The link to the pdf file from which this thread's lead article was taken is found at the end of "week 6" at this location:
Legal documents, trial materials, updates.
The pdf file is 95 pages long, and the defense closing argument starts on page 60.
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What new and fledgling science movement is he talking about? I thought the dispute was over Intelligent Design?
Steve Fuller's colleagues on the editorial board of SciPolicy Journal just submitted an amicus curiae disagreeing with him. An editorial in that journal also took a diametrically opposed viewpoint from Fuller. It appears we have yet one more ID 'expert' who's way out in left field.
Here's the editorial
The Dover Area School District mandates that a statement be read to students in biology classes announcing that “Intelligent Design” is an alternative theory to Evolution. According to School District Administration, the content and procedure of the announcement were “...developed to provide its ninth grade Biology students with a balanced view and not to teach or present religious beliefs...” and “...teaching intelligent design is not part of the ninth-grade biology curriculum and students will not be tested on this subject" (Defendants' Statement of Material Facts, Nos. 23, 25). However, the School District Administration fails to explain how stamping official imprimatur on an essentially faith based concept promotes a "balanced view" of science in a public school setting and further, identify what educational value there is in a bland reference to intelligent design? Moreover, the Administration defends the mandate as devoid of teaching content, and it suggests that teaching is different from making announcements about the existence of possible alternative explanations to evolution. However, the proffered rationale is not supported by generally accepted principles in educational psychology and psycho-educational processes, which treat the teacher as a very powerful influence on students. Additionally, the mandate has an institutional influence, conveying legitimacy to the notion of intelligent design when in fact such notion is not sanctioned by the scientific community - including The National Academies (of Science), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the panoply of physical science professional groups and associations.
Quality education, especially in the teaching of science at the high school level, depends upon the exposure of students to the important intellectual history and philosophical inquiries that shed light on the authority of science. Science teaching, to be valid, should foster an understanding of the discovery process and the way that scientific theories come into being and change over time as discoveries are made and new knowledge is developed. The importance of teaching critical and rational thinking -- processes that require the comparative reading and analysis of literature in an unbiased environment -- is denied when the alternative of "intelligent design" is simply announced as "an alternative theory."
There is a logical fallacy in mandating the inclusion of intelligent design since it provides neither scientific explanation nor empirical evidence of the actual existence of a designer, but through fiat simply asserts that a designer must exist to explain the gap in knowledge. Stripped of its intellectual facade the announcement is nothing but a transparent effort to engraft religious dogma onto the classroom examination of scientific theory.
There is no challenge here to the legitimacy of the concern among some groups about the erosion of family value and the proliferation of crime and drug abuse among the young. These same groups are free to espouse the view that the root cause of these conditions is the deterioration of the role of religion and faith in daily life. However, the School District’s blatant attempt to introduce spiritual considerations into science as a means of promoting religion is intellectually biased and totally unacceptable.
There can be no challenge to the right of parents to expose their children to secular views. And, especially in the arena of public education, we are long past the time when there can be a legitimate challenge to the co-extensive right of parents to insulate their children from secular views. Instantly, the School District Administration devised a mechanism to impose religious views on an entire public school community. We have no quarrel with the right to harbor faith and to espouse it. We do, however, maintain that the School District Administration has no right to proselytize others in a public school setting or to introduce explicitly religious notions (such as intelligent design) into public school curricula. And we have requested the Court to declare the policy of the Dover Area School District to be violative of constitutional principles.
How am I supposed to eat dinner after reading this?
but you do not comprehend.
Hmmm. Does, this mean speciation goes through the finches, or that Miller teaches through finches?
YEC INTREP - read later
This man, and the ID/Creationists have obviously not read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Considering that the locals elected new board members who are against ID, do you think this might be a bad argument to use?
"...the law prescribes improper purpose..."
I assume they meant "proscribes".....
As Fuller has explained, it is merely a philosophical commitment to so-called methodological naturalism, adopted as a convention by the bulk of the scientific community, which bars reference to the possibility of supernatural causation, again, at least so far as such causation is currently regarded as supernatural. Even Pennock agrees that philosophers of science, those who have examined these matters in detail, do not agree as to the viability or benefits of this so-called methodological commitment.Can any of you creationists show me ONE breakthrough theory in science that has EVER been successful, that relied on the existence of the supernatural???Moreover, the evidence shows that this philosophical, nonscientific commitment is in no way an essential feature of scientific inquiry. One should be reluctant, truly loathed to impose as a matter of federal law a current convention of the scientific community when the consequences would be to greatly harm scientific progress, at least if the history of science can shed any light on its future. But that would be the practical effect of accepting the artificially narrow view of science espoused by the plaintiffs' experts.
It's interesting to see that Gillen thinks Fuller, with his postmodernist defense of ID, was their only expert witness worth mentioning.
WTF? Admitting supernatural causation into science is like admitting forged documents into the historical record.
By arguing that ID requires no physical evidence to support it. Scripture is sufficient.
Behe said so under oath.
The testimony and evidence offered by Behe and Dr. Scott Minnich proved that IDT is science.
Bwhahaha. Even Behe admitted on the stand under oath that science had to be redefined for ID to be considered science. The defense attorney must think the judge is dense.
eh? what? which?
has this lawyer been reading the same trial transcripts as I have?