constitutional law, I had a law professor who was actually a very, very well known scholar in the field of religion and the law, especially in free exercise clause legal doctrine. And he's a Mormon and he came to class drinking Mountain Dew. And I thought, this guy is an LDS member who drinks Mountain Dew and is an expert in religion and the law. I want to get to know this guy. And he was my constitutional law professor for my two semesters of that during law school. So I went and went into his class during law school and found out that actually he had a real interest in the topic of intelligent design and origins. I think he had read a couple books by Philip Johnson and he was familiar with the subject. So I ended up doing an independent study during law school on the constitutionality of teaching ID in public Schools. Again, I had no clue at this point that there even was an option someday to work at Discovery Institute and that I'd be, you know, doing this. But during that independent study, ended up doing a real deep dive into the first amendment law, establishment clause law, and how it's taught and how these issues are taught in public schools, and developed sort of some ideas about the Lemon Test.
We can get into this more. But basically, the Lemon test is the primary legal doctrine that is used to assess government policies that deal with religion. And their Lemon test has been criticized a fair amount over the years. And in fact, in the Kennedy case a few years ago, the Supreme Court even seemed to kind of not give the Lemon test as much credence as it had in the past. But it's still on the books and it's still used, so it's still worth talking about. Certainly when the Dover case happened, the Lemon test was the primary legal test that was used for assessing whether a policy establishes religion in a public school curriculum. And so that was what was at the heart of the Dover case. But anyway, the Lemon test says that the primary or principal effect of a law may neither advance nor inhibit religion.
And so what I found was that there was a long line of cases that found that, okay, yes, the primary or principal effect of a law may neither advance nor inhibit religion, but there was a whole long line of cases that talked about the secondary or incidental effects of government doctrines. And actually, there was one Larva article that said that we should justify teaching evolution on the grounds that although it does touch upon, you know, worldview issues about that might impact people's religious beliefs, you could justify teaching evolution by saying, look, if you're teaching it like a science, then the primary effect of that, that action is to advance the scientific knowledge, not to advance some kind of religious viewpoint or to establish religion. And in that respect, if there are secondary or incidental effects of a law that touch upon religion, it should be legal for the government to do that, provided that the primary fact of a law does not advance nor inhibit religion. And so, as I thought about this, I realized this is the perfect legal test for assessing the teaching of id. Because intelligent design, it is a scientific theory, and if you're teaching it as a science in a public school classroom, then the primary effect of teaching intelligent design should be to advance scientific knowledge. And sure, there might be effects that touch upon religion, but those would all be secondary or incidental effects to the primary effect of advancing scientific knowledge. And any effects upon religion are going to be Secondary, you know, because, of course, the topic of origins, whether you're talking about evolution, intelligent design, or the Big bang, whenever you get into these questions, sure, there are also larger implications that can be relevant for religion. But if you're sticking to the science in the classroom, then the primary effect should be to, you know, teach science to advance scientific knowledge. And so, as I discovered, you know, this line of cases, I realized this really is the best way to deal with this subject in public schools, because we don't have to pretend that there are no religious questions at stake or at play in these conversations, however we can. So we can acknowledge, you know, that religion is playing a role in what's going on here, but we can also not have to worry about being unable to teach those subjects in a public school science classroom, provided that the focus is on the scientific content. And if that's the case, then according to the Levantest line of cases, the primary effect would be to advance scientific knowledge. And so that was actually the legal test and sort of the legal argument that I developed in this independent study I did under Professor Smith at the University of San Diego during law school.
And guess what? When we ended up writing amicus briefs, everybody agreed this was the way to go. So that was the sort of legal test and the approach that we recommended to Judge Jones as he was considering the constitutionality of ID during the Dover trial. Now, of course, Judge Jones decided to go in a different direction. We can get into that, but that's just, you know, long version of sort of my background. I felt like, to be honest, like it was very providential that I'd had that opportunity to write that independent study looking at the constitutionality of teaching id. And I think that the legal test that we used really made a lot of sense, and I still think that's the best way, legally speaking, to deal with this issue in public schools.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Some very interesting background there. And it's good to know that you. You were getting into this early and developing these theories that would come in handy as we defended intelligent design legally later. And congratulations, by the way, on 20 years at Discovery Institute.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's been 20 years total because, again, I left for about four and a half years during my PhD, but 20 years since my start date. Yeah. Hard to believe. Time really goes by fast. Yeah.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Okay, Casey, let's take it in this direction. Did Discovery Institute support Dover's ID policy? And if so, how does this fit with Discovery's overall position on what should be taught in public schools and what our main Goals are for Intelligent design.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So Discovery Institute did not support Dover's ID policy. And that was basically a policy that did bring intelligent design into the curriculum in the Dover School District. Dover, by the way, is a small public school district in sort of rural central Pennsylvania, semi rural central Pennsylvania. And Discovery did not support that because our policy for years prior and both after the Dover case, was that we did not support public schools pushing ID into the curriculum. And the reason for that is that our priority for a long time with ID has to see it grow and develop as a science. We've always believed that at the end of the day, science is what is going to settle the debate over intelligent design. It's not going to be settled by court rulings or politics or legal stuff. It's going to be settled by science.
And the best way to have ID advance is to allow ID friendly scientists to be able to do research and, and develop the scientific case for ID in the academy. And the problem is that when ID gets brought into public school curricula, that tends to cause a large amount of controversy. And this was something that we would, you know, tell folks prior to the Dover case. We would say, look, this is going to cause a lot of controversy or lawsuits if you bring ID into the curriculum.
And it's one. It was one of those times when, you know, your prediction turned out to be right, but you kind of wish that you hadn't been right. So, again, this was before I came to Discovery, but my predecessor, Seth Cooper, he did have conversations with the Dover School board folks and said to them to not require ID to not bring ID into the curriculum and to simply teach the evidence for and against evolution without getting into ID as sort of an alternative or replacement theory. And what we had found both before and also after Dover is that you could teach the evidence for and against evolution without causing nearly as much controversy. And in fact, you know, I can think of, in my 20 years of discovery, somewhere between 10 to 12 states that have adopted policies that either require or permit students to learn about the scientific evidence for and against evolution, but do not bring ID into the curriculum at all. And guess what? There have been exactly zero lawsuits against any of those policies. Why is that? Well, the reason why is because in the 1987 case Edwards vs. Aguilar, the US Supreme Court basically says that it is legal to teach scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories. So our opponents, you know, folks at the ncse, the aclu, other folks on the other side of this issue in the, in the legal departments they know that the law is fairly well established, that it is legal to teach scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories, evolution thing into that category. So they know, I think this is what I think. They know that if they were to bring a lawsuit over a policy that simply requires or permits teachers to critique evolution, they know that they would not win that case. All right, Absent some extenuating circumstances, if it was just a simple policy to critique evolution and allowing or requiring that, that's not going to be a very good case that they're going to be able to win. And so when they lose that case now, they're going to have bad law on the books, as far as their perspective goes, that says, oh, yes, it is in fact legal to, to critique evolution. They don't want that. Okay? That's just going to, you know, push the legal momentum against their camp. So they don't even file lawsuits against policies that are on the books that either require or permit teachers to critique evolution. And discovery is known for a long time. Talking about David DeWolfe, he was one of the legal scholars that helped to craft this approach because he knew as well as I agree with him very much that there is very good legal precedent for supporting teaching evidence for and against evolution. Now, ID before the Dover case, and even today, the question of the constitutionality of teaching ID really remains an unsettled legal question at the national level. Yes, we do have the Dover ruling, which found that ID is unconstitutional to teach in public schools. But, and we'll get into this more, that was a ruling only at the lowest level of the federal courts, Andrew. It was from the district court level. And as the Supreme Court ruled earlier in 2025, a federal district court cannot settle issues nationally. Okay, so a federal district court has domain in its jurisdiction, but it doesn't have domain to settle an issue nationally. And the Dover trial will talk about this as well. It was never appealed. Okay? So there's no appellate court, certainly no Supreme Court ruling that has ever dealt squarely with the question of the constitutionality of teaching ID in public schools. So for that reason, I very much consider the teaching of id, formally speaking, an unsettled legal question here in the usa. Now, if somebody, school district were to bring ID into the curriculum again, I wouldn't be surprised if there was another lawsuit. And again, our priority with ID is not to see it become a hot potato for lawsuits and legal issues, but to see it grow and develop as a science. And when ID gets pushed into the curriculum, that results in lawsuits, those lawsuits result or in the Dover case, a lawsuit, and if there were other examples, it would result in more lawsuits. Those lawsuits cause controversy, and the controversy that happens tends to fan the flames of intolerance among ID critics in the academy, where they actually begin to increase the amount of persecution of pro ID scientists in the academy. And again, this is one of those times, Andrew, where you make a prediction and you turn out to be right, but you kind of wish that you hadn't been right. Because we predicted that in the wake of the Dover case and all the politicization that happened because of that lawsuit that there would be a lot of persecution of pro ID scientists. In fact, in one of the amicus briefs, we warned Judge Jones about Guillermo Gonzalez, who at that time was an untenured faculty member at Iowa State University who was about to go up for tenure. And we knew that. We said, you know, there are folks like Guillermo out there in the scientific community who would be at risk if a court did a full blown ruling, you know, defining science, claiming that ID is not science and is religion, et cetera, et cetera, that could actually threaten the academic freedom of ID friendly scientists at the universities. And unfortunately, our prediction turned out to be precisely right. And again, maybe we'll talk about this more, but I can tell you that in the years following the Dover ruling, that, you know, the Dover ruling was the very end of 2005, we saw an intense spike in the amount of persecution of pro ID scientists in the academy. Actually, I would say in the years, basically the Dover era and the post Dover era. So, you know, the year which the Dover events happened, the year of the Dover trial, and then the years following Dover, we saw quite a few persecution cases and instances of discrimination against ID friendly scientists and other academics in the academy. And so I spent a lot of time in those years working on those cases. You know, again, I was just after I got my law degree, coming to discovery. And, you know, I was not typically the attorney of record, but we would work with local attorneys and I was working behind the scenes assisting attorneys on those cases. And that's frankly why for folks who know the movie Expelled, that's why the movie Expelled came out in 2008. Okay, because in from 05 to 8, the years following the Dover case, we had all these academic freedom persecution cases that were, I would argue, directly inspired by people wanting to say, look, this judge said IDs in science. So we have to basically expel all these ID friendly academics from the academy. You know, kill the infidel, basically. All right, that's what they were trying to do, metaphorically speaking. All right.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: And they were doing that. And so we had a bunch of cases, and eventually this caught the attention of Ben Stein and some other folks. And. And that's why they made the expel documentary, which came out in 2008. And as folks who have seen it know that that documentary told the stories of a number of ID friendly scientists who had faced various forms of persecution, most of it taking place in the Dover or post Dover era. So this was very real. And it's still an issue today. Maybe not quite as much, but it's still an issue today. No, no question about it. But that is why we, for many years, both before, during and after Dover, have opposed efforts to push ID into the public school curriculum. That causes controversy and politicization, which ends up resulting in persecution of pro ID scientists and makes it harder for ID friendly scientists to develop the case for ID in the academy. Okay, so that's why we oppose Dover policy.
Some folks have tried to say the Discovery Institute changed its approach after Dover. That actually pre Dover, we were trying to push ID in the public schools. They'll say that we were responsible for the Dover, the Dover policy. That is not true. Discovery Institute had a very clear public record that we opposed Dover's policy. Right around the time that it was passed. We came out with a statement saying, we don't agree with this approach.
John west was quoted in some major news stories at that time. He worked at Discovery. That was in like September or so of 2004. September, October 2004. And then, you know, we were very much on the record, and this should have been nothing new to people who were paying attention. Our first major involvement with a statewide public policy debate was in Ohio in 2002. And in that case, in that it wasn't a legal case. But in that policy debate, Steve Meyer came out and urged the Ohio State Board of Education to not require the teaching of intelligent design and to simply teach the evidence for and against evolution. That was what he recommended. And so that had been Discovery's approach to before Dover and certainly after Dover. Now you asked about Dover's ID policy.
It's important to understand what Dover's ID policy was. So just because we didn't think it was a good idea and we thought that it was not the smartest policy approach, that does not mean that we think that the policy itself should have been considered to be unconstitutional. Okay, those are sort of two different questions. The policy question is what you would say, what do we think is the smartest thing to teach. But then there's the raw legal question. Is that policy in fact unconstitutional? Those are two separate questions. And I would argue that, I think that in an ideal and in a fair and just world, there's no question that Dover policy on its face should not be considered unconstitutional. I mean, let me read you this. Okay. What was Dover's policy? All they did was require biology teachers to read a short 4 paragraph oral statement before biology class when they were studying this subject. Okay, so can I read that policy to really to you really quick, Andrew?
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Let's hear it.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah, because I think it'll be interesting for our listeners to understand what actually was the Dover policy. You know, most people would think that the Dover school district was torturing puppies or something like that, given the, the really severe reaction that it engendered from our, from our opponents on the pro Darwin lobby. But here's what the policy actually said. All right, I'll read it. The Pennsylvania academic standards require students to learn about Darwin's theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. That's paragraph one. Here's paragraph two. Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. That's the second paragraph. Okay, third paragraph. Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life, that difference from Darwin's view. The reference book of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves. Okay, here's the fourth paragraph. As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards driven district, class instruction focuses on preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards based assessments. Okay, so notice a couple things about this policy. Number one, one short, let's see, two sentence paragraph mentions intelligent design twice. All right? And then they basically say if you want to go and learn more about this, there's this book in the library called Of Pandas and People. You can go learn more about it there.
That's literally all they said about intelligent design. All right, now some of this stuff I don't recommend saying that evolution is a theory, not a fact. I think that gets that sometimes confuses the way that scientists often use you know, define the word theory. And that's another sort of legal landmine to step on. So I, again, we would not have recommended on policy grounds that this be the approach they take. But as far as triggering, you know, the Darwin lobby, all it took was a short one paragraph oral mention of intelligent Design and then saying, if you want to learn more, you can go learn more about it from this book that's in the library. All right? And that triggered the evolutionists at the ACLU and the NCSC and other places to file a lawsuit to try to get ID banned from the Dover School District and to have that Pandas and People textbook banned, have it removed from the library so school students would no longer be allowed have access to any information about Intelligent design. So this really tells you what their goal is. Their goal, and let's just call it what it is. It's censorship. All right? You're listening to this. You're from that camp. You don't have to like what I'm saying. But this is what you advocate. You advocate censorship. Nothing less than censorship of intelligent Design. And your goal was to make sure that intelligent design is banned from the minds of students so they don't have the opportunity to learn about it. All right? And I know this because, you know, they would say, oh, well, maybe if they talked about it in a philosophy class, it would have been okay, well, guess what? The next year, a poor little school district in California took the ACLU and the Darwin lobby's word when they said, oh, you could talk about ID in a philosophy class. And they did that. And then they got hit with a lawsuit, too. Okay? So I don't believe anybody when they tell me on the other side that they would be okay with students learning about ID in any context, because they got it, they saw it, and successfully did get it banned from a science classroom in Dover, Pennsylvania. They try to get it banned in another school district in El Tahon, California. That's what they want. They want ID to be banned and censored from students. And so this is. This is kind of what we're up against in the ID community. Just like they want to, you know, persecute the infidel, the ID theorist, and get them out of academia. This is what they want. They want to have ID expelled. And that's why I think that the title of that documentary is very apt. So this gives our listeners some background on what was really going on. You know, this very short mentioned of intelligent Design encouraging students to keep an open mind, et cetera, et cetera that was too much for the Darwin lobby. They had to file a lawsuit to get all that banned.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Hmm.
Wow. And I keep coming back to the fact that, you know, if you're confident in a theory, let it, let it be aired out. You know, let, let it be discussed and debated because you're confident that it's going to stand. But this doesn't really point to confidence on the part of Darwinists and the Darwin lobby, you know, because they were just afraid that it would get discussed at all and reviewed in the schools.
It's unfortunate.
That was the first half of my conversation with Casey Luskin, looking back at the Dover vs. Kitzmiller trial of 2005 as we mark its 20th anniversary.
Now, Casey has set the stage here by giving us some of the inside details as well as his unique perspective on the trial.
In a separate episode, we continue the conversation. Cayce discusses the outcome of the trial. He gives us a detailed account of everything Judge Jones gets wrong in his ruling. He explains why the ruling was poor legal scholarship. And he looks at the short and longer term impact of the Dover trial on the debate over evolution.
So don't miss the conclusion to this conversation.
Also, don't forget, you can watch episodes of ID the Future now on our ID the Future YouTube channel. Help us spread the word by
[email protected] dthefuture that's YouTube.com dthefuture well, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for joining us.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: Visit us at idthefuture.com and intelligent design.org this program is Copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
