Microcosm_ E. Coli and the New Science of Life - Carl Zimmer [76]
Over the past twenty-five years E. coli’s flagellum has become an icon to creationists, a molecular weapon they try to wield against the evils of Darwin and his followers. For decades they have touted it in lectures and books as a clear-cut example of the handiwork of a divine designer. But it was not until the Dover case that they had the opportunity to present the flagellum to the world.
The strategy failed miserably. At the end of the trial, Judge John E. Jones ruled against the school board, in part because its case for the flagellum’s intelligent design was so weak. In fact, flagella are a fine example of how evolution works and a clear demonstration of why creationism fails as science.
Creationism—the belief that life’s diversity originated from specific acts of divine creation—first emerged in American history during the early years of the twentieth century. But it was never a single body of ideas. Some creationists argued that the world was a few thousand years old, while others accepted the geologic evidence of its great age. Some claimed evolution must be wrong because it did not accord with the Bible. Others tried to attack the evidence for evolution. They claimed that living species were so distinct from one another that they could not have evolved from a common ancestor. They pointed out the absence of transitional fossils, such as ones that might link whales to land mammals, and claimed that such gaps were proof that intermediate forms could not possibly have existed. When paleontologists discovered fossils of some of those transitional forms—such as whales with legs—the creationists simply retreated to another gap.
While creationists failed in the scientific arena, they had more luck in public high schools. In the 1920s, state legislatures began banning the teaching of evolution, and many of those laws stayed on the books for more than thirty years. It was not until 1968 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that banning the teaching of evolution amounted to imposing religion on students. If creationists could not keep evolution out of classrooms, they would try to get creationism in alongside it. They began to claim that creationism is sound science that deserves to be taught. These self-styled “creation scientists” founded organizations with august names, such as the Institute for Creation Research. They began working on a textbook about creation science that they wanted introduced into schools. And they looked around the natural world for things they could claim as scientific evidence of creation.
Biology had changed dramatically since the birth of creationism. Molecular biologists were plunging into the exquisite complexity of cells, discovering clusters of proteins working together like the parts of machines. Creation scientists mined the new research for structures they claimed were the result of creation, not evolution. One of the things they chose was E. coli’s flagellum.
In 1981, Richard Bliss, chairman of the Education Department of the Institute for Creation Research, came to West Arkansas Junior College to give a talk about creation science. He told his audience that in the creation model of life, “we would predict that we’d see a fantastic amount of orderliness, and there is, folks. There’s orderliness on a macro level and on a micro level. The further we get down into the molecular level the more we see this orderliness jump out and scream out at us.” As an example of this order, Bliss showed his audience a picture of E. coli.
Bliss described its flagellum, detailing the many proteins that make it up and how they work together to make it spin. “I