the Court is confident that no other tribunal in the United
States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial
area. Finally, we will offer our conclusion on whether ID is science not
just because it is essential to our holding that an Establishment Clause
violation has occurred in this case, but also in the hope that it may prevent
the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a
subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us. [p. 63]
(emphasis added)
This passage exhibits the height of presumption,
and it's why in my initial statement after the trial I referred to Judge Jones
as having "delusions of grandeur." First, and contrary to the Judge's claim, a
determination of whether ID is science was plainly NOT essential to the
disposition of the case, as pointed out above. Even more troubling, however, is
the Judge's suggestion that he wanted to determine whether ID is science so
that no other judge need investigate the facts for himself. Judge Jones is a
federal district court judge in one particular district court in Pennsylvania.
But he's speaking as if he is more powerful than a majority on the United States
Supreme Court! He is staking out the claim to have the right and duty to decide
the question of whether intelligent design is science for all other judges in
the entire United States in the future. Lower federal court judges are bound by
Supreme Court precedents, but they certainly aren't bound by the rulings of
other lower court judges at the same level. Although other federal judges
certainly can refer to Judge Jones' decision (especially to his legal
reasoning), every judge has a duty to reach an impartial and independent
determination of the facts and law in the cases before him. Another federal
district court judge can't simply say, "Well, Judge Jones has already decided
the matter, so there is no need for me to do anything in this case before me."
Nor can the judge tell the parties to a new case: "I've decided not to allow you
to present any evidence, because Judge Jones already heard the evidence three
years ago." Judge Jones, no matter what he thinks, is not the entire federal
judiciary. Nor does he have the right to speak for the entire federal judiciary.
Another thing: Judges who truly believe in judicial restraint are
careful not to try to use judicial power to decide divisive cultural
controversies unless it is legally necessary to do so. In this case, as pointed
out previously, Judge Jones had narrow grounds on which to base his decision.
But he chose not to do so because he wanted to issue a definitive ruling on the
disputed questions of whether intelligent design is science and whether it could
ever be taught constitutionally in science classes. He wanted to decide the
larger public controversy for all future legislators, school boards, and judges.
That is judicial activism with a vengeance. It's the same type of activism that
led the federal courts to try to decide the issue of slavery before the Civil
War by judicial fiat in the case of Dred Scott. And it's the same type of
judicial activism that led the federal courts to inject themselves into a host
of social conflicts (such as abortion) during the past few decades. Far from
resolving controversial issues, such activism betrays the democratic process and
often leads to further polarization. By giving everyone a stake in the
discussion, the democratic process tends to promote incremental solutions and
compromise, which cools tensions over the long term. That's why judges who
believe in judicial restraint are careful not to intervene on one side of a
controversial debate unless absolutely necessary. It is the hallmark of activism
for a judge to try to impose his view on a controversy when such a course of
action is not absolutely necessary as a matter of law.
The main
responses I've heard to the charge that Judge Jones is an activist are these:
(1) he insists he's not an activist; and (2) he's a lifelong Republican.
Well, of course Judge Jones says he's not an activist. But methinks he
protests too much. In his decision he goes out of his way to announce that his
opinion will surely be attacked as an activist one. Far from indicating that he
isn't an activist, I think that this self-serving disclaimer indicated that he
plainly knew he was being an activist and wanted to cover himself.
Regarding the fact that he is a Republican appointed by a Republican
President: So what? The most liberal activist member of the current United
States Supreme Court (John Paul Stevens) was appointed not by Bill Clinton but
by Republican President Gerald Ford. President Ronald Reagan, meanwhile,
appointed a number of judges (at all levels) who turned out to be just as
liberal as any Democratic appointees. Only someone with scant knowledge of
judicial appointments over the past few decades would claim that the fact that a
Republican president appointed a judge would mean that the judge could not be a
judicial liberal or an activist.
Of course, the newsmedia are now fast
spinning the tale that Judge Jones is not only a Republican, but he's supposed
to be a conservative and devoutly religious Republican. As I will blog about
soon, those claims seem to be about as mythical as the view that Judge Jones
isn't an activist.
Posted by John West on December 23, 2005 01:00 PM | Permalink
2. Judge Jones wrongly treats
theologian/philosopher Thomas Aquinas as the ultimate source of the argument to
design.
Drawing on theologian John Haught, Judge Jones treats Thomas
Aquinas as the originator of the ID of intelligent design, writing that "ID is
not a new scientific argument, but is rather an old religious argument for the
existence of God. He [Haught] traced this argument back to at least Thomas
Aquinas in the 13th century...." (p. 24) In fact, discussions about the design
of nature date back to Plato and Aristotle and significantly predate medieval
theology. Judge Jones would have known this fact had he read the Foundation for
Thought and Ethics amicus brief, which pointed out (with documentation):
Ancient philosophers began formulating arguments about design long
before they had exposure to the Bible, and indeed without basing their arguments
on sacred scriptures of any kind.The Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Empedocles,
Democritus, and Anaximander believed that life could originate without any
intelligent guidance, while Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle advocated that mind
was required.33 During the Roman era, Cicero cited the orderly operation of the
stars as well as biological adaptations in animals as empirical evidence that
nature was the product of “rational design.” [pp. 12-13]
Judge Jones
either didn't read the brief, which is part of the official record of the case,
or he again ignored the evidence simply because it didn't fit his predetermined
conclusions.
3. Judge Jones wrongly claims that intelligent design
"requires supernatural creation." (p. 30, emphasis added)
Contrary to
Judge Jones, there was extensive evidence in the trial record and documents
submitted in briefs that intelligent design does NOT "require supernatural
creation." Indeed, Judge Jones seems to willfully misrepresent the claims of
intelligent design scientists, who consistently have made clear from the very
start that empirical evidence cannot tell one whether the intelligent causes
detected through modern science are inside or outside of nature. For extensive
documentation of this fact, see Appendix A to the Discovery Institute amicus
brief submitted in the case, available here.
As
a scientific theory, all ID claims is that there is empirical evidence that key
features of the universe and living things are the products of an intelligent
cause. Whether the intelligent cause involved is inside or outside of nature
cannot be decided by empirical evidence alone. That larger question involves
philosophy and metaphysics.
To justify his false claim that ID requires a
supernatural cause, Judge Jones also completely misrepresents the content of the
textbook Of Pandas and People. He claims at one point that "Pandas
indicates that there are two kinds of causes, natural and intelligent, which
demonstrate that intelligent causes are beyond nature." (p. 30) In fact,
Pandas explicitly and repeatedly makes the opposite claim: Intelligent
causes may be either inside or outside of nature, and empirical evidence alone
can't determine which option is correct. Pandas made this distinction
even in its early drafts, one of which emphatically stated that "in science,
the proper contrary to natural cause is not supernatural cause, but
intelligent cause." (FTE Amicus Brief, Appendix B, Document B; emphasis
added.) Also consider the following passages from the edition of Pandas
actually used in Dover (both of these passages were highlighted for Judge Jones
in Appendix A of the FTE amicus brief):
“If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the
message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause. But
what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this
question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. But that should not
prevent science from acknowledging evidences for an intelligent cause origin
wherever they may exist.”(Of Pandas and People, 2nd ed., 1993, pg. 7; emphasis
added)
“Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be
considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development
of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes.
We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the
intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe
(supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science.” (Of
Pandas and People, 2nd ed., 1993, pg. 126-127; emphasis
added)
Again, the intelligent causes detected through empirical
evidence may be either inside or outside of nature; and contrary to Judge Jones,
this point is made in the very book he cites to justify his position.
Incredibly, Judge Jones at another point in his opinion (p. 25) misinterprets
the Pandas' quote on p. 7 as further proof that ID requires a belief in a
supernatural cause, claiming:
In fact, an explicit concession that the intelligent designer works
outside the laws of nature and science and a direct reference to religion is
Pandas’ rhetorical statement, “what kind of intelligent agent was it [the
designer]” and answer: “On its own science cannot answer this question. It must
leave it to religion and philosophy.”
Contrary to Judge Jones, the
above statement clearly does NOT concede that "the intelligent designer works
outside the laws of nature and science." Instead, it merely reaffirms that
empirical science cannot determine whether the intelligent cause detected
resides inside or outside of nature. That further determination requires more
than empirical science. Far from being merely "rhetorical," this claim is
central to the definition of intelligent design as a scientific theory, and it
is reaffirmed and further explained in other passages in Pandas that the
Judge ignores (such as the passage on pp. 126-127 cited above).
4.
Judge Jones wrongly claims that intelligent design grew out of Christian
fundamentalism.
According to Judge Jones, intelligent design is not
just "religious," it is the outgrowth of twentieth-century American Christian
"fundamentalism." He makes this claim notwithstanding the fact that the debate
over design in nature reaches back to the ancient Greeks (as pointed out above),
and that the debate remained an important dispute among scientists from Darwin
onward. As explained in the FTE amicus brief:
Design was also an important part of the contemporary scientific
debate at the time Darwin’s theory was developed. Indeed, the term “intelligent
design” as an alternative to blind evolution was employed by Oxford scholar
F.C.S. Schiller as early as 1897. Schiller wrote that “it will not be possible
to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an
intelligent design.” Schiller, like modern design theorist Michael Behe, argued
for intelligent design without rejecting all forms of evolution or even common
descent.
It's important to stress that Judge Jones can't point to
even a single doctrine unique to Christian fundamentalism that is incorporated
by ID. Indeed, he effectively concedes that ID proponents distinguish their
theory from fundamentalism by pointing out that it does NOT involve arguments
based on "the Book of Genesis", "a young earth," or "a catastrophic Noaich
flood." (p. 35) So where's the fundamentalism?
In wrongly trying to
conflate ID with fundamentalism, Judge Jones simply ignored the testimony in his
court of two of the most prominent ID scientists, biologists Michael Behe and
Scott Minnich. Neither Minnich nor Behe were shown by the ACLU to be
fundamentalists (they aren't), neither were shown to believe in a literal
reading of Genesis (they don't), neither were shown to come to their beliefs in
ID from fundamentalism (they didn't), and both reject neo-Darwinism on
scientific grounds. Indeed, Behe has made clear that he had no problem with the
modern theory of evolution until he discovered that what he was seeing in the
lab did not fit with what he was being told in standard textbook accounts.
Behe's skepticism of neo-Darwinism was not driven by a change in religion, but
by scientific evidence. So again, where's the fundamentalism?
To
conclude, Judge Jones' repeated mistatements of fact and his one-sided
recitation of the "evidence" reveal not only a judicial activist, but an
incredibly sloppy judge who selects the facts to fit the result he
wants.
Posted by John West on December 26, 2005 02:58 PM Permalink
AMICUS
BRIEF FILED BY THE FOUNDATION FOR THOUGHT AND ETHICS (excerpts)
I.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN, AS DESCRIBED IN PANDAS, DIFFERS FROM CREATIONISM IN
BOTH METHODOLOGY AND PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT. A. Intelligent Design, As
Described In Pandas, Bases Its Claims On Empirical Evidence And
Scientific Methods Rather Than Upon Faith, Doctrine, Or
Scripture.
Creationism is identified by its reliance upon religious
scripture and doctrine, rather than empirical evidence. By contrast, the theory
of intelligent design, as developed in Pandas, relies upon scientific
data and does not address religious or doctrinal questions. Pandas infers
design using observations, uniform experience, and empirical experimental
evidence: "If experience has shown that a certain class of phenomena results
from intelligent causes and then we encounter something new but similar, we
conclude its origin also to be from an intelligent cause." Pandas
consistently takes this empirical approach and nowhere relies upon faith,
doctrine, or religious scripture.
B. Intelligent Design, As Described
In Pandas, Is Distinct From Creationism Because It Does Not Use Science
To Postulate A “Supernatural Creator,” Nor Does It Attempt To Validate The
Biblical Account In Genesis.
Plaintiffs contend that teaching
intelligent design endorses religion. The endorsement test, as adopted by the
Supreme Court, employs an objective component where a statement cannot be taken
in isolation but must be read in its entire context: "The meaning of a statement
to its audience depends both on the intention of the speaker and on the
"objective" meaning of the statement in the community. Some listeners need not
rely solely on the words themselves in discerning the speaker's intent: they can
judge the intent by, for example, examining the context of the statement or
asking questions of the speaker." Plaintiffs ignore the context in Pandas
explaining how intelligent design cannot identify the designer as well as
Pandas’ emphasis on empirical data.
1. Pandas Demonstrates That
Intelligent Design Takes A Scientific Approach Which Cannot Identify The
Designer.
In Edwards, the Supreme Court held that creation
science entailed the “religious viewpoint” that “a supernatural creator was
responsible for the creation of humankind.” Plaintiffs try to force the square
peg of design into the round hole carved by Edwards, falsely asserting that
Pandas postulates a “supernatural entity.” Yet Pandas clearly
states that the scientific theory of intelligent design cannot address questions
about the ultimate nature of the intelligent cause: "But what kind of
intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it
must leave it to religion and philosophy." "We should recognize, however, that
if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological
origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without
the help of science." Because it does not delve into questions surrounding the
supernatural, Pandas does not violate methodological naturalism (as
espoused by plaintiffs).
Moreover, the Pandas edition used in
Dover explicitly disclaims endorsement of Christianity: "Advocates of design
have included not only Christians and other religious theists, but pantheists,
Greek and Enlightenment philosophers and now include many modern scientists who
describe themselves as religiously agnostic. Moreover, the concept of design
implies absolutely nothing about beliefs normally associated with Christian
fundamentalism, such as a young earth, a global flood, or even the existence of
the Christian God." This context makes it clear that Pandas does not
endorse any particular religious belief, including Christianity. All design
implies is “life had an intelligent source.”
2. Plaintiffs Mistakenly
Contrast Natural Causes With Supernatural Causes, Rather Than With Intelligent
Causes.
In an attempt to attack the scientific basis of the theory of
intelligent design, plaintiffs claim that the only alternative to explanation by
natural causes is an appeal to supernatural causes. Pandas offers two
distinct categories of scientific explanation: natural and intelligent.
Pandas carefully distinguishes between “supernatural” causes and
“intelligent” causes, for intelligent causes are amenable to scientific
investigation, whereas it is impossible to detect whether a cause is
“supernatural.” The distinction between intelligent and supernatural causes is a
critical one, and it was adopted by FTE before the decision in Edwards,
as reflected in early drafts of Pandas. If plaintiffs were correct,
Pandas should not explain design using examples of intelligent, yet
non-supernatural causes. But Pandas offers many such examples, including
human writers, artists, skywriters, car manufacturers, carpenters, tribespeople,
and engineers. In short, the intelligent aspect of a cause is detectable, while
supernatural identity is not: if an intelligent cause is indeed supernatural,
its identity as such cannot be determined via science. Pandas explains
that we have everyday experience with detecting intelligence; thus, intelligent
design is not an untestable supernatural concept.
3. Statements About
A “Master Intellect” Do Not Endorse Religion.
Plaintiffs argue that
appealing to a “master intellect” entails a deity. Yet the appropriate
dictionary definition of “master” has no religious overtones: "being a master of
some occupation, art, etc.; eminently skilled a master diplomat; a master
pianist." Pandas refers to the “master intellect” in terms of the
designer’s ability to design sophisticated biological molecules. An early draft
of Pandas observes: "Some master intellect is the creator of life. But
such observable instances of information cannot tell us if the intellect behind
them is natural or supernatural. This is not a question that science can
answer."
The claim that the complex information in biological organisms
is best explained by an intelligent source is no more “ultimate” in its reach
than the claim of Neo-Darwinism that all life results from random mutation and
natural selection. What matters is not the degree of “ultimacy” but whether the
claim is one that science can address. “Thus the so-called ‘Big Bang’ theory, an
astronomical interpretation of the creation of the universe, may be said to
answer an ‘ultimate’ question, but it is not, by itself, a ‘religious’ idea.”
Similarly, intelligent design interprets biological data as sharing the same
informational content found in human language and machines. Like Big Bang
cosmology or Neo-Darwinism, the theory of intelligent design in biology is not
religious because it lacks “comprehensiveness” and is “generally confined to one
question.”
4. Pandas Does Not Advocate “Creation Ex Nihilo” And
Advocates A View Of The Fossil Record Consistent With That Of
Paleontologists.
The phrase “creation ex nihilo” exists nowhere in
Pandas. Nonetheless, plaintiffs complain that Pandas advocates “abrupt
appearance,” which they claim is equivalent to “creation ex nihilo.”
Pandas states that “[i]ntelligent design means that various forms of life
began abruptly through an intelligent agency….,” but this language is a comment
on the fossil record, not a theological assertion. It is also a commonplace
observation among paleontologists. For example, Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “The
fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual
change . . . transitions between major groups are characteristically
abrupt.” [emphasis added]. True, creationism also defined itself in terms
of abrupt appearance, but simply because Pandas shared this view with
creationists no more renders it a form of creationism than does Stephen Jay
Gould’s observation render him a creationist. Moreover, in Edwards, the Supreme
Court declared creationism religion because it required the “supernatural”;
“abrupt appearance” had no influence upon the majority’s constitutional
analysis, no doubt because of the number of mainstream paleontologists who hold
similar views.
5. Pandas Does Not Promote A View Parallel To
Genesis.
While Edwards took a broad view of creationism, the
Court cited extensively to McLean, which found that “the parallels
between [creationism] and Genesis are quite specific." These parallels include:
"(1) Sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing; (2) The
insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of
all living kinds from a single organism; (3) Changes only within fixed limits of
originally created kinds of plants and animals; (4) Separate ancestry for man
and apes; (5) Explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophism, including the
occurrence of a worldwide flood; and (6) A relatively recent inception of the
earth and living kinds." Two concurring Justices in Edwards observed that
McLean recognized that creationist organizations require commitment to
specific religious tenets, including the view that all life was created “by
direct creative acts of God during Creation Week as described in Genesis” and
“accept[ance] of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.” Pandas promotes
nothing even approximating these viewpoints.
Pandas makes no
reference to a flood or worldwide geological catastrophe. Pandas never
takes the viewpoint that life or the earth were created recently, and at various
points incorporates a conventional geological time scale. Pandas makes no
references to Genesis or Christian religious doctrines. It does not claim that
life was created “out of nothing” and does not even explore questions about the
origin of the universe. While the textbook does question, on scientific grounds,
the ability of mutation and selection to account for the complexity of life and
at other points questions common ancestry of all living organisms, these views
in themselves do not constitute a religious viewpoint and indeed are advocated
by a number of scientists in mainstream scientific literature.
III.
REJECTION OF THE LANGUAGE OF EARLY DRAFTS OF PANDAS CLEARLY DISTINGUISH
INTELLIGENT DESIGN FROM CREATIONISM.
Plaintiffs allege that
unpublished draft versions of Pandas provide evidence that the “real” purpose of
the published book is to promote “creationism” and “creation science.” But this
claim rests on faulty logic and a misrepresentation of the content of these
draft versions.
A. Early, Unpublished Drafts Of Pandas Have No
Bearing Upon What Students Learn In Schools Today.
It is puzzling, to
say the least, that Plaintiffs should rely upon early drafts of Pandas,
in light of the burden on Plaintiffs to show that either of the first two prongs
of the Lemon test have been violated. Unless either the school board, the
teachers or the students were aware of the early drafts of Pandas, it is
hard to see how their content could be in any way relevant to the question of
whether the school board’s actions had a secular purpose, or had a primary
effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. Perhaps plaintiffs recognized that
what is presented in the book actually adopted by the school board does not
support their claim of unconstitutionality—and so they shift attention to an
earlier unused version. But the earlier version was never adopted by the school
board and will never be seen by students. Amicus thus urges that only the
published version of Pandas is germane, and that previous drafts be
ignored.
B. The Removal Of “Creationist” Terminology From The
Published Version Of Should Be Interpreted As A Rejection Of Creationism, Not As
Hidden Support For Creationism.
Assuming, ad arguendo, that the Court
looks to previous drafts of Pandas to interpret its meaning, however,
Amicus urges the Court to draw precisely the opposite conclusions from those
advanced by Plaintiffs. Admittedly there are no canons of “textbook
interpretation”; however, using canons of construction employed in interpreting
statutes, language removed from an earlier draft of statute is usually
understood as a rejection of that language. For example, “where Congress
includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another
section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts
intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.” Similarly,
in comparing a previous version of legislation that was vetoed to the bill that
was ultimately enacted into law, the Supreme Court interpreted the removal of
language about retroactivity to mean that Congress intended not to make the law
retroactive. Finally, this same form of reasoning is normative among scholars of
constitutional law, who refer to language rejected from drafts of constitutional
amendments in order to determine what was not the intent of the Framers. If the
Court were to apply this canon of construction to Pandas, then the fact
that published versions of Pandas removed mention of “creationism” should
indicate that textbook authors did not intend to promote
creationism.
C. A Similar Rule Applied to Plaintiffs’ Own Expert’s
Publication Would Disqualify Dr. Kenneth Miller’s
Textbook.
Plaintiffs claim that references to “creation” and
“creationists” deleted from pre-publication drafts of Pandas establish
the equivalence of intelligent design and creationism. Yet the first two
editions of a biology textbook actually published by plaintiffs’ expert Dr.
Kenneth Miller explicitly affirmed the anti-religious claim that Darwinian
theory “required” belief in philosophical materialism: "Darwin knew that
accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the
conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and
spiritual phenomena are its byproducts... Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just
one more species in a world that cared nothing for us... Worst of all, there was
no divine plan to guide us."
Dr. Miller was quick to point out that later
versions of his textbooks removed such anti-religious statements. But if
unpublished drafts—never seen by the school board or students—evidence the “real
meaning” of Pandas, what should be the significance of language that Dr.
Miller actually published? Plaintiffs’ attempt to rely on pre-publication drafts
of Pandas not only ignores the context in which the constitutional issues
in this case arise, but threatens to open a floodgate to lawsuits challenging
the “hidden agenda” of textbooks widely used by students today.
D.
Early Drafts Of Pandas Did Not In Fact Advocate Creationism As It Has
Been Defined By The Supreme Court.
While certain early drafts of
Pandas and other writings may have used the terms “creation” and
“creationists,” it is clear that these terms were defined to mean something
quite different from “creationism” as later defined by the Supreme Court. As
noted earlier, from the beginning Pandas specifically rejected the view
that science could detect whether the intelligent cause identified was
supernatural. Although the process by which an intelligent agent produces a
designed object can loosely be called a “creation” (as in stating that this
brief was the “creation” of several lawyers), the authors of Pandas
clearly understood that this was a “placeholder” for a more sophisticated
expression of this concept. A pre-Edwards draft from early 1987
emphatically stated that “observable instances of information cannot tell us if
the intellect behind them is natural or supernatural. This is not a question
that science can answer.” The same early draft rejected the eighteenth century
design argument from William Paley because it illegitimately tried “to
extrapolate to the supernatural” from the empirical data of science. Paley was
wrong because “there is no basis in uniform experience for going from nature to
the supernatural, for inferring an unobserved supernatural cause from an
observed effect.” Similarly, another early draft (also from when the manuscript
was still titled “Biology and Origins”) stated: "[T]here are two things about
which we cannot learn through uniform sensory experience. One is the
supernatural, and so to teach it in science classes would be out of place . . .
[S]cience can identify an intellect, but is powerless to tell us if that
intellect is within the universe or beyond it." By unequivocally affirming that
the empirical evidence of science “cannot tell us if the intellect behind [the
information in life] was natural or supernatural” it should be clear that the
early drafts of Pandas meant something very different by “creation” than
did the Supreme Court in Edwards. The decision to use the term
“intelligent design” in the final draft to express the emerging theory of
origins was not an attempt to evade a court decision, as Plaintiffs have
alleged, but rather to furnish a more precise description of the emerging
scientific theory.
IV. THE PRESENT THEORY OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN DOES
NOT RELY UPON PANDAS AS AN AUTHORITATIVE GUIDE.
If this case
were being argued in 1989, Pandas might be more dispositive as an authoritative
guide to the theory of intelligent design. But there is now more than 15 years
of scholarship by scientists and philosophers of science who think there are
empirical means to detect design in nature. Pandas predates most of the major
works of the contemporary design movement in science, including monographs by
Cambridge University Press, and technical articles in peer-reviewed science and
philosophy of science journals. The primary guide to the beliefs and views of
intelligent design scholars today should be this record of scholarly and
scientific and technical articles, not a supplementary high school textbook
written more than a decade-and-a-half ago.
Posted by John West on
December 28, 2005 12:34 AM | Permalink
I served for 10 years, Madam Chairwoman, as an assistant public
defender in Schuylkill County, and so very frequently I found myself enmeshed in
unpopular areas representing unpopular people. In particular, in 1989, I
represented an individual who was alleged to have murdered a 12-year-old boy. It
was, as you can imagine, coming from a small town, a highly charged atmosphere.
We had a week-long trial. I represented him throughout in a most difficult
circumstance, with the community at large very much against him. He was
convicted. I was able to keep him from suffering the death penalty in that
case... I was very proud to do that as an assistant public defender consistent
with my obligations as an attorney.
The idea that Judge Jones is
somehow devoutly religious apparently derives from one comment he made to The
New York Times shortly before he handed down his decision. Asked whether he
attends church, he told the reporter that he goes on occasion to a Lutheran
church favored by his wife. That may make him a dutiful husband, but it doesn't
make him religious, especially since he never became a member of any church or
any religious group of any kind.
By the way, although Judge Jones
declined to join any religious or conservative groups, he did join the trial
lawyers association. At the time of his confirmation, he also was a 20+ year
member of a country club. Thus, it might be appropriate to call him a "country
club Republican."
Please don't misunderstand me: Judge Jones has every
right to be a "country club Republican" if he so chooses, and he certainly has
every right to be as religious or non-religious as he wishes. The point here is
to challenge the media's effort to turn Judge Jones into something he's not in
order to defend a biased and sloppy ruling.
(Note: You can verify for
yourself the above information about Judge Jones' memberships and his comments
at his confirmation hearing by going to the U.S. Government Printing
Office and downloading the pdf version of S. HRG. 107–584, PT. 4,
Confirmation Hearings on Federal Appointments, U.S. Government Printing Office,
2003, Serial No. J–107–23. See especially pp. 73 and 191-192.)
Posted by
John West on December 29, 2005 12:00 AM Permalink
도버카운티 법정 판결에 대한 디스커버리 연구소 입장 (Dover in Review)
