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.
You do know that space isn't Euclidean, right? That was "self evident" for over two thousand years and quite wrong.
Come on Fester, you know exactly what's meant by the word.
Three strikes and you're out!
I don't understand why this is considered a conservative issue by some folks.
I won't speak for Fester, but the meaning of nature is not a self-evident fact. Its meaning varies in scope according to preference.
The poster above just equated science with nature.
I don't believe in ID as a science. But I firmly believe that there is no harm in local school boards presenting the view to its students as a theory because like Darwin it is a theory. I see not conflict between evolution and the creation of the World by God. The question at hand is the Biblical Creation Myth and should it be taught. ID does not teach the bible but a creation theory. Their is no need for the supression of ideas.
No, it is a straightforward observation about the nature of ID vs. modern science. ID is not science.
Of course ID is science.
No, you are confusing natural (which is the word Fester used) and nature. They are not the same thing. Minimally, one is an adjective and the other a noun. Natural as applied to science has a specific meaning. Modern science is naturalistic and Fester knows what this means.
If so, then from an assumption of ID you can deduce a testable claim about the world. Feel free to make such a deduction.
You mean knowledgeforfreedom. Once the distinction between subject and object we can proceed.
an assumption of ID you can deduce a testable claim about the world
Deductions and testable claims are only one aspect of things. There are also first principles.
Ah, yes, naturalistic by rule of law.
No, that is not what I mean. You aren't making sense. Celebrating the holidays?
What you mean is sly, IMHO. You and I don't agree. I think you are wrong. The assumption of naturalism can only be understood once the distinction between subject and object is in place. Short of this clarity, the mantras are nothing but propaganda.
It may be only one aspect, but it is a necessary one. We are discussing (I think) whether ID is a scientific theory and one criterion is that the theory make testable predictions. It is up to those claiming ID is scientific to produce such a prediction. I guess you will join the long line of ID-is-scientific posters to fail the challenge.
And no, contrary to your hyperbole, it is not a matter of law but of convention.
As an aside, it's not clear there are any other necessary criteria for a theory to be scientific.
You probably hit it, and I'm just sardonically-challenged. :)
Not so fast. The only party boun by this decision is the Dover School board. No other school board is bound by this decision, even in the same judicial district. In fact, no future Dover School board is bound by this decision.
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