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"Those school board members have given conflicting statements as to whether they would allow the case to continue to the appeals courts in hopes of making it a national test case to ban intelligent design from the classroom," Time notes. But it's highly unlikely: The locals are really tired of being in national spotlight and have no desire to make their town an even larger issue. And because the town wishes this story would just go away, they may not want a criminal trial, either. But who knows?

In a separate news article, the Daily Record looks at the perjury question: Professor Richard Fallon of Harvard Law School said a judge wouldn't have the authority to level perjury charges in a case that he or she had tried. That authority would go to a prosecutor. Steve Harvey, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Jones would be able to forward any such concerns to federal prosecutors."

The paper does not quote Bonsell on the subject, but paraphrases him saying "he disagreed with the judge that the board provided a disservice to the public and that members lied to cover their tracks."

Buckingham was more direct in an interview with The New York Times. "If the judge called me a liar, then he's a liar," the former board member said.

Meanwhile, it's worth remembering that other supporters of Intelligent Design, like the Discovery Institute, are being sullied by the board members' actions. (The Discovery Institute actually opposed the Dover policy and every other policy requiring the teaching of Intelligent Design.) In fact, closing arguments in the case claimed that the board members' dishonesty was an outgrowth of the deception of the Intelligent Design movement in its "shell game" attempt to say it's not religious.

In an interview with the York Daily Record, Dover science teacher Rob Eshbach again equated the deception of the board members with the ID movement. "We are certainly glad that Judge Jones saw it for what it was," Eshbach said. He saw the lies that took place. The deception that took place. That's what we were hoping for."

Such equations are spurious, but expected. It is not terribly difficult to use the sins of a few to tar the intentions of the many. Nor is it difficult to criticize Darwinists for taking advantage of the opportunity.

What is more difficult is to recognize that so many of us are tempted to "forget" inconvenient facts, to retell events in a more positive light, to take shortcuts for the benefit of what we think is the greater good. When it comes down to it, though, which do you think God cares more about? That those who act in his name got a school district to call Darwinian evolution a theory, or that the entire world now considers them perjurers?

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December (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49