Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.
For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.
During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.
When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.
“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”
Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.
It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”
Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.
In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop, which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.
Exactly. One might as well argue that because someone supports the Human Life Amendment, they must agree that Roe vs. Wade was properly decided.
I know you know the following.
The increase of information argument put forward by creationists and IDists is what is called a reification. They take an abstract idea meant to ease understanding of a concept and treat it as it were the concept itself, in effect making it concrete. By attributing aspects of language to the genome (remember they also claim that 'junk' DNA sequences are there to be triggered when needed so are included in the 'information'***) information theory (generally Shannon) can be applied thus removing the possibility of point mutations, transposons, even something as large as a gene duplication from producing what they call 'novel' features. Of course without the creation of novel features, the evolution of such things as eyes, feathers, wings, etc. is not possible. This is related to the 'blueprint' model of the genome.
A blueprint is a list of all the materials needed for and their exact placement in a structure. Without increasing the size of the blueprint, (information content) substructures can not be added to the original structure. For example, on the blueprint of a 3 bedroom home, if a fourth bedroom is to be added, the minimum change to the blueprint would be the addition of a single wall and door. A maximum bedroom addition to the blueprint would consist of three walls, a door, and a number of windows, floor, roof, ceiling, wiring, etc.
If this analogy is accurate, and it is just an analogy (refrain from reifing this please), then indeed more information would be needed to produce 'novel' features.
If creationists really want to invoke the 'information' incantation, then a more accurate information theory to use would be Kolmogorov-Chaitin, where the amount of information contained by a string is determined by the minimum size of the algorithm necessary to produce the string. If coding sequences of DNA are considered algorithms, or the formalization of them - procedures, functions, subroutines, methods, whatever your favourite programming language calls its subroutines - then the analogy is more accurate.
In a program, the minimum added information to produce another bedroom would be a simply incrementation in the number of bedrooms needed. The maximum would be a start point, orientation, dimensions, position and type of windows and doors, all of which can be specified by a minimum bit string. In this case the DNA (genotype) is the program (group of algorithms) and the phenotype is the set of strings produced by the program.
In the latter scenario, a point mutation is enough to produce a novel feature, a gene duplication containing a point mutation is more than enough to result in substantial change.
Of course this all presupposes that 'novel' features are necessary for change beyond species level instead of the simple expansion and modification of existing features.
*** If the entire genome is 'information, then the Amoeba dubia with 670,000,000,000 base pairs must be one well informed complex critter.
However, the Dover decision is one instance in which our courts got it right.
The only problem with your answer is that it avoids the response.
Which came first, ZERO or something?
Apparently connectthedots is having a little problem connecting the dots!
I wonder if connectthedots realizes how amazingly ironice his screen name is, considering his aversion to inference.
Not to mention how it shows complete disregard for Last Thursdayism. This is nothing but more darwinist dogma to further the atheistic macroevolution religion that conspires to destroy God in its quest for world domination via socialist nazism.
Oh yeah...</creationist mode>
There is always a before. Sequence is not bound by time. On the hypothetical spaceship leaving earth at the speed of light, the lives of the people on earth SEQUENTIALLY are completed before the lives of the people on the spaceship are completed.
Which came first ZERO or something?
You missed my point. They can determine if science can be taught, but can they decide what constitutes science?
Although a really bad analogy for my meaning, the board can determine if rock music be taught but can they determine what rock music is? Or is that only within the purview of musicians?
Baloney. For one, chemical reactions are not strictly 'by accident'. For another, all the probability calculations I've seen and that I assume you are referring to, make some rather silly initial condition assumptions.
Have you ever tried to calculate the probability of a God existing?
It is true that many learned people claim that ID is not to the level of a scientific theory yet (and they may be right.) However, I continue to object to a public school system that I am forced to pay for, yet will accept no challenges to the theory of evolution. In my opinion it is not only bad science but bad policy.
Care to list all the morphological similarities and differences between a Great Dane, a Pug and a Cheetah?
Yes. It's the inverse probability of the universe being suitable for life vs. not, multiplied by the possibility of abiogenesis occuring accidentally.
The odds turn out to be rather favorable.
I'm not sure if I'd rank it as the worst, but it's certainly up there.
Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade are pretty awful too, as are the New Deal decisions made after FDR's court-packing threat.
For a new judge to come along and rule that the framers never intended for that little mention of God during a sports EXTRACURRICULAR activity was not even remotely close to breeching the establishment clause would have the atheists, liberals and ACLU in an uproar. They might have to start eating the words the spew on crying "activist judge, cause you know it would be them at that point.
I'm not familiar with this - please point to where the courts ruled that religion can't be taught at all. I've seen information about religion in history classes, philosophy classes, and comparative religion class. I never took a Bible as Literature class, but they certainly exist.
The courts have ruled that religion can't be taught as science, and that religion can't be in public schools in such a way that the school appears to favor a religion. Teaching comparative relgion is fine.
I think you might be wrong on that. Like the poster said, in some districts no mention of God can even be made on the football field. The more I think about it, the more court cases I remember where a validectorian can't even share a brief mention in his/her speech outside of the learning enviroment itself.
I think it is all far beyond the ACLU wanting to win this "for the children" and more about their ulterior motives in wanting to tear down institutions that have helped keep families together and helped the community without government through the years all while fattening their own coffers.
For the record, I have never read the ID book. I wasn't behind the Dover School Board per se. But I don't think the framers ever intended for a school system (which they never invisioned would be forced upon the people)to not some day be able to discuss whatever the hell it damn well pleases given the wishes of the parents in a given locality or to utter one or two simple sentences even without the thought and truth police going apeshit (pardon the pun).
Forget about the ID book and Dover. The new Scopes Monkey trials are going to involve teachers saying a few simple little sentences on their own like: "Keep an open mind, this is one theory, there might be complimenting or other explanations." But that seems terrifying to some. I don't get it. I understand, Dover SB's approach was underhanded. But I still don't get the threat.
I don't think only "social conservatives" as the article states are the only ones railing over "activist" judges. But as a rule they do, because outside of this one issue (which has become so emotionally charged and polarizing on this forum) the judiciary tends to get much more involved in shooting down things like voter initiatives when the legislation in question grates against the liberal movement. They are much more activist in nature given my understanding of newspaper accounts of court rulings over the years.
There is no chemical property that makes it more likely for DNA to just happen to line up in just such a way as to create a living cell, let alone for the DNA to just happen to be surrounded by exactly the right materials to interact with to create a cell from scratch.
For another, all the probability calculations I've seen and that I assume you are referring to, make some rather silly initial condition assumptions.
The "silly initial condition assumptions" are the ones required for the primordial soup creation myth.
I admire your faith. I don't have sufficient faith to believe in accidental abiogenesis. It's much easier to believe in God, especially after you've had some personal encounters with Him.
9th grade biology class--your only goal is to start learning what tens of thousands of scientists have discovered. Better get humpin', as you have hundreds of years of research to catch up with.
Challenges to the theory of evolution belong in graduate school or the peer-reviewed literature, not high schools. Do you really think 9th grade biology students know enough of anything to have a truly educated opinion?
If that's the case, what do you think scientists who have been studying the field intensely for 30 or 40 years are? Chopped liver?
Evolution is about the only field where rank amateurs feel they can tell professionals how to conduct their investigations.
Following your reasoning, you might try your hand at amateur surgery. I understand it can be quite profitable!
Laughably off-point. One need only consider that religion is not science.
And if anyone actually believed any of that happened, you would have a point.
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