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.
Compare the following (I should have to do this for educated men?)
you said ""Government and religion are never to be mixed according to the constitution.""The Constitution says: Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Constitution does not say that government shall prevent Christians from exercising their faith if they do ever enter government premises or become government employees or employees of government contractors (which accounts for about 60%+ of all people in one way or another).
It does not say government employees cannot display nativity scenes, or Bibles or the 10 Commandments on government premises. The government shows respect for the religions of its employees, or citizens, by allowing religious displays on government property, it does not "establish" a religion.
Are we establishing the religion of Jeffersonianism, or Lincolnism, or Washingtoniasm, just because we include their pictures on our currency? Are we telling people we MUST all adopt the values and beliefs of those men simpkly because we print stamps with their pictures or raise monuments to their lives?
By deliberating shunning Christianity in government we are showing disrepect and telling our children and non-Christians that Christianity is shameful and profane and does not deserve acknowledgment or respect by the government in anay manner whatsoever.
Science that begins with the assumption the universe is intelligently designed by God.
I don't know any creationists on FR who would ever post anything so smug and arrogant as this.
You must have made it up.
If the government deliberately shuns Islam or Budhism or Rastafarianism or any other non-Christian religion, is the goverment showing disrepect and telling our children and Christians that these are shameful and profane and do not deserve acknowledgement or respect by the government in any manner whatsoever? If so, is that not establishing a government Christian religion? What flavor of Christianity would be the official government version and who decides? Congress?
You're the only person on FR I've ever heard claim that anyone who doesn't respond to you must be "running away" from you.
Did it ever occur to you that some of us have lives outside of FR?
I don't know what "challenges" you claim I'm "running away" from. I doubt if I ever even read your posts.
I don't sit around FR waiting for you to hand out homework assignments on evolution. Sorry dude.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Something Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans all agree with. And acted on.
That's actually part of the reason ID isn't considered science: there's no possible way to test it. Unless there are some restraints placed on the powers of the hypothetical designer, absolutely any observation is consistent with "Oh, that's just the way the designer did it."
This means that there is no way to either confirm or to falsfy ID.
Evolution theory, on the other hand, places severe limits on what should be and should not be found. EG, the distribution of genetic markers of various types should track the phylogenetic tree: If it's found in both cow and whale genomes, it will also be found in hippos. And so on and so on...
As an ex-evolutionist I can tell you that I am absolutely confident that you will eat your words one day when you stand before the Creator.
I've been where you are and know the game inside and out. I used to spout the same kind of crap you spout here to those who challenged me.
And I know better than to waste my time trying to convince those who are willfully and deliberately blind to the truth.
You really have no clue about the perspective I have of these Creation/ID/Evolution debates as an ex-evolutionist. But you will one day soon.
It's unecessary. The existance of an overseeing intelligence in the production of any intelligent design is self evident.
It's there for all to see and people are without excuse for not seeing it.
On the other hand it requires an exercise in willful self deception and blindness to deny ID. Something people can become very skilled at.... if they practice it enough, as evidenced on these boards.
It was self evident that space is Euclidean. It was also wrong.
You said: It's unecessary
Which means it hs no place in science classes.
As if no scientific fact is self-evident?
Give me a break.
Right. And with all due respect if I hear one more psuedo-intellectual egghead pro-evolution argument like this I will throw up.
Christians follow Christ, from the New Testament, not the Old. The rules of Christ supercede the Old Testament.
We do not put adulterers or homosexuals to death either. Nor do we own slaves. Christ teaches us not to do this. He teaches us to allow all brothers to freely practice their faiths as well, provided they do not harm us or our brothers.
This is part of why we needed Christ in the first place. If things were fine in the Old Testament then God would not have needed to send His only begotten son Jesus to redeem us.
Christ has two primary commandments that supercede everything. Please learn this so you will not make the same mistake again.
"Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving[b] that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” 29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[c] This is the first commandment.[d] 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[e] There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. 33 And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul,[f] and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” -- Mark 12:28-33
Burning witches is not allowed by the last of the above 2 commandments.
So the majority of Darwinists are Christians. Well, I don't know how anyone would be able to state whether or not this is a fact, but even if it is, based on degree of anti-Christian sentiment, it looks as if some Darwinists are pretty far up the list. See here: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/klinghoffer200512210814.asp
There's no possible way to test the Big Bang theory or Global Warming theories either. But they have been smeared over our science textbooks for years.
Global Warming theorists are like roosters taking credit for the sun rising (they crow every morning, and sure enough the sun rises, it must be them)
Nor does anyone have a monopoly on Christianity or it's definition. How would you like the athiests whom you seem to think are hiding in your closet and under you bed like the boogeyman to be the appointed group that tells the world what Christianity means, represents and holds for the future. Episcopalians in this nation have gotten a small taste of that...how'd ya like it on a grand scale?
Your comparison of Big Bang cosmology and ID is faulty. BBC won out over the Steady State theory because the SST couldn't explain the microwave background radiation. IE the theory fits the data better than other theories and it accounts for the observations.
There are potential observations that would show BB to be false - eg, finding **very** distant galaxies (say 100 billion light years distant), or finding that the spectra of distant galaxies is just like that of modern ones, with the same proportion of heavy elements (because the theory is that these are from supernovas, and there wouldn't have been time for many of those in very early galaxies) IE, the theory is falsifiable.
The problem with ID that I was addressing is its vacuity. It does not, in any except the trivial "that's how the designer did it" way, explain the distribution of genetic markers across different species, like the example I frequently use of cows, hippos, and whales. In fact it explains nothing.
And even more damningly, it cannot be falsified; there is no possible observation that is inconsistent with "that's how the designer did it", unless you can somehow put limitations on the designer's abilities or desires or whatever. This hasn't been done; if the designer is God, it can't be done.
Global warming is **much** more speculative than either BB or ToE. There is some evidence that warming is occuring, but whether, or to what degree, it is manmade is very unclear. However, there really are "greenhouse gases", so it's not complete cr@p, but it obviously is very politicized by the usual suspects.
RA, I pinged you on this because I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of BB's status as a theory
Merry Christmas to all!
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