In a previous article, I mentioned an episode from the TV series Boston Legal and the firm’s choice to defend a school-board member who fired three teachers who would not teach Intelligent Design (ID) along with evolution in the science classroom. You can read it here.
Next up on the witness stand was Roberta Turner, one of the teachers who refused to teach the theory of evolution alongside the theory of Intelligent Design:
Roberta Turner: At the beginning of the school year, we got the word at our teacher’s assembly, that moral values would be one of our educational objectives. Which was fine. But to have Evolution bumped for Creationism.
Attorney Daniel Gellman: Well! To be fair, Evolution isn’t being displaced. Creationism is just being included.
Roberta Turner: Evolution is a tough subject matter. We cannot cut into what little class time we have to service a political agenda. To teach…
Lori Colson: Objection! This is non-responsive.
Judge William Howe: Please limit your answers to the questions.
Attorney Daniel Gellman: Why can’t you view Intelligent Design as a Science, Ms. Turner?
Roberta Turner: Because! There is simply no scientific data to support it. How are we to maintain any credibility as science teachers if we say, “Gee! Despite all this data, there’s also another possibility.” Intelligent Design makes a mockery of Science. If you wanna teach it as a religion course? Fine! But as a Science? It’s simply preposterous.
This is the standard response to ID. There’s no science behind it. Tell that to the thousands of scientists who are advocates for ID. She’s ignorant. Unfortunately, the defense team did not counter her claims that there is no science behind ID. Neither the lawyers at Crane, Poole, and Schmidt nor producers of Boston Legal wanted to go there since the science is very compelling. Atheists, the ACLU, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State would have gone ape if a fair hearing of Intelligent Design had taken place on a popular network show!
By This Standard
God's Law is Christianity's tool of dominion. This is where any discussion of God's law ultimately arrives: the issue of dominion. Ask yourself: Who is to rule on earth, Christ or Satan? Whose followers have the ethically acceptable tool of dominion, Christ's or Satan's? What is this tool of dominion, the Biblically revealed law of God, or the law of self-proclaimed autonomous man? Whose word is sovereign, God's or man's?
Buy NowAt this point attorney Daniel Gellman gives his closing.
Attorney Daniel Gellman: These are bad times for science your Honor. Especially at the hands of moral values. The government has systematically distorted or worse, suppressed findings by the FDA and EPA when it comes to contraception, stem cell research, AIDS, global warming, pollution…
Judge William Howe: Let’s just stick to the case, Counsel, and leave politics out of it.
Attorney Daniel Gellman: This case is all about politics. It’s about getting religion back into schools. Creationism is religious doctrine; it is not supported by scientific data. I’m a Christian. My wife is a Jew. We have wonderful debates. And this country, as a whole, should be more theologically literate, but it’s not Science! What’s happening here today is an attack on evolution. It’s clever. Let’s call it Intelligent Design. Let’s not mention God. But, come on! The Supreme Court banned the teaching of Creationism in the public schools. They were right then, they remain right today, and my client’s discharge was unlawful, as well as in violation of our time-honored tradition of separating Church and State. Of course, we have a legitimate Cause of Action.
Shirley Schmidt: That was almost Evangelical. The Establishment Clause prohibits the endorsement of or discrimination against any particular religion. But it was never meant to extinguish the notion of a Higher Power. I certainly believe in evolution. Who here among us, while watching the presidential debates could deny that we all come from monkeys? But, what’s so wrong with suggesting, as a possible theory, that a Higher Power might have also played a part? As for Church and State, we go to war over God-given rights to Democracy. Let’s face it. God is big here. We love God, and we as a nation have an overwhelming belief [in God]. He had something to do with the creation of humankind. But teach that in a Science class? Perish the thought. Nobody here is trying to squash evolution, and I would agree with Mr. Gellman, it isn’t good Science to suppress information. But I would ask the court, who here today is trying to do the squashing?
Actually, it was “evangelical,” evangelical atheism because atheism and something-from-nothing evolution are religious ideologies.
She gets the First Amendment right. It’s not about separating Church and State. Arguing that God created the world is not an establishment of religion, but “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion is a violation of the First Amendment. She also gets it right when she said, “it isn’t good Science to suppress information. But I would ask the court, who here today is trying to do the squashing?” The Left fears equal time for controversial subjects like human origins and the claim that there are more than two sexes.
Because the defense called for a declaratory judgment, the judge had the final word.
Judge William Howe: Nobody, is more frightened than I am of the Religious Right getting a stranglehold on our values.
Lori Colson: [Under her breath] This is the part where we get spanked.
Judge William Howe: It seems as long as you do it in the name of the Almighty, one is free to abandon not only common sense and Science but also the facts. But I am also concerned about a secular society squeezing faith out of our lives. We’ve all witnessed the ridiculous lawsuits to stop Nativity scenes at Christmas, to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. God has always been a part of who and what we are as a nation. On our currency, it reads, “In God we trust.” The Declaration of Independence speaks of God. How we are created, endowed by our creator; it references our Supreme Judge of the world and Divine Providence, God. And I’m sorry, anybody who has ever held a newborn child in his hands must make room for the chance that a Higher Power exists. And it shouldn’t offend you Scientists to say, “Hey! We just don’t know.” I find the decision to include Intelligent Design along with evolution into the Science curriculum does not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. I’m ruling in favor of the defendant. This lawsuit is dismissed. [He pounds his gavel.]
Yes, he takes a swipe at the Religious Right, as if the Religious Left and Leftists, in general, don’t have a “stranglehold on our values.” There is no neutrality. Have you noticed how liberals have appealed to the Bible on abortion (here) and college debt relief (here). Every law—positive or negative—is the imposition of someone’s moral values. Remember, this is Boston Legal, television dominated by liberals, and the Democrat city of Boston. We shouldn’t expect too much.
This is the fourth time the word “values” came up. How does one account for fixed moral values in a something-from-nothing worldview? How do fixed moral values arise from a matter-only origin of the cosmos (never demonstrated by science)? Computers don’t exude moral values. There are no moral values stamped on DNA. The Declaration of Independence, acknowledging a Creator gets the logic correct: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” No Creator, no rights. Can the Declaration of Independence be taught in government schools because it mentions the following:
· Endowed by their Creator
· Supreme Judge of the world
· Divine Providence
The Constitution of the United States refers to the Declaration and indirectly to Jesus Christ: “done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty-seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.”
Evolutionists rarely want to start with origins since the can’t account for the “stuff” that evolves. Instead, they begin with “mutations in biological organisms that occur naturally during the reproductive process.” Where the mind, thought, logic, reason, love, joy, sorrow, to name a few non-material entities, to be found in the evolutionary process? Evolutionary “progress” is bloody, violent, and dismissive of the weak. Here are some of the popular descriptions of Godless evolution:
· “Everything, if Darwin is right, is mechanical and blind, and purposeless at the bottom.”
· “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great engulfing cosmic dark.”
· “The cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.”
How do these scientists with evolved brains know anything truly? How does anyone develop a legitimate value system in a matter-only cosmos? Richard Dawkins says that he has a “materialist view of the world” that commits him to “the view that when I think I have free will … free choice, I’m deluding myself.” This would make a great defense for school shooters. “Hey, I was taught a scientific theory in these schools that says I don’t have free will. Natural Selection is the affecting agent. Nature selected me to kill people. Who’s to say I can’t?”
Richard Dawkins said it best (worst):
In the universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.[1]
You won’t find the lawyers at Crane, Poole, and Schmidt on Boston Legal operating this way. It would have made a good episode if someone had, but it couldn’t be allowed.
The Peking Duck Syndrome
In this presentation, you will learn that America's moral and cultural crisis is the result of Christians not applying the Christian worldview to every area of life. Discover why there is no such thing as ‘neutrality.’ While Christians stand by and do nothing, the other side is working feverishly to implement their godless, humanistic, destructive worldview. Watching from the sidelines is not an option. Which worldview will ultimately prevail? Are you cooking the goose of the anti-Christians or are they cooking yours?
Buy NowThe episode closes with this exchange:
Lori Colson: Is it a good thing we won today?
Shirley Schmidt: I don’t know.
Lori Colson: You believe in a Higher Power, right? It wasn’t just advocacy in that room [just to win the case].
Shirley Schmidt: With what’s going on the world, I need to believe. But …
Lori Colson: But what?
Shirley Schmidt: God forbid, the next court says it’s okay to ban evolution from the schools.
Lori Colson: Yeah. God forbid.
Notice how they need God to forbid the teaching about God. But if the full logical moral consequences of materialism were taught, then evolution should be banned in the same way any ideology should be banned or at least ridiculed for arguing that survival of the fittest is the de facto premise of science. We’re fortunate that true-blue atheists aren’t consistent with their faith.
[1]Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: HarperCollins/BasicBooks, 1995), 133.