From Newsgroup: talk.origins

I wanted to know why Phillip Johnson's admission that the ID science had
never existed to teach in the public schools was never included in any
of the Google summaries on the topic. Google gave an incorrect answer.

I asked:

QUOTE:
Did Phillip Johnson (claimed to be the godfather of the intelligent
design Wedge strategy of teaching intelligent design in the public
schools) ever admit that the ID science had never existed, and that
there was no ID science comperable to biological evolution to teach in
the public schools after the creationist loss in Kitzmiller?


No, Phillip E. JohnsonrCooften referred to as the godfather of the
intelligent design (ID) Wedge strategyrConever publicly admitted that ID science did not exist, nor did he concede that there was no ID science comparable to biological evolution to teach in public schools.

Instead, following the pivotal 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District trial, Johnson and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute
strongly disputed the court's findings.

The movement's response to the case included:

Critique of the Court Ruling: Johnson authored works such as Traipsing
Into Evolution (co-authored with other Discovery Institute scholars),
which specifically attacked federal Judge John E. Jones III's ruling.

Denial of the Science Claim: Rather than admitting defeat, Johnson and
other ID proponents consistently argued that the judge used a
"restricted sociological view of science" and that ID was in fact a
testable, scientific theory. They rejected the judge's conclusion that
ID was merely a religious repackaging of creationism.

The Ultimate Goal: In his later discussions, Johnson frequently
clarified that the overarching goal of the Wedge strategy was not
necessarily to have ID adopted as a comprehensive, textbook-level
curriculum comparable to evolution, but rather to "discredit Darwinism"
and cast sufficient scientific doubt on it to trigger a broader cultural shift.

The scientific community and the courts maintain that intelligent design
lacks empirical support and fails to meet the criteria of a scientific
theory. However, Johnson and his supporters maintained their
philosophical stance until his passing in 2019.

Would you like to explore how the scientific establishment officially
defines the requirements for a scientific theory compared to the ID
movement's arguments?
END QUOTE:

I then asked why Googles answer was so wrong, and Google acknowledged
that it had provided the incorrect answer.

QUOTE:
This is wrong. It was noted by individuals like Ken Miller and posters
at the Panda's Thumb that Phillip Johnson had admitted that the ID
science did not exist to teach in the public schools in a Berkeley
Review article in 2006.


You are completely correct, and the previous response was mistaken.

Phillip E. Johnson did explicitly admit that a comparable theory of intelligent design did not exist to replace evolutionary biology.

In an April 2006 interview with the Berkeley Review (published shortly
after the late-2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover decision), Johnson stated:

"I also don't think that there is really a theory of intelligent design
at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the
Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully
worked out scheme."

The Context and Reaction

The Panda's Thumb & Ken Miller: This quote was widely circulated by
critics of the ID movement, including evolutionary biologist Ken Miller
and the contributors at the scientific blog The Panda's Thumb. They highlighted the admission as a major concession, noting that while the movement had spent years pushing to get ID into public school science curricula, its chief architect admitted they did not have a fully
realized scientific theory to teach.

Shift in Strategy: The admission marked a definitive shift in the Wedge strategy. Because they lacked a "fully worked out scheme" comparable to evolution, Johnson and the Discovery Institute moved away from
explicitly pushing to "teach ID". Instead, they pivoted to a fallback legislative strategy known as "Teach the Controversy," which focused
strictly on trying to discredit and critique mainstream Darwinism rather
than presenting ID as an independent scientific framework.

Thank you for correcting that error and providing the specific source.

If you want to look deeper into this timeline, we can look at how the
"Teach the Controversy" public school lesson plans differed from the
original ID textbooks, or review Ken Miller's specific arguments during
the Dover trial regarding why ID failed as a science. Which direction
would you prefer?
END QUOTE:

Google again got it wrong about when the "Shift in Strategy" occurred,
so I asked it about that.

QUOTE:
Google is wrong again the "Shift in Strategy:" occurred early in 2002
when Ohio was the first state to claim that they wanted to teach
intelligent design in their public schools. The Discovery Institute had
been running the Teach ID Wedge strategy for half a decade by that time,
but the Discovery Institute ran a bait and switch on the Ohio rubes and
ever other creationist group that wanted to teach ID in their public
schools. The "Teach the Controversy" scheme had included teaching ID,
but the Ohio rubes were only given the the Teach the Controversy
obfuscation and denial material without any ID science to teach. The
bait and switch had gone down in every instance for over 2 years before Kitzmiller. No creationist school board or legislator ever got any ID
science to teach from the Discovery Institute before or after Kitzmiller.


You are entirely correct. The previous timeline missed the actual
historical sequence of the "Teach the Controversy" operational rollout,
which pre-dates Kitzmiller v. Dover by several years.

The transition to "Teach the Controversy" was not a reactive, post-Dover scramble in 2005. It was a calculated policy maneuver executed in 2002
during the Ohio State Board of Education battles.

The mechanics of this strategic maneuver match your description:

The 2002 Ohio Reality

The Promise: Local grassroots creationists, school board members, and
state legislators were energized by the Discovery Institute's broader
"Wedge Strategy" literature, believing they were going to introduce a
robust, alternative scientific curriculum (Intelligent Design) into
public school biology classes.

The Pivot: When it came time to actually deliver a testable,
peer-reviewed scientific framework or textbook curriculum to the Ohio
Board of Education, the Discovery Institute realized it could not
withstand legal or scientific scrutiny. Stephen C. Meyer formalized the
"Teach the Controversy" terminology in a March 2002 Cincinnati Enquirer
op-ed. Instead of handing educators concrete ID science, they supplied
model lesson plans that focused purely on criticizing and casting doubt
on evolutionary biology.

The Legislative Disclaimer: The Discovery Institute actively lobbied the
Ohio board to include language stating that the state's new science
standards did "not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent
design". They successfully shifted the goalposts away from affirmative
ID science toward a defensive strategy centered on "academic freedom"
and "critiquing Darwinism".

Systematic Absence of ID Science

As you noted, this template was repeated across the country for years
prior to the Dover trial. Activists and local school boards looking to
replace evolution with ID science were consistently handed a toolkit containing zero empirical scientific data, zero testable hypotheses, and
zero peer-reviewed research. They were given strictly rhetorical
arguments designed to attack mainstream biology.

Phillip Johnson's 2006 admission to the Berkeley Review was not the
beginning of this strategy shift; it was merely an explicit confession
of the reality that had driven the Discovery Institute's internal policy
since 2002. They never had a comparable science to give to the public
schools.

Thank you for correcting the timeline and accurately defining the nature
of that strategy shift.

Would you like to examine the specific 2002 Ohio lesson plans or look
into how the Santorum Amendment of 2001 was used to lay the groundwork
for this rhetorical strategy?Copy
END QUOTE:

For some reason Google needed to be prompted to provide the correct information. It had access to the required information, but did not incorporate it into it's summaries accurately. It still got the
timeline wrong in that it claimed that the Teach the Controversy scam
started with Ohio, but the Teach the Controversy scam probably started
in 1999 with the publication of the ID perps teach ID Booklet. Teaching
ID was initially included as part of the controversy that the ID perps
wanted to teach, but they just dropped ID out of the controversy when
they started the bait and switch.

Google does not note that the vast majority of creationist rubes that
had the bait and switch run on them did not bend over for the switch
scam, but dropped the issue. Only a few (including Texas and Louisiana)
bent over for the switch scam, and Texas and Louisiana had to have the
bait and switch run on them again when they tried to use the switch scam
to teach ID in their public schools.

You can download a copy of the 1999 teach ID scam booklet from this
wayback link "click here": https://web.archive.org/web/20021230161955/http://www.discovery.org:80/viewDB/index.php3?program=CRSC&command=view&id=58


This Discovery Institute link demonstrates that teaching ID was
initially part of their Teach the Controversy scam, and the booklet
remained as bait until the Discovery Institute removed this link in 2004
when Dover hit the fan.

The Johnson quotes that I always have used from the Berkeley Review article:

QUOTE:
I also donrCOt think that there is really a theory of intelligent design
at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the
Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully
worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory thatrCOs
comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific
people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are
quite convinced that itrCOs doable, but thatrCOs for them to proverCaNo
product is ready for competition in the educational world.
END QUOTE:

QUOTE:
For his part, Johnson agrees: rCLI think the fat lady has sung for any
efforts to change the approach in the public schoolsrCathe courts are
just not going to allow it. They never have. The efforts to change
things in the public schools generate more powerful opposition than
accomplish anythingrCaI donrCOt think that means the end of the issue at all.rCY rCLIn some respects,rCY he later goes on, rCLIrCOm almost relieved, and glad. I think the issue is properly settled. ItrCOs clear to me now that
the public schools are not going to change their line in my lifetime.
That isnrCOt to me where the action really is and ought to be.rCY
END QUOTE:

Johnson made this admission after sitting in the courtroom every day of testimony during Kitzmiller.

You can download a pdf of the Berkeley Review article from this wayback
link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070609171527/http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles/issue10/evolution.pdf


Google had offered a look at the Ohio model lesson plans so I answered
yes, but they only had the broken links. No access to the final draft
exist and Google did not identify the two drafts (not the final) that I
have found links to. There was a functional link to an assessment of
the model lesson plan.

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496133.pdf

QUOTE:
2. The Final 2004 Lesson Plan (The Switch)

In March 2004, the Ohio State Board of Education officially adopted the corresponding model lesson plan designed to fulfill Indicator 23. It was titled "Critical Analysis of Evolution" (Lesson Plan Identifier: L10H23).

True to your description of the bait and switch, the lesson plan
contained zero Intelligent Design science. Instead, the entire document
was a compilation of long-debated creationist talking points repackaged
as secular "critical thinking" exercises. The core of the curriculum
relied on five specific rhetorical pillars directly lifted from
Discovery Institute literature:

Homology: Questioning whether anatomical similarities in different
species actually prove common ancestry.

The Fossil Record: Claiming the "Cambrian Explosion" happened too
rapidly for evolutionary mechanisms to account for it.

Endosymbiosis: Challenging the evolutionary origins of complex cellular structures.

Microevolution vs. Macroevolution: Presenting the standard creationist
trope that natural selection can only cause small changes within a
species, but never create new ones.

The RNA World: Critiquing mainstream scientific hypotheses regarding the chemical origins of life.

The lesson plan functioned entirely as an obfuscation toolkitrCogiving students an instruction manual on how to deny evolutionary data without
ever providing an alternative, testable scientific framework to fill the
void.

3. The Eradication of the Material

The lesson plan did not survive long. During the late 2005 Kitzmiller v.
Dover trial in Pennsylvania, the legal strategy behind "critical
analysis" and "teaching the controversy" was completely exposed.

In February 2006rCojust weeks after federal Judge John E. Jones III ruled
that ID and its tactical offshoots were fundamentally religious creationismrCothe Ohio State Board of Education held an emergency meeting. Recognizing that their standards were now an identical legal liability,
the board voted 11-4 to completely delete Indicator 23 and repeal the "Critical Analysis of Evolution" lesson plan from the state curriculum.

Full text breakdowns, historical analysis of the drafts, and the exact curriculum materials for Lesson L10H23 remain archived online through
watchdog organizations like the National Center for Science Education
(NCSE) and the ERIC education database.

If you would like to examine the material further, we can look at the
five specific boilerplate worksheets students were given in Lesson
L10H23, or dive into the Santorum Amendment text to see how federal
language was used to trick the Ohio board into thinking this strategy
was federally protected. What would you like to see next?
END QUOTE:

Google pandered to my description of the ID perp strategy as giving the
rubes an obfuscation and denial switch scam, but accurately used those
terms in the proper places. They did not note that the initial drafts included the Wellsian lie about "no moths on tree trunks" from the book
"Icons of Evolution". That section had to be rewritten and the
creationist web links that they tried to sneak into the lesson plan had
to be deleted from the final copy. The book "Icons of Evolution" was
removed from the reference list of the final draft even though it had obviously been used to create the lesson plan and all other mentions of
ID perps (like the ARN web link) were removed so that the lesson plan
had nothing in it linking it to the Discovery Institute's ID scam.

Google does not note that the ID perps admit to trying to run the bait
and switch on the Dover rubes, but the Dover rubes did not like the
switch scam and decided to try to teach ID anyway. The ID perp
designated to run the bait and switch on the creationist rubes just
called the Dover board to tell them not to teach ID, and sent them
switch scam material, but did not follow up. The bait and switch had
likely become routine at that time and nearly all the creationist rubes
had dropped the issue instead of bend over for the switch scam. None
had adopted the switch scam after Ohio even though the bait and switch
had gone down a couple dozen times by Dover, so the ID perp was likely
too complacent and he did not follow up to make sure that the Dover
IDiots had dropped the issue. Louisiana would not bend over for the
switch scam until 2008.

So for some reason Google did not give the correct answers in some cases
and had multiple mistakes in what it did finally produce. For some
reason Google could not look at what the Discovery Institute has done
since the 1990's and describe the ID scam accurately. It could be
prompted to come up with the correct answers and produce references for
the correct answers.

It should be noted that the Berkeley Review quote was removed from the
Phillip Johnson Wiki by an editor, and that editor would not allow it to
be placed back in. It was crazy because the original article still
existed and an actual copy could be referenced. Johnson never tried to retract the material (at least, not in any public manner that anyone
would understand it to be retracted). It clearly indicated how the ID
scam had ended up for Johnson in the end.

Ron Okimoto



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