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.
Darn. I was aiming for sardonic.
How does one create a hypothesis while insisting upon a category of phenomena, namely "natural," that has no limits in either direction? Any observer at any time can ascribe the word "natural" to any phenomenon he observes, even if at bottom it is "supernatural." Furthermore, the capacity to hypothesize does not extend to the fundamental assumptions with which one undertakes science.
Hypotheses are but one tool of many in the arsenal of scientific inquiry. They neither define science, nor are they coterminous with science. By requiring the word "natural" as part of the definition of science, you yourself have introduced a concept that cannot be scientifically tested.
A supernatural ultimate creator of forces is not within the purview of science.
If by "purview" you mean such an entity cannot be physically grasped and made available for direct comment and direct observation, you may be right. But it is well within the purview of science to make inferences based upon organized matter that behaves according to predictable laws. It is not within the purview of science to declare from the outset than an intelligent designer will never be available in a more direct sense.
Inasmuch as theories are a general way of explaining a set of phenomenon, and inasmuch as science is speculative by nature, it is certainly well within reason and established scientific pursuit to approach the presence of organized matter that behaves under predictable laws as if it were intelligently designed by God.
There is no small hypocrisy in saying "the universe only gives the appearance of design yet it must have evolved by natural causes" when the simpler explanation is that it is designed in the first place. How is it that "appearances" are somehow lathered up and called "science" when the nature of the universe is constrained to particle matter that does not change on a whim, and therefore better understood as intelligently designed? One could just as easily say, "the universe only gives the appearance of evolving." Is such a statement less scientific than saying "the universe only gives the appearance of design?"
I would happily allow atheists to speak however they wish in explaining and describing the Christian faith. But I would not expect their words to go unchallenged, or be prohibited by law from speaking or presenting an alternate point of view. What I don't like is atheists being granted by law a sole hearing as to what constitutes science, as if it is scientific to eliminate the possibility that God at some point may become more directly observable, or that the presence of organized matter behaving according to predictable laws can be explained better by "self-organization," or "undirected forces of nature."
I do not think of atheists as bogey men. I am not afraid of them. A good many of them happen to make for fine citizens and dedicated patriots. They have a stake in public education, too. They have valid points and have made huge contributions to the body of knowledge we all share.
But in this matter of creation vs. evolution, to the extent it becomes a philosophical issue, it is the better course to let both sides have a hearing and let each man decide for himself. Otherwise, it is an unconstitutional burden for the law to require only one side of the debate to be presented. Otherwise we had best dismantle the walls of public education.
Flapdoodle. Time did not exist before the Big Bang. Thusly there is not even a "before" at all.
Why is such an assertion "damning?" It seems to me you are taking one small aspect of science, namely falsifiability, and stretching it is if it applies to the general principles under which any sentient being would undertake to understand the universe. An assertion just as "damning" is saying "that's how evolution did it." Truth is, neither assertion is particularly "damning." They just happen to be different ways of looking at the universe, and they both work quite well. They can even be combined.
Sounds creative.
I keep hoping they will read his posts. Ahhh - the ability to dream. :-)
Your loss.
*****I doubt if I ever even read your posts.****
The Festival of Unknowledge continues unabated...
Hmmm... so is it a theory or a law?
Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome advices from the District’s science teachers who uniformly opposed the change. (29:109 (Buckingham)). In disregarding the teachers’ views, the Board ignored undeviating opposition to the curriculum change by the one resource with scientific expertise immediately at its disposal. P. 122
Yup, they tried to thrust the idea of ID and it's companion "text book" into the classroom to "improve" the science education, but they never consulted any scientists as to whether ID made any scientific sense. What a bunch of disingenuous dingbats....
"Natural" is part of the definition of science
Nonsense. You confuse the subject and object. You study something. You are the scientist with a science. The something is nature which you study. Get it straight.
There is no equation between nature and science.
Why are no confusing grammar with a question about philosophy of nature?
now
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.