After the Dover trial of Intelligent Design,1 there was a fair bit of talk about Judge John Jones, who made the decision that “Intelligent Design” is not science and should not be taught in school science classes. It was clear from the decision itself that Judge Jones is a formidable man who reached his conclusion in an honest, rational way, but most of the talk about him (that I saw, anyway) didn’t really go much past that.2
The latest issue of PLoS Genetics has an interview with Judge Jones that is by far the most interesting and detailed I’ve seen. Judge Jones explains the background of the case, the history of the legal battles between evolution and creationism, how the trial itself was supposed to work and how it did work, how he reached his decision, all kinds of stuff. Jones does a great job of putting things in an understandable way, and the interviewer3 asks good questions. Go read it now.
… some of the school board witnesses were dreadful witnesses and hence the description “breathtaking inanity” and “mendacity.” In my view, they clearly lied under oath. They made a very poor account of themselves. They could not explain why they did what they did. They really didn’t even know what intelligent design was. It was quite clear to me that they viewed intelligent design as a method to get creationism into the public school classroom. They were unfortunate and troublesome witnesses. Simply remarkable, in that sense.
–Judge John E Jones III
- Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, 2004[↩]
- I see that there are several books about the case, and I haven’t read any of them, but I imagine they talk about this too.[↩]
- Jane Gitschier, Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, Institute for Human Genetics, University of California San Francisco[↩]
Judge Jones rose to eminence for his decision because it went along with the liberal power base, whose quest to stifle any opposition to their ideological materialist position is their primary motivation. A strong statement, but I believe it to be factual.
First, his supporters never fail to ‘legitimatize’ Jones’ as an unbiased conservative, by never failing to mention his appointment by GW Bush. If anything like Bush, I would paint him as an egotistical, lying putz, who’s out to further his own agenda. And that he did, by siding with the wide reaching and well organized materialist power brigade of the ACLU, NCSE, AU, and virtually all federally funded universities, along with their funding organizations (NSF, AAAS, NAAS, NIH, and more). Every one of those high profile organizations not only fully endorses evolutionary theory, but also militantly opposes any academic questioning of is materialist underpinnings.
Would any judge find in favor of a small, religious motivated group, at the peril of his own career? Since the trial, Jones has made thousands of dollars in appearance fees, plaques and awards, including several honorary degrees from prestigious universities. He was even awarded Time Magazine’s ’100 Most Influential People Award, and get this, the ‘Humanist Religious Liberty Award’, a prominent atheist organization.
http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/DarwinDay2008.php
Finding against the Dover School Board is not the issue; they displayed religious bias, lied about some funding issues, and may well have had religious motives, violating the separation of church and state. Where Jones stepped out of bounds was to make a ruling against Intelligent Design, ruling it as religion disguised as science, and with the motive of infiltrating science, and academia, with religious indoctrination.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Today, ID is a secular, scientific pursuit, seeking verification or falsification the hypothesis of guided intervention at selected intervals in the evolutionary process. This would constitute a modification of the present theory, if empirically validated. There is no valid reason to rule against it by judicial fiat.
I appreciate that Judge Jones admits that ID was not properly represented, nor need it have been, since ID was not on trial. His quotes are telling:
In his concluding article remarks, he makes my point; that ID was not properly represented.
But you do Juge, in toto, and without question. And by virtue of acts by these defendants, a perfect ‘setup’ trial for the ACLU and NCSE, and a furtherance of Judge Jones’ career took place.
To conclude, please take the time to read legal and ethical critiques of the decision, and not just the popular press pieces, which almost universally give Darwinian evolution a rubber stamp, similar to what Judge Jones did. The Dover decision has been disseminated and debunked by the Montana Law Review and others regarding its ruling on ID as religion.
http://www.umt.edu/mlr/Discovery%20Institute%20Article.pdf
editing errors:
s/b out of quote box:
You may view me as biased, but …
a couple typos.
What I would welcome is some objective feedback regarding Intelligent Design as an alternate hypothesis, IF you can accept my assertion that ID is on a new track, and will embrace no pre assumptions based on religious dogma or beliefs
Respectfully,
Lee Bowman
Every successful scientific theory to date is philosophically materialist (ie naturalist) – and furthermore holds up well with respect to Occam’s idea of parsimony. Take it from a non-liberal (I’m a libertarianish moderate), who is not necessarily a philosophical materialist when it comes to matters that could arguably be seen as not necessarily well accounted for by present-day science – such as the qualia and free will aspects of the “mind-body problem” as philosophy calls it (in english, the problems of reconciling common intuitions of consciousness and personal freedom of will with materialism/naturalism). So it’s a little odd to slam the NIH for their materialism, when all successful science so far has been materialist too. They are going with what has worked in the past.
I think it’s more or less OK to investigate providence of whatever sort as an evolutionary force, at least as long as it doesn’t use up large amounts of public money. I know of a biomedical researcher who I learned is interested in ID, and that doesn’t make me write off his other work on unrelated subjects. I’m not sure how you could verify providence in evolution, but I suppose it would be logically possible to at least show that evolutionary changes have taken place that are totally inconsistent with biochemistry as we know it. But you are imlicitly applying the wrong standard, because such things seem not to have been shown, to my knowledge, and I know of no secular reason to suspect that they ever will be. So it seems ID is an unsupported or scantly-supported hypothesis at best, though I haven’t read anything on the subject myself. There are endless boatloads and boatloads of scientific hypotheses – perfectly valid as hypotheses, and usually having some serious support – that aren’t taught in school because they aren’t repletely supported, even though quite a lot of mainstream scientists may be partial to them, and surely many of them will turn out to be true. It takes “a mountain of evidence.” Only the very best-supported stuff becomes curriculum. Evolution is about as well-supported as any bedrock theory in science can be. Whether or not ID can be a proper secular hypothesis, there are virtually no scientists who think it is repletely supported empirically.
By the way, in using the term “supported,” I meant “empirically supported.”
“Judge Jones rose to eminence for his decision”
Yes.
“because it went along with the liberal power base,”
Or perhaps because it was a rational decision? My opinion is that your use of “liberal power base” is silly.
“whose quest to stifle any opposition to their ideological materialist position is their primary motivation.”
Silly, silly, silly. Go up to a scientist and insult him in this way and prepare to be knocked sillier than you are already.
“A strong statement, but I believe it to be factual.”
My opinion is that your opinion is silly.
“Where Jones stepped out of bounds was to make a ruling against Intelligent Design, ruling it as religion disguised as science”
My opinion is that your opinion is silly.
“Today, ID is a secular, scientific pursuit, seeking verification or falsification the hypothesis of guided intervention at selected intervals in the evolutionary process.”
You have now stated your opinion at Panda’s Thumb and their opinion seems to be that your opinion is not actually based on anything at all. There is no way that “ID” can “seek verification or falsification” and they aren’t even trying.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/12/texas-op-ed-ain.html
The thing that I found most distasteful were the people who were claiming to be Christian
but ovbiously did not believe the Bible. You
are christian or you are not – you can’t be
both. Either be hot or cold – don’t try to be
both. I believe that all life adapts to it’s
enviornment – That is part of the design of
things. I do not believe that human beings are
evolved monkeys. If you really want to prove
that show me a monkey in the stage of evolving
into a man – or at least show me the missing
link between monkey and man then i will believe
you. Produce your evidence.
“What I would welcome is some objective feedback regarding Intelligent Design as an alternate hypothesis, IF you can accept my assertion that ID is on a new track, and will embrace no pre assumptions based on religious dogma or beliefs.”
Of course I cannot accept your assertion. Lee Bowman is a paid employee of the “Discovery Institute” – a deliberately biased (and profitable) propaganda machine.
“If you really want to prove
that show me a monkey in the stage of evolving
into a man – or at least show me the missing
link between monkey and man then i will believe
you.”
Of course the evidence is overwhelming. Just recently there is evidence of an ancestor of 1.5 million years ago walking upright and leaving proper footprints in the mud. So if you have been ignoring the dozens of missing links, that’s your problem.