Posted on 10/06/2005 9:06:46 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
HARRISBURG — Intelligent design did not spring from Genesis, an expert testified Wednesday in the federal lawsuit against the Dover Area School District.
Rather, its inspiration came from the Gospel of St. John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
In the sixth day of the trial in U.S. Middle District Court, plaintiffs' attorneys used the testimony of Barbara Forrest, a Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor, to connect a series of dots regarding the history of the intelligent design movement and creationism.
The author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse," Forrest painted a picture of a covert religious movement — one that presented itself as scientific to the media and mainstream public. But under the surface, she said, leaders plotted not only a revolution in science, but also of modern culture.
In repeated accounts, she outlined how intelligent design's founders wanted nothing more than to have their concept permeate all religious, cultural and political life.
Forrest also pointed to an inherent contradiction in the movement — even as it presented intelligent design as science, its proponents actively courted Christians and promoted creationist beliefs.
"Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," William Dembski, one of the movement's chief proponents, said in a 1999 interview in Touchstone, a Christian magazine that Forrest cited in her testimony.
While its supporters maintain that intelligent design — the idea that the complexity of life requires a guiding hand — is not religious because God is never mentioned, Forrest also referenced numerous examples where the name of the designer is clearly spelled out.
"Christ is never an addendum to a scientific theory, but always a completion," Dembski wrote in his book, "Intelligent Design."
Forrest, under questioning by plaintiffs' attorney Eric Rothschild, spoke of the "wedge strategy," the brainchild of Phillip Johnson, founder of the intelligent design movement and now-retired Berkley University law professor.
Johnson wrote that he believed that evolution contradicts not only the Book of Genesis "but every word in the Bible." In his article, "How the evolution debate can be won," which was presented in court, Johnson proposed an intellectual movement "in the universities and churches."
Johnson's strategy was later outlined in a fundraising document produced by the pro-intelligent-design Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, posted on the Internet in 1999.
The first sentence of the document states: "The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built."
It also lists one of Discovery's long-range goals to use intelligent design "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
To accomplish Discovery's mission, the wedge document lists alliance building with churches and religious groups and speaking at seminars of apologetics, the branch of theology that deals with the defense and proofs of Christian beliefs.
Discovery, in a statement issued Wednesday night, denied any links to creationism.
"The scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text," the statement said.
Also, during cross-examination, Dover's attorney Richard Thompson pointed out that Dover's board members all have signed affidavits saying they had never heard of the wedge strategy before voting to include intelligent design in the district's biology curriculum.
After the board changed the curriculum in October, 11 district parents filed suit against the district, arguing board members were trying to get God into science class.
And while Thompson didn't discount any of the quotes attributed to the movement's leaders, he spoke of philosophical statements espousing secular humanism — the rejection of religious faith — made by evolutionary supporters.
Thompson equated their remarks with Johnson's and Dembski's religious statements regarding intelligent design.
Under repeated questioning, Forrest disagreed. Her cross-examination continues today. Following defense attorneys' protracted attempts to disqualify Forrest's qualifications and over their objections, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled to allow her to testify.
In addition to the wedge strategy, many of her remarks also focused on early drafts of the pro-intelligent-design textbook "Of Pandas and People."
Using exhibits plaintiffs' attorneys had subpoenaed from the book's publisher, Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Forrest showed how references to "creation science" in earlier drafts were changed to "intelligent design" after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the teachings of creation science in 1987.
The first printed version of "Pandas" was published in 1989.
During testimony in federal court Wednesday, Southeastern Louisiana University professor Barbara Forrest cited, among other things, the Discovery Institute's wedge strategy document to show the link between creationism and intelligent design. The institute says the document was used in a fundraising campaign.
Created in 1999, the document outlined the goal of seeing the end of what it calls "scientific materialism," which it described as "(portraying) humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment."
Here are some of its five-year objectives:
1. A major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists by 2003
2. Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications, such as sex, gender issues, medicine, law and religion
3. One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by Discovery Institute's fellows
4. Significant coverage in national media
5. Spiritual and cultural renewal, including:
6. Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula and include design theory For more details
To read the complete wedge strategy document, go to http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/oese/WEDGE_STRATEGY.html To read the Discovery Institute's response to criticism of the wedge strategy, go to http://www.discovery.org/. Click on search and type "wedge" into the "Search by: Title/Sub-Title" line. Then follow the prompts.
"But it really isn't religion" placemarker.
No. Intelligent design also fits all the non-facts, too. ID has no more content than Last Thursdayism (which fits all facts, known, unknown, unknown-unknown, Rumsfeldean, etc.)
Darwinian fundamentalist, "I'm OK, You're OK!", mutual admiration society, circle jerk, "placemarker", (sic).f.Christian, is that you? :P
Too coherent.
What are we going to learn what 'ad hominem' means?
Is that phase-coherent?
Indeed, it is; until one encounters The Turtle of Special Pleading.....
;-)
Yeah, but it makes a difference in evaluating the legal case, which requires (in part) that it be determined whether the endorsement of ID advances religion, or whether there is a religious purpose to the law rather than a valid secular purpose, etc.
Yeah, but it makes a difference in evaluating the legal case, which requires (in part) that it be determined whether the endorsement of ID advances religion, or whether there is a religious purpose to the law rather than a valid secular purpose, etc. (The point being that it doesn't violate the Constitution to teach somethings that's wrong or stupid. So if ID is only wrong or stupid, the courts have nothing to say about it.)
I think they're counting on him being sympathetic to people who deny their Faith.
Plaintiff's witness: "Intelligent Design is based on the Gospel of St. John"
Dover board attorney: "No it's only a scam to raise money"
Just who are the anti-Christians again?
Entangled even.
ID appears enfeoffed to folie à deux.
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Well that's maybe too strong an objection. Most regular scientists play hunches -- grasping a theoretical framework based on incomplete evidence and then trying to fill it out with additional empirical data.
You are right in that, of course. Many scientists have a flash of genius and then spend their time trying to document that insight. But they don't publish until they do document that insight.
The difference here, I think, is that CS/ID is publishing the insight (based on divine revelation and the bible) without the scientific documentation.
Well, I've been pretty lucky. About one in a thousand of my insights have panned out. Of course, I refuted 998/1000 before finishing the shower.
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