The Untold Story of the Kitzmiller Trial

On December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones, III handed down his decision in the widely publicizedKitzmiller v. Dover case.¹ At the heart of his decision was a flawed narrative about the intelligent design textbook Of Pandas and People (Kenyon and Davis, 1993).² The following report is not the place to discuss the provocation or actions of the Dover Area School Board and the Judge’s decision concerning them. It will concentrate instead on the narrative Judge Jones adopted, a narrative holding that intelligent design was a disguised form of creation science (or creationism) and thus inherently religious, and therefore its use in public schools a violation of the First Amendment. Judge Jones’ view was largely derived from the ACLU’s argument alleging that Pandas was originally written as a creation science text, but that its publisher and editors, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), quietly changed the terminology, substituting “intelligent design” for “creation science” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the latter as religion in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard case.³ Abundant evidence establishing that this allegation is not only inaccurate, but also at odds with history, has been compiled since the trial. This evidence is provided in detail in the following account.