Intelligent Design Advocates Face Uphill Fight

Legal Intelligencer ^ | 12/22/2005 | Hank Grezlak

[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.

[Mark Felton]

""[M]oreover ... ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," he said in the 139-page opinion."

This statement is proof that this is anti-Christian persecution.

They state that just because the idea is mentioned in the Bible it automatically becomes a failed idea.

This is prejudice, pure and simple. They insult adults who know the truth of Christ and insult and belittle children of Christians by telling them their Bible is a lie.

I believe lawsuits can be won. They must be filed. My teenafgers can see how the school insults them and belittles their religion. (My children pity them their poverty, but they nonetheless suffer in such a hostile environment).

BTW: The reason there is so much panic among the atheists is because since 1998 they have been dealt setback after setback as previous scientific theories are shot down and the idea that there must be a God becomes scientifically ever more credible.

The theory that a Creator is responsible for the Universe is more credible now than an oscillating universe theory which had been (and still is) taught in most every high school science curriculum for the past 20 years.

The founder of modern science, Sir Isaac Newton also disagrees with all of these 'scientists" who use his ideas to attempt to discount the idea of God.

"There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than any in profane history." -- Sir Isaac Newton

[Texas Eagle]

Like many evolutionary mistakes, intelligent design may be on the road to extinction...

Dream on. God's Truth is marching on. Ain't no judge gonna be able to stop it.

[lonestar67]

brace yourself.

[jwalsh07]

Intelligent Design as "science" is officially dead.

Nietzche?

[claptrap]

Infinite

[gcruse]

they use the good ol' government to make sure such "dangerous" ideas aren't put in anyone's head.

No one is stopping you from putting whatever notions you like into the head of your child.  Using  government to put Christianity's notions into the head of other people's children is what is under discussion.

[Mark Felton]

Those laws of nature are so precise that were any of them to vary in the smallest percent then life could not exist at all.

This is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of God. It is statistically impossible (almost infinite improbability) for those physical constants to come into existence at random with the values necessary for life to exist.

That is why scientists had to create the wild-eyed notion that an infinite number of parallel universes must exist (the "multiverse" theory), for an infinite period of time, and our universe is just one of those random universes that just happened to have the right set of values.

God is much more likely. Particularly since God has already told us He exists and intervenes in our lives everyday.

BTW: I used to be a deist for over 25 years I am an engineer and scientist. At age 44 I discovered that Jesus Christ was the real thing. Without any shadow of a doubt and with more certainty than any scientific proof I know Jesus Christ was the Son of God and came to earth to show us how to connect with God and create a personal relationship with Him. I accepted the Holy Spirit into my soul and it was unlike anything that has ever happened in my life. It is more powerful than any other form of love or passion.

Jesus and God are as real as love, yet science cannot prove love exists either.

[M203M4]

Beheism as practiced by Beheists was never alive as a science.

Beheist. Keeper?

[Getready]

one problem (at least) with the judges opinion...

ID doesn't posit a GOD, it just posits a designer.
The designer may come from another galaxy, or even
time warp or other universe (in the putative multiverse
concept of reality)....
Lots of creationists however may think that ID is
gonna prove creation, but I don't think that is true...
Nothing can prove creation, cuz no human was there to
observe and report...(same true for evolution, no?)

If we engineer a life form, who after finding the life
form after 1,000 years would think it was designed,
(unless they found the blueprints, lab logs,, etc,
and they still couldn't really prove it, after all
the data could have been forged or added later to
carry on the deception (sorta what some people say
about the gospels)
Anyway, time, and some new models regarding the
likelihood of complex biomolecular organism might
help develop in order to predict whether a
bioorganism was designed or changed based on random/
selected traits....Easy way to compare would be
to monitor changes in any living system which occurs
on it's own, and persists, in the genome, giving that
a "likelihood" value and doing the computations...versus
the "likelihood" of design...

[Mark Felton]

Without the Bible in education you are only replacing a proven set of religious values with a wholly failed set of religious values promoted by the secular humanist academicians.

There is no such thing as an absence of values. The only question is whose values shall be taught. Our public schools have succumbed to the values of anti-Christian socialism.

Our society crumbles further and further and our liberties are forever lost as the socialists conitnue to expand and spread their value-system.

When Christianity was the dominant religion in government and schools and society we did not have the crime rate or the tyranny we have today.

[gcruse]

When Christianity was the dominant religion in government and schools and society ... you got the Inquistion. Congratulations.

[Recovering_Democrat]

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto..."

"The Christian conception of God... is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth..."

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900.

I, for one, don't buy Nietzsche's ideas. And I don't believe we are just a random set of molecules that somehow got chained together into complex cells. I don't think our love for children, spouses, friends, neighbors and country are merely the result of chemicals mixing together in the soft tissue of our brains. I believe we exist because we were fearfully and wonderfully made.

We have a creator, a reason for existing, and a purpose for our lives.

[jwalsh07]

That is why scientists had to create the wild-eyed notion that an infinite number of parallel universes must exist (the "multiverse" theory), for an infinite period of time, and our universe is just one of those random universes that just happened to have the right set of values.

Absolutely correct. Did Judge Jones ban the multiverse as well? He certainly would have banned Lemaitre's Big Bang Theory. I can see it now.

Albert Einstein testifies before Judge Jones and says, 'The universe is static, we all know this'.

Lemaitre testifies: 'But your honor, even Professor Einsteins own field equations testify to the fact that the universe is expanding and he threw in a cosmological constant to maintain the universe as static.'

Judge Jones: 'Science doesn't allow for creationists like Lemaitre poisioning the minds of our youth with creationism, Professor Einstein obviously has the better argument here and is eminently qualified. Big Bang Theory is banned. Next case!'

[M203M4]

You think that upsets him? :)

[Mark Felton]

I believe in the power of evolution. I've personally been involved in R&D using evolutionary techniques to create software algorithms.

Evolution however does not explain the creation or beginnings of life.

Evolution works only when a system exists that is capable of evolving. Rocks do not evolve.

Any good designer builds adaptability into his design.

BTW: It is not surprising to me that those societies which most closely follow the Gospels (Old and New Testaments) are the most successful societies in the history of mankind. Protestants Christianity has led to the greatest advancement of science and liberty and political systems in the history of mankind. That is indisputable. Slavery was ended by Protestants for the first time in the history of mankind. Freedom of religion, for the first time, was created by Protestants (mostly led by Baptists). Protestants nations were the first to ever conquer other nations and set them free from dictators to be run by their own people rather than be pillaged by the conquerers.

[fizziwig]

"No one is stopping you from putting whatever notions you like into the head of your child. Using government to put Christianity's notions into the head of other people's children is what is under discussion."

Hardly. Intelligent design also, in part, supports the moslem and jewish worldview. No one has mentioned Christ in this debate.

On the other hand, Darwinists have no problem whatsoever putting the notions of their religion..i.e Naturalism, into the heads of other people's children.

[gcruse]

LOL I hadn't thought of that.

[gcruse]

" No one has mentioned Christ in this debate. "

The judge pretty well disposed of the notion that this is anything other than a particular brand of Christianity.

[claptrap]

Your history is wrong , Catholicism was responsible for the inquisition, Catholics also delighted in burning those who
read the bible at the stake, that is what happened.

[indcons]

Are you suggesting that Catholicism is not within the domains of Christianity?