When Real Judicial Conservatives Attack [Dover ID opinion]

If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.

For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.

The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.

During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.

When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.

“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”

Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.

It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”

Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.

In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:

Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.

["Did RussP actually *read* "the Blind Watchmaker"? Contrary to RussP's false claim, Dawkins discusses "the significance of the ratio of beneficial to harmful mutations" on quite a few pages, including pages 124-125, 129-130, 233-24, 306, and 313."]

I don't have anything like enough time to reply to your entire screed,

You'd be more amusing if you had just used Monty Python's line, "RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!"

I nailed you on a number of your fallacies and misrepresentations, and now you dodge those points by saying you don't have "time" for them. I've lost count of the number of time an anti-evolutionist has used that lame excuse.

but let me just set you straight on the your most important blunder.

This should be amusing.

I reread the pages cited above, and in only one sentence does Dawkins even *mention* anything remotely relating to the ratio of harmful to beneficial mutations.

Then read them again until you actually grasp the material.

All the rest of it is discussion of the mutation rate itself (the rate of copying errors).

...along with Dawkins acknowledging that the majority of non-neutral mutations would be deleterious, even lethal, as opposed to beneficial, or pointing out that evolution discards the deleterious mutations while retaining the beneficial. You sort of "forgot" to mention that part, since it reveals that you were being dishonest when you claimed that Dawkins never addressed "the significance of the ratio of beneficial to harmful mutations". He didn't get into the actual numbers, but he *did* cover the "significance" -- and the significane is, "not very" -- of the fact that mutations are harmful more often than they are beneficial. He did address the point you falsely claimed he did not. Shall I quote the passages to you? Or do you want to bluster some more?

And you *still* haven't addressed the question of why you feel this is so freaking "significant". Yeah, harmful mutations outnumber beneficial ones. So bloody what? Why are you obsessed with this elementary fact? Evolutionary processes proceed just fine even with an overabundance of harmful mutations relative to beneficial ones, since natural selection "filters" mutations based on their fitness. Did you imagine you had some sort of point?

Apparently you don't understand the difference between the two ideas, but that's typical of evolutionists.

Yawn. Unable to discuss the merits of the issue, I see.

The one sentence in which Dawkins actually mentions anything about the harmful/beneficial ratio is a real hum-dinger. On page 233 (Norton, 1996 edition), he writes:

"The point is that if we consider mutations of ever-increasing magnitude, there will come a point when, the larger the mutation is, the less likely it is to be beneficial; while if we consider mutations of ever-decreasing magnitude, there will come a point when the chance of a mutation's being beneficial is 50 percent."

So the only actual number given is 50% for small mutations, but that is absolute and complete nonsense. If you think the chance of any random mutation being beneficial is 50%, you are truly clueless. That Dawkins could get away with such a blunder speaks volumes.

HEY, STUPID! YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU!

Try reading that chapter for content next time, instead of something you can yank out of context so you have a cheap excuse to misunderstand it.

Dawkins was talking not about mutations on the whole, but only about mutations which had sufficiently small phenotypic effects. This should have been clear to anyone with a tenth-grade level of reading comprehension, based on his use of the phrase (which you even quoted), "...if we consider mutations of ever-decreasing magnitude..." Clearly, this is a minor subset of all mutations. Clearly, Dawkins was *not* talking about mutations of all types, or about "any random mutation" as you have stupidly tried to rephrase it.

And your clue (CLUE ALERT) that he wasn't talking about "small mutations" in the sense of single nucleotide alterations, but instead of mutations that had a small effect on PHENOTYPE, can be found back on page 230, where he introduces this topic:

Theories of evolution that depend upon macromutation are called 'saltation' theories, from saltus, the Latin for 'jump'. Since the theory of punctuated equilibria frequently is confused with true saltation, it is important here to discuss saltation, and show why it cannot be a significant factor in evolution.
Macromutations - mutations of large effects - undoubtedly occur. What is at issue is not whether they occur but whether they play a role in evolution; whether, in other words, they are incorporated into the gene pool of a species, or whether, on the contrary, they are always eliminated by natural selection.
[...] There are very good reasons for rejecting all such saltationlist theories of evolution. [...] The first of these poitns was put by the great statistician and biologist R. A. Fisher...

Dawkins then goes on to show that mutations of large *effect* (i.e., large phenotypic effect) are far more likely to be harmful than beneficial. He even states:

The more 'macro' it is, the more likely it is to be deleterious, and the less likely it is to be incorporated into the evolution of a species. As a matter of fact, virtually all the mutations studied in genetics laboratories -- which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them -- are deleterious to the animals possessing them (ironically, I've met people who think that this is an argument against Darwinism!).

(Gosh, I thought you said Dawkins didn't *address* such ratios?!? Maybe you were confused. Or lying.) In the passage which you quote (out of context), Dawkins is saying that the subset of all mutations which are of sufficiently small phenotypic effect, on the other hand, are as about as likely to be beneficial as detrimental.

And he's right, actually. On small enough scale, the fitness landscape is smooth, and is either flat (in which case the mutations are neutral, which you have already stated are not the issue here), *or* the fitness landscape is sloped, and one direction goes "uphill" (increased fitness) and the opposite direction goes "downhill" (decreased fitness). That's where Dawkins' 50/50 split comes from. If you're still not clear on the concept, you must have flunked your classes on function optima and limits.

And read those links I provided in my past post, they go into heavy analysis of mutations of small fitness values (both positive and negative).

Reasonable people might quibble about how common mutations of "sufficiently small" phenotypic effect are, but for pete's sake, you first have to actually UNDERSTAND what Dawkins is actually talking about, and you clearly didn't have the first clue.

I've asked this before and I have to keep asking it again and again -- is incompetency at reading comprehension a *requirement* for being an anti-evolutionist? Because it sure seems that way. Most of them have enormous trouble reading for content, as you have demonstrated here.

Again, think about the random bit flips in the Linux kernal.

Again, this is a completely invalid analogy for the actual cases Dawkins is talking about.

Living organisms are far more complicated than the Linux kernel, of course, which means that the chances of a beneficial mutation are even less.

Wrong, because living organisms are based on "code" that is more redundant and flexible than a computer program.

The emperor has no clothes. In this case, I'm not sure he even has skin!

Sorry, in this case you didn't have the first clue what Dawkins was actually talking about, so your brays of victory just make you look like a jackass.

I'm done wasting my time with you, sir.

That's the first smart thing you've done this whole thread. Go pursue some topic where you actually know enough about it to stop wasting your time.

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