Posted on 01/10/2006 4:51:17 AM PST by tpeters
Welcome to Science Court
The ruling in the Dover evolution trial shows what the legal and scientific processes have in common--intellectual rigor
Chris Mooney; January 9, 2006
Legally speaking, Judge John E. Jones III's ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District--Pennsylvania's much-discussed lawsuit over the teaching of "intelligent design"--can only be called conservative. The decision draws upon and reinforces a series of prior court precedents, all of which barred creationist encroachment upon the teaching of science in public schools.
In another sense, though, Jones' ruling is revolutionary. We live in a time when the findings of science themselves increasingly seem to be politically determined--when Democrat "science" is pitted against Republican "science" on issues ranging from evolution to global warming. By contrast, Jones' opinion strikes a blow for the proposition that when it comes to matters of science, there aren't necessarily two sides to every story.
Over the course of a lengthy trial, Jones looked closely at the scientific merits of "intelligent design"--the contention that Darwinian evolution cannot explain the biological complexity of living organisms, and that instead some form of intelligence must have created them. And in the end, the judge found ID utterly vacuous. "[ID] cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory," Jones wrote, "as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community."
ID critics have been making these same observations for years; so have leading American scientific societies. Meanwhile, investigative reporters and scholars studying the ID movement have demonstrated that it is, indeed, simply creationism reincarnated--all religion and no science. On the intellectual merits, ID was dead a long time ago. But before Judge Jones came along, it's astonishing how hard it was to get that acknowledged, unequivocally, in public discussion of the issue.
Up until the Dover trial, well-funded ID proponents based at Seattle's Discovery Institute had waged a successful media campaign to sow public doubts about evolution, and to convince Americans that a true scientific "controversy" existed over Darwin's theory. And thanks in part to the conventions of television news, editorial pages, and political reporting--all of which require that "equal time" be allotted to different views in an ongoing political controversy--they were succeeding.
For example, a national survey conducted this spring by Ohio State University professor Matthew Nisbet in collaboration with the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University found serious public confusion about the scientific basis for “intelligent design.” A slight majority of adult Americans (56.3 percent) agreed that evolution is supported by an overwhelming body of scientific evidence, but a very sizeable proportion (44.2 percent) incorrectly thought the same of ID.
Ritualistically "balanced" news media coverage may not be the sole cause of such confusion, but it’s can hardly have helped. Consider just one of many examples of how journalists, in their quest for "objectivity," have lent undue credibility to ID. The York Dispatch, one of two papers covering the evolution battle in Dover, Pennyslvania, repeatedly summarized the two sides of the "debate" thusly: “Intelligent design theory attributes the origin of life to an intelligent being. It counters the theory of evolution, which says that people evolved from less complex beings.” Here we witness the reductio ad absurdum of journalistic "balance." Despite staggering scientific consensus in favor of evolution--and ample documentation of the religious inspiration behind the "intelligent design" movement--evolution and ID were paired together by the Dispatch as two competing "theories."
Judge Jones took a thoroughly different approach, actually bothering to weigh the merits of competing arguments. He inquired whether an explanation that inherently appeals to the supernatural--as "intelligent design" does--can be scientific, and found that it cannot. He searched for published evidence in scientific journals supporting the contentions of the ID movement--and couldn't find it. And in his final opinion, he was anything but "balanced."
We have seen this pattern before. During the early 1980s, the evolution trial McLean v. Arkansas pitted defenders of evolutionary science against so-called “scientific creationists”--the precursors of today's ID proponents. Today, few take the claims of "scientific creationism,” such as the notion that the earth is only a few thousand years old, very seriously. At the time, however, proponents of “creation science” were treated very seriously by members of the national media covering the trial. According to a later analysis of the coverage by media scholars, reporters generally tried to create a “balance” between the scientific-sounding claims of the “scientific” creationists and the arguments of evolutionary scientists.
But in the McLean decision, judge William Overton did no such thing. Rather, the judge carefully investigated whether "creation science" fit the norms of science at all--and found that it did not. Overton therefore concluded that the attempt by the state of Arkansas to include "creation science" in science classes was a transparent attempt to advance a sectarian religious perspective, as barred by the First Amendment. Now, Judge Jones is following in Overton's footsteps very closely. In his decision, Jones cites the McLean case repeatedly.
If there's an underlying moral to be derived from Judge Jones' decision, then, it may be this. It's very easy to attack well-established science through a propaganda campaign aimed at the media and the public. That's precisely what "intelligent design" proponents have done--and they're hardly alone in this. However, it's much more difficult for a PR attack on established science to survive the scrutiny of a serious, independent judge.
That hardly means that courts are more qualified than scientists to determine the validity of evolutionary theory, or other scientific findings. But in their investigative rigor, their commitment to evidence, and their unhesitating willingness to decide arguments on their merits, courts certainly have much more in common with the scientific process than many of today's major media journalists do. The fact that today Judge Jones has become America's leading arbiter of what counts as science certainly underscores his own intellectual seriousness. But it also exposes the failure of other gatekeepers.
Shhh. Nobody tell him or her, and I might be able to keep it going.....
The teaching of the ToE is illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Not to be overly optimistic, but one could read ID as a soft landing way to move YECs toward reality. I notice some of the ID biggies are now on record accepting common descent and a reasonable age for the earth. Some (Denton) have moved completely to naturalism plus fine tuning.
Getting a kick out of you discussing the height of your children...my brother was 6'8", all my uncles and male cousins were well over 6 ft...my dad was the shortie, at 5'10"...at family gatherings he said he felt like a midget...my mom was 5'9" or so, still tall for a female of her age...I am the shortie female, at 5'7"...
My older boy, was almost 6 ft tall at his death, when he just turned 15...my younger boy is 6'5"...
When my younger son took a year long trip around the world, he was backpacking and hiking and hitchiking, and that left very little room for him to carry along a lot of excess clothing...when he did need to replace some clothing that either became damaged, or was stolen, he had a terrible time trying to buy new clothing in countries, whose men averaged well below even the USA standard of average height...
In a lot of the countries where he stayed for any length of time, the locals always gave him a name in their language, which roughly translated always meant the same thing, something like 'Huge American Giant'...the food vendors at various food stalls always greeted him with a big grin, as seeing how big he was, they knew he would order lots and lots of food, putting lots and lots of money into their pockets..
However, being extremely tall, while most of the time was a pain in the butt on that trip, it did serve him well, when he accidentally wound up in a little cafe in Turkey, most likely run by the Turkish 'mob'....found himself in a situation where a couple of goons tried to rush him to force him to pay an outlandish bill, but being as he was so big, and they so small, that they hesitated before rushing him, and he was luckily able to knock them down in one rush, and beat feet up the stairs, and into the safety of the streets...
Sometimes being extra big and tall is a pain, sometimes its an advantage...
You won't get any argument from me.
"I grilled steaks for the wife every week while she was pregnant. In the winter here north of Chicago, it's hard to get the grill going even when I used gasoline.
Up here in frigid Canuckville we grill in -15C weather using propane grills. I have tried it in colder weather but the cooking seems to take longer and it is more difficult to sear the meat.
Sorry to hear about your son.
Being tall is good when you need reach things off shelves, paint the house or scare aware uncertain hoodlums, but bad for nearly everything else.
Thanks for your sympathies concerning my son...
One other thing I have noticed...my son always has little bitty short gals, for girlfriends...(except his current galpal, who is taller)...I always thought when giving the good night kiss, he had to put his little girlfriends up on a box or a step...I actually bought him a little folding stool(9 inches high, which is really for me trying to get into his Jeep)...but I remarked that this little stool would also serve him well, to make that goodnight kiss to little short gals a little easier...
Now thats a great story...
I would lay money on the types of service with the highest casualty rates (eg junior infantry officer, combat pilot, special forces) being even more heavily overrepresented by atheists. I derive this belief from the educational and intelligence requirements for such posts, and the correlation between educational attainment and atheism.
I further add that I bet the majority of Freepers who post this "no atheists in foxholes", and "atheists won't fight for their country" bullshit have never themselves been within 1000 miles of any combat.
You think all Americans are stupid? We know what's going on up there. You cook over a caribou-chip fire, frying baby seal steaks in walrus blubber.
I'm not taking that bet....
In my experience, it's a mistake to ask Canadians this question. They're torn between a desire to tell you the truth and a desire to be polite. :-)
It doesn't matter what you know. What matters is the 'education' we give Americans. All we need to do is convince the masses we are a technically advanced society and they'll buy anything we have to sell. Put some horns on the baby seals and Americans will believe they're grade A Canadian beef. Add sulfur to our livestock produced methane and Americans will buy it as natural gas. A bit of coal and walrus blubber becomes high grade high priced oil. We cover all the angles and we're after your money.
Sometimes we just have to get things off our collective chest and do both.
Anyone who thinks Canadians are polite has not been to a hockey game.
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