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Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design' In Science Class
Delia Gallagher and Phil Hirschkorn | CNN | 12/20/2005

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A Pennsylvania school district cannot teach in science classes a concept that says some aspects of science were created by a supernatural being, a federal judge has ruled.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that teaching "intelligent design" would violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.

"We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," Jones writes in his 139-page opinion posted on the court's Web site.

"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions," Jones writes.

Intelligent design claims the complexity of some systems of nature cannot be explained by evolution but must be attributed to a designer or supernatural being.

The Dover Area School District, about 25 miles from the state capital, sought to become the first in the nation to require high school science teachers to teach the concept of intelligent design as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution.

"Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact," said the statement that the old school board approved in a 6-3 vote in October 2004. "With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind."

That school board mandated the teaching for ninth-grade biology classes and directed school libraries to purchase an alternative textbook, "Of Pandas and People," which advocated the concept. The town has since voted out eight of nine board members.

A lawsuit challenging the policy was brought in December 2004 by 11 parents in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State last December.

Jones presided over a six-week trial that ended last month. His decision applies only to the Pennsylvania school district.

His decision would block the school district's plan "requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID."

Jones says in his ruling that he did not doubt that intelligent design advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors," but he also said scientific experts testified that Darwin's theory "in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator."

Jones -- an appointee of President Bush, who backs the teaching of Intelligent Design -- defended his decision in personal terms.

"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court," Jones writes.

"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 intelligent design, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy," he said.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, "Children in public schools deserve top quality science education and freedom from religious indoctrination and today they were granted both."

In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana could not teach creationism because it would "restructure the science curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint."

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ChronicSmoke7

yup i heard that

Cassius

Quoted for posterity.

Thank God at least SOME judges in this country know what science is and isn't.

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Buzzby

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ChronicSmoke7

my bad, it was on the news

 

Higher Logic

Buzz, I was trying to find the transcript from the O'Reilly Factor last night and I came across this clip from his show on December 1. You really need to see this:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512020005CNN a left-wing news outlet? If anything, reports show that Fox is the right-wing outlet and CNN and other networks tend to stay in the middle when it comes to reporting. Man this guy really pisses me off.

Alright, sorry to distract from the topic Anyways, here's Bill talking to a professor in January about ID:And if Bill (or anyone else) wants a GREAT explanation on how science takes new input and eventually arrives at a theory, check out the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Now on to the show about the federal judge shooting down "Intelligent Design" from yesterday:

There is an ongoing controversy about teaching "intelligent design" as an alternate theory to evolution. In Pennsylvania, Federal Judge John Jones has declared it is unconstitutional to mention intelligent design in biology classes. Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano disagreed with the judge's opinion. "He says even mentioning a deity is a violation of the First Amendment because it is using government money to choose religion over non-religion. Fortunately, his decision is limited to the area where he sits in Pennsylvania. And when Judge Alito replaces Justice O'Connor this kind of nonsense will be gone." The Factor cited this as another example of judicial overreach. "We have a federal judge who says a school can not mention God in a biology class. We're really losing our bearings here. I'm worried about a loss of freedom in this country, and we have to start fighting back or the country's gone."

...on second thought, I can't find the transcript yet, they don't publish them until 24-hours after airing.

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Cassius

I disagree. It is not presented as an unchanging fact, it is presented as a hypothesis. The hypothesis being: "complexity necessitates intelligent design". It is a ludicrous hypothesis, in my opinion, but a hypothesis nonetheless -- and hypothesis / scientific theory are synonymous.

It is empirically testable, in that you could gather data on complex systems and their origin, and either accumulate data on intelligently-designed complex systems or discover a complex system that was not intelligently designed, thus disproving the hypothesis (or accumulating support for it if you did not find such a counterexample).

The point Bill truly missed, I think, and what a lot of people are missing, is that there has been no such empirical testing. That is the first problem with intelligent design as a theory, and the second is that it is not addressing the same topic as that which it has been pitted against -- evolution.

In regards to the former, it is preposterous that a hypothesis (even if it is a valid hypothesis) would be suggested as an alternate explanation to a question with no evidence whatsoever. Einstein was hardly accepted by the scientific community for a long time because the only evidence he mustered (since general and special relativity is empirically untestable without attaining speeds near the speed of light) were mathematical representations of his theories that hardly anyone understood. Eventually, people DID come to understand the math, and the math supported his theories, and his theories are now accepted as scientific, and taught in the classroom. That is the way it should be.

Intelligent design, however, has zero evidence backing up its hypothesis. The hypothesis could be tested in the manner I mentioned earlier, however no one (especially the people proposing the theory) have done such testing. I am sure it is because the only evidence that could be empirically gathered could possible disprove their little theory. How hard would it be, after all, to find one, just one, complex system that was not designed by an intelligent being?

In regards to the latter flaw with intelligent design, the amount of evidence accumulated supporting evolution is not insignificant. The amount of evidence supporting evolution as the origin of species is quite lacking -- in fact Darwin abandoned the idea himself shortly after he thought of it. But that is not what intelligent designed is being proposed as an alternative for -- it is in fact evolution itself that they propose to put side-by-side with intelligent design.

Do we know that life evolves? Absolutely. It is not questioned. It is scientific fact, as solid a theory as gravity, and I have not heard it ever disputed, for the body of evidence supporting it is enormous.

Do we know that life evolving is, in fact, how life got started in the first place? In other words, did life come into being because it evolved from non-life -- proteins and amino acids combining to form the first single-celled organisms? No, we do not know that at all. In fact, Darwin abandoned the idea, and it has not been researched much since then, for the evidence supporting or refuting it is so minute and so hard to gather that it has not been a pressing scientific concern. After all, discovering the origin of something millions, possibly billions, of years old is not easy. It is akin to the Big Bang theory, something that is so distant from our present situation that it still has much evidence to be gathered and the theories surrounding it are still evolving (pun intended).

If anything, intelligent design should be proposed as an alternative for that, for the theory that evolution is what got life started in the first place. It shouldn't be proposed as an alternative, due to the first flaw (it has no evidence supporting it whatsoever, the people presenting it are not scientists and in fact have no empirical data to support their hypothesis, therefore it is not a truly scientific hypothesis at all), but in fact it isn't being proposed as an alternative for that at all. It is being proposed as an alternative for evolution itself -- the question of whether life evolves at all, a matter which is completely and widely accepted by the scientific community everywhere. We all know that life evolves, many of us have seen it happen ourselves in petri dishes, and yet this is what intelligent design is being presented as an alternative to.

Creationism repackaged, indeed.

PotShot

Judge's ruling seen as blow to intelligent design
By Rachel Zoll | Kentucky.com | Dec. 22, 2005
BUT SOME SAY IT WILL GALVANIZE SUPPORTERS

A federal judge's ruling that intelligent design is faith masquerading as science is being viewed by all sides involved with the issue as a setback, though not a fatal blow, for the movement promoting the concept as an alternative to evolution.

Intelligent design advocates say the judge's lengthy, pointed rebuke of the concept Tuesday in a case out of Pennsylvania may energize supporters, many of whom view his opinion as part of a broader pattern of hostility by courts and the government to religion in public schools.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones criticized the "breathtaking inanity" of the 2004 decision by the Dover Area School Board to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum. He called the concept "a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism" and said the board's policy violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher being.

"This galvanizes the Christian community," said William Dembski, a leading proponent of the theory and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that promotes intelligent design research. "People I'm talking to say we're going to be raising a whole lot more funds now."
PS: Well, I wonder who he is talking to? It seems to me that lying is not something that would be considered good christian morals, and such actions would turn away support. The Christian community should be galvanized AGAINST the Discovery Institute.

From a legal perspective, the decision's immediate consequences are very limited. The school system is not expected to appeal, because several board members who backed intelligent design were voted out of office in November and replaced by candidates who reject the policy.

Yet opponents contend intelligent design advocates have emerged from the case substantially weakened. The ruling will probably influence judges in other districts and discourage other school officials from pursuing similar policies, said K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, a Washington group that promotes separation of church and state.

Battles over evolution are already being waged in Georgia and Kansas.

"Because it was a six-week trial, with a lot of testimony from proponents of intelligent design as well as critics from the scientific community, it's going to have a big impact," Hollman said. "It had a pretty full hearing."

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