Posted on 12/22/2005 6:09:22 PM PST by KingofZion
Like many evolutionary mistakes, intelligent design may be on the road to extinction, put there Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III.
When Jones ruled that the Dover Area School District's intelligent design policy violates the First Amendment and barred the district from mentioning intelligent design in biology classes or "from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution," he wasn't just applying a pinprick to the trial balloon intelligent design supporters had chosen to float in this case.
He aimed a cannon at it. And fired. Several times. Odds are, other courts will find it hard to argue that he missed his target.
In one of the most closely watched cases in recent memory -- not just in Pennsylvania but across the nation -- Jones took the opportunity in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District to frame the case in the much larger context many, including supporters of intelligent design, had seen it in.
The impact of his ruling can't be overstated. Not only did Jones find the policy unconstitutional but he also ruled that intelligent design is not science.
"[M]oreover ... ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," he said in the 139-page opinion.
Jones didn't pull any punches in making his ruling, criticizing the school board for its policy, as well as those who saw the case as an opportunity to make law that would pave the way for greater acceptance of intelligent design.
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge," he said. "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 ID, 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."
Not surprisingly, several groups that endorse the teaching of intelligent design, or "ID" as Jones referred to it throughout his opinion, lashed out and accused him, as he anticipated, of being an "activist federal judge."
Who knew that Republican judges appointed by Republican presidents could be such hacks for the left?
Well, if activism is changing the norm and imposing one's will from behind the safe confines of the bench onto the helpless masses, then Jones' decision in Kitzmiller hardly fits the bill, since the opinion follows closely the reasoning of other federal courts on the issue, including the U.S. Supreme Court. If anything, Jones was critical of the changes the Dover Area School Board made for an entire community and potentially a whole generation of school children.
But organizations like the Discovery Institute, the Thomas More Law Center and the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom should be angry with Jones. Because what he did in his opinion, systematically and ruthlessly, was expose intelligent design as creationism, minus the biblical fig leaf, and advanced by those with a clear, unscientific agenda: to get God (more specifically, a Christian one) back into the sciences.
Jones goes into an exhaustive examination on the intelligent design movement, and what he found will make it difficult for future pro-ID litigants to argue that the whole thing isn't religion masked in neo-scientific terms.
According to Jones, the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture developed a "Wedge Document" in which it said the goal of the intelligent design movement is to "replace science as currently practiced with 'theistic and Christian science.'"
He said that one of the professors, an ID proponent, who testified for the school board "remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God."
Jones also points out that the ID textbook the Dover policy encouraged students to check out, "Of Pandas and People," is not only published by an organization identified in IRS filings as a "religious, Christian organization," but that the book was meticulously changed following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 1987 that the U.S. Constitution forbids the teaching of creationism as science.
By comparing the early drafts to the later ones, he said, it was clear that the definition for creation science was identical to the definition of intelligent design and that the word creation and its variants were replaced with the phrase ID and that it all happened shortly after the Supreme Court decision.
As Jones points out throughout his opinion, ID's supporters couldn't shake two problematic facts -- its close association with creationism and its inability to divorce itself from the supernatural.
"ID is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in the world," he said. "While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory."
All of which lead Jones to conclude that "ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."
There's plenty of other things worth noting in Jones' opinion, including how school board members talked at meetings about creationism and complained of "liberals in black robes" taking away "the rights of Christians," or how the Discovery Institute was in contact with board members prior to the policy change, and a number of other machinations that might leave one feeling less than secure about the separation of church and state in Pennsylvania, but those are facts specific to this case.
The real impact of the opinion is what Jones lays out with regard to intelligent design's roots, its proponents, its agenda and the tactics (and there's really no other way to describe them) being used to advance it. It reads like a cautionary tale, one that we should all be reading.
And while it's unlikely that the country has seen the last of this issue, one can hope that Jones' decision might save future judges a little bit of time, if not discourage groups with a religious ax to grind from using residents of small communities as pawns in the name of a dishonest, fruitless agenda.
Since there is no such thing as theistic science, I assume you mean theism, in which case we both agree with the judge's ruling. We saw from the deletions and insertions in their book that ID is creationism in drag. Replacing science with theism belongs in Sunday School, not public school.
There is such thing as theistic science. It begins with the assumption that God made everything, and therefore it is intelligently designed. It does not bring God into every explanation, and it doesn't have to anymore than atheistic science has to bring the absence of God into every explanation.
What part of this do you believe is false --
Judge Jones found that board members later lied under oath about making these and other similar statements because they realized that their words revealed the religious, not scientific, motivations behind their actions.
It is the natural course for human beings to embrace and practice decadence. Whatever good comes forth is either due to a residual knowledge of moral law, or better yet, a foundation in what is revealed through the biblical texts. That holds for every opportunity in education, which, in its widest sense, is simply experience in the world.
If we are going to uphold what is right according to our founding fathers, then we must either allow for atheistic science in public schools along with theistic science, or simply refrain from the establishment of public schools. Unfortuately our tax dollars are currently dedicated to the establishment of exclusively atheistic science in those cases where its assumptions and conclusions are, by law, left unchallenged.
What part of post 140 did you not understand? If it is the intent of certain people, either directly or by stealth, to "replace" atheistic science in public schools, then I disagree with them. If it is their intent to establish theistic science as a viable means of explaining the universe, then I not only support them, but also recognize it is within their rights under the Constitution to do so.
It should hardly be necessary to couch these intentions in subterfuge or false testimony. The fact of general agreement with religion and the idea of intelligent design has no bearing on the reasonable notion that matter does not typically organize itself, or that the presence of organized matter that behaves according to predictable laws can reasonably be explained in general terms as "God's work."
I did not ask about the goal and motives of other people. I asked what is particularly "Christian" about the ideas of organized matter or intelligent design.
The goal of the people who designed ID was to make it consonant with Christian views. That isn't how science works. Theistic science is an oxymoron damaging to both theism and science. It is no more possible than light darkness.
Quite correct. The ID proponents are beginning to remind me of the Mullahs in Iran - reverse course, throw out all progress that has been made since the 7th Century.
Nobody is preventing Christians from teaching their children about ID (though it certainly won't do them any good when they take their SATs). But the Constitution does not permit public schools to teach religion in science class.
If ID is really a viable scientific theory, why isn't it taught in Catholic schools? Because even the Pope knows that belief in a supreme being and Darwin are not incompatible - they just don't belong in science class.
"If ID is really a viable scientific theory, why isn't it taught in Catholic schools?"
Now, that's a very good question. Mayhap one of the IDiots will answer it.
Remember, it must be persecution....not the inability of Christians to use the force of government to spread the Word. Go ahead, Baptist. Tell me all about the Christians who are flogged and imprisoned in America for practicing their faith. I'm sure you have hundreds of stories, don't you?
The details as to how fundamental assumptions work themselves out can be applied to any branch of science. To suggest this must entail the introduction of every tom-dick-and harry sideshow into a science cirriculum is to introduce a red herring. Bag it. I've already said that neither approach - theistic or atheistic - needs to be intrusive.
It is no more intrusive than atheistic science. It is also no less reasonable. 99% of scientific endeavor takes place without reference to either assumption or philosophy. Theistic science simply takes for granted that the universe is intellgently designed, and therefore sensible, comprehensible, and purposeful. It is a general approach that yields good fruit. It does not have to re-assert theistic assumptions at every turn. If it did, then it would be intrusive. Do you understand what I mean by intrusive? It means, to use a figure of speech, beating a dead horse.
And what you call a sideshow might be central to another group.
General science classes have taken place for thousands of years under the assumption of intelligent design and a universe created by God without being hijacked by religious dietary issues. Bag the red herring, please.
ID isn't a constitutional right.
Some of you really need to dust off the Constitution and give it a read. Stop depending on the likes of David Barton to tell you what it says.
A general definition for "persecute" is "to oppress or harass with ill-treatment, especially because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or beliefs."
Oppression and harassment take different forms. Sometimes it is physical, but not always. I would consider it to be mildly oppresive if, in order to receive a passing grade in science class, I had to regurgitate atheistic talking points. I also consider it to be mildly oppresive to have my taxes used for the establishment and maintenance of atheistic science in public schools with no legal means to present the reasonably scientific assumption that the universe is a product of intelligent design. Lastly, I would consider it to be oppressive if atheists were given failing grades in science class because they happen to hold no belief in God.
Bottom line is, there is plenty of good science to do without making an issue of the observer's philosophical underpinnings.
Ah, good. A conversation. I think, and I'll clarify my thoughts, that you and the the judge are still misunderstanding whether or not Behe "blew it".
ID proponents do not argue to exclude the supernatural. ID proponents would argue that if a Designer (of a system, in this case the "natural" world) exists, that designer must be transcendant from the system (or in this case, super-natural).
Behe's point, was that if you are to examine if a Designer exists you have to have a thought system that allows for the supernatural to exist.
ID proponents argue that it is in fact scientists who assert that the supernatural cannot be examined in science based on their definition of science as only including within it's realm of study (possiblity?) the "natural". Judge Jones discusses and accepts that argument in his decision. He rules that if you are talking about "supernatural" then you are talking about religion. If you are talking "science", then you can only talk about "natural".
That's the only point I was making, and I think it's a critical point. In other words, Behe didn't blow it and expose himself. He merely stated the ID position that for us to examine the evidence for a Designer, you have to allow for the possibility of transcendancy, or the supernatural - which the Judge's accepted definition of science doesn't allow for.
Read the parts of the Judge's decision where he discusses this definition of science and tell me what you think.
Takes for granted.
Okay, thanks for settling thousands of years of scientific inquiry for us. It's not science unless it makes sense...meaning, fits into your theory...is comprehensible for people with no background in science and serves the purpose of advancing our knowledge of God.
This is what many of us mean when we refer to the complete inability of the ID crowd to exercise honesty when it comes to this subject.
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