No Easy Victory Ensues in Legal Battle Over Evolution

But bringing a legal case against intelligent design is a tricky business. The small band of scientists who publicly support intelligent design are able debaters, and, as became clear when Behe took the stand, they do not sound remotely like William Jennings Bryan, the lawyer who eight decades ago in Tennessee invoked biblical authority to decry evolution.

Behe began by rattling off the names of prominent scientists, many of whom are not advocates of intelligent design, who questioned key aspects of evolutionary theory and noted that there is scant evidence for large mutational leaps. Then he read aloud from a paper written by an evolutionary biologist, whose theorizing was peppered with "maybe" and "might have" and "probably."

The heart of Behe's argument, though, centered on biochemistry, where he claims to have found machinery so complex, such as the bacterial flagellum, as to be irreducibly complex -- meaning it could not have evolved because it needs all of its parts to work.

"If leaders in the scientific field do not know how something came about, then one can be confident . . . that nobody in the world knows how it came about," Behe said. "There's no natural evidence that Darwinian evolution would have produced it."

Several weeks back, biologist Miller told the court that scientists are hard at work decoding the evolution of the flagellum. "Behe basically told scientists, 'Don't bother to try to investigate the evolution of this because it's irreducibly complex,' " Miller said. "Fortunately, research scientists didn't listen to him."

Lawyers also peppered Behe with questions about his assertion that those who believe in God are more likely to accept intelligent design. Behe replied that it was a matter not of theology but common sense: An atheist or agnostic will be predisposed to doubt a theory that relies on the possible hand of God.

Critics of intelligent design seem convinced that the past week in court went smashingly. A lawyer for the parents mockingly compared intelligent design to the "theory" of astrology.

Still, Behe and the intelligent design crowd display no signs of flagging. They have considerable financial support, often from political conservatives. And Behe's argument that intelligent design represents an insurgent struggle against a scientific bureaucracy resonates deep within the heart of American culture.

"Have you listened to him?" asked Dover Area School Board President Sheila Harkins, who is among the board members who favor teaching intelligent design. "He's smart and knowledgeable, and he's not backing down up there. He's terrific."