Punctuated Equilibrium and the Validation of Macroevolutionary Theory 989
taught us how to fight fire (or rather the inability of reprobates to kindle any real
flame) with fire—and the splendid man cited by creationists as their own primary
hero did promise that truth would make us free.
In the Texas textbook hearings of 1984, for example, Mel and Norma Gabler,
the infamous professional propagandists for forcing a right-wing evangelical agenda
into textbooks, lobbied for four imposed changes in any evolutionary passages within
biology texts. One of the items rested upon the second standard creationist
mischaracterization of punctuated equilibrium: "There are systematic gaps in the
fossil record, showing absences of intermediate links. Punctuated equilibrium was
devised to explain these gaps. Therefore presentation of evolutionary lineages, such
as from amphibians to reptiles to birds and mammals, cannot be supported with
evidence. The textbooks should be revised to reflect this understanding."
But our side holds a strong weapon in such public cases, for we can also testify,
and therefore expose. We have never failed in these circumstances. The Gablers'
proposal lost and the State of Texas endorsed good biology books.
Given the power of the First Amendment, and the fairness and intellectual
stature of federal judge William Overton, our success in overturning the Arkansas
equal time law, in a trial held in Little Rock in late 1981, seemed assured. I can only
regard my own role, as one of six expert witnesses for science and religion, as both
minor and probably irrelevant to the inevitable decision. But I was able to speak for
paleontology and to add our unique temporal perspective to the documentation.
Clarence Darrow's scientific witnesses were not permitted to testify in the
Scopes Trial of 1925. The Louisiana creationism law, the only other statute passed in
modern times by a state legislature, and a virtual copy of the Arkansas law, was
dismissed by summary judgment following our success in Arkansas, and was
therefore never tried in court. The State of Louisiana appealed this case to the
Supreme Court, where oral argument consumes but one hour, and only the principal
lawyers may testify, with no witnesses called. Therefore, for the first and only time in
American history, the Arkansas trial permitted full-scale testimony about creationism
in a court of law. I feel honored that I had the opportunity to help present the case for
evolution as natural knowledge, and for creationism as pseudoscience, in the only
legal venue ever provided to experts in the relevant professions throughout this long
and important episode in 20th century American history.
My testimony and cross examination at the Arkansas trial lasted for the better
part of a day, and focussed upon two subjects: the absurdity of attributing the entire
fossil record to the single incident of Noah's flood (a favored creationist ploy for
cramming the entire geological history of the earth into a mere 6000 years or so), and
creationist pseudoscientific practice as illustrated by their clearly willful distortions
of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. (We did not, in this trial, try to "prove"
evolution—a subject scarcely in need of such treatment, and not for a court of law to
adjudicate in any case—but only to expose creationism as a narrow form of dogmatic
religion, masquerading