Federal Judge Rules Against Intelligent Design

evil agent writes "CNN is reporting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that Intelligent Design cannot be discussed in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. Dover Area School Board members had previously mandated that Intelligent Design be included in the biology curriculum. According to the judge, 'our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'" Update: 12/20 23:40 GMT by J : eSkeptic has a look back at the trial and what led to it. And the Discovery Institute has issued a press release.

Comments

Well good

[butters the odd]

Intelligent design isn't science, therefore it doesn't belong in a science room.

Re:Well good

[sickofthisshit]

Intelligent design makes claims that are extremely sloppy in logic, if not utterly fallacious. Feel free to be stupid on your own time, or to teach your children to be stupid, but realize that is what you are doing.

Generally, it boils down to finding examples of complicated structures or systems in biology, and saying "see, this is complex enough that I don't think it could arise by evolution." It is a strawman---no biologist says that evolution has to result in structures that obviously arose from simpler precursors.

It is one step above young Earth creationists, who seek "geological evidence" to "support" their preconceived interpretation of the Genesis chronology. ID proponents are almost all seeking "flaws" in evolution to avoid threatening their preconceived notion that God played a crucial role in biological development.

Pardon me if I don't have much sympathy or respect for people who choose to support such stupidity.

Re:Well good

[numbski]

Just so we're clear here....

The desktop computer I have today has evolved over the last 30+ years. Heck, we could go back decades or even centuries beyond that depending upon what you call a "computer". What one might consider a computer 100 years ago most certainly bears no resembelence to what we have today. This process of evolving was more or less self-contained.

Now, I could go either way in the argument from here that Charles Babbage didn't create the computer knowing that things would evolve and change and grow, and didn't write a big elaborate story explaining how things would change and grow, but at the same time those evolutions required intelligent design.

I believe the point that the gp was trying to make was that we're teaching science, or rather the fact that things HAVE changed, discuss why they have changed, and perhaps even what dictated those changes. When we tech computer science, we may go into a brief history lesson, but we generally wouldn't dwell on the life and times of Charles Babbage. We also wouldn't start rambling on about how Mr. Babbage is still watching today and shaping the computer industry. A seperation of church and state here is appropriate. That still doesn't mean that intelligent design and evolution are mutually exclusive, but rather it's the wrong material in the wrong classroom.

Oh, and Mr. Troll, indoctrination is not so. Once you hit 18, you should begin to think for yourself. Long before that in fact. The fact that society as a whole tends to be one large flock of sheep that is herded around as such does not mean that your or I should be so. Sure, I was raised christian. I strayed away. I learned to think for myself, had the very foundations of what I believed torn apart due to the fact that science contradicts the story-book biblical teaching of my childhood.

I came back to it as a personal choice and a matter of faith. If you are insinuating that we as adults are not capable of making choices beyond what we have force-fed to us as children, well I would suggest you're posting on the wrong boards.

Or maybe not, this IS slashdot after all. :\

Re: Well good

[Black Parrot]

> The people who are rabidly against the concept of intelligent design are nothing more than arrogant freaks who declare that man may be able to build evolving life in the lab but nobody else in the universe has ever been able to do so, nor ever will

Uh, no. We're rabidly against Intelligent Design (notice the capitals) because it's a blatant political attempt to wedge pseudoscience into the public school classrooms to provide cover for creationist voters who don't want their children to learn about evolution.

Re:Well good

[SpryGuy]

Why is the parent a troll? It's the truth. That's about the only place ID could or should be taught. I have no problems with ID being mentioned in mythology courses or even comparative religion classes. But it's not science (and in many ways is the opposite of science), and doesn't belong in ANY science classes.

Re:Well good

[demachina]

"Generally, it boils down to finding examples of complicated structures or systems in biology, and saying "see, this is complex enough that I don't think it could arise by evolution.""

Their is a conundrum here when ID proponents say these supposedly "enormously" complex structures couldn't possibly have spontaneously sprung in to existence on their own.

The entire framework of their philosophy is that God, the most complex entity imaginable, somehow spontaneously sprang in to existence from nothingness.

Randomly throwing together organic molecules over the course of billions of years to produce the basic building blocks and mechanics of life seems trivial by comparison to spontaneous creation of an all powerful, omnipotent being.

My inclination is that if it was impossible to for a bacteria to spring in to existence from pools of organic molecules over the course of billions of years, its even more unlikely that an omnipotent being could likewise spring in to existence from nothing.

Re:Well good

[Yewbert]

"Ok, so now they teach the " Fact of Evolution" not the " Theory of Evolution" hmmm.... you know that humanism, atheism, and being agnostic are all religions too,... "

I wish I knew whom to give credit to for this quotation:

"If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."

Re:Well good

[Izmir Stinger]

It's more like a bunch of philsophers looked at the world and thought it was way to complicated to have occurred by chance.

I wonder if these same philosophers look down at their Bridge hand (13 cards) and conclude that the odds of them being dealt that particular hand are less than 1 in 6 billion, so they couldn't possibly have been dealt that hand by chance. The dealer must have given them a seemingly random crappy hand on purpose.

Re:Well good

[Alioth]

You clearly do not understand what a scientific theory is, nor what science is. You never hear real scientists saying "Evolution is fact!" because it isn't. The theory of evolution doesn't say "There is no supreme being". Teaching evolution theory does not say "A supreme being cannot exist". The theory of evolution doesn't even mention supreme beings.

Intelligent design, on the other hand, is not a scientific theory by any definition and therefore should not be taught in a science class because it simply isn't science. Whether you're Christian, Muslim or an atheist, it makes no difference - ID is *not* a scientific theory. If intelligent design is to be taught, then it should be taught either in a philosophy class or a religious studies class. It has no place in a science class because it simply is not science.

Scientific theories are NOT about faith - in fact, part of the scientific method is to *disprove* theories, wheras faith is exactly the opposite - simply believing it's true and not challenging it. Scientists are always looking at probing the theory of evolution, trying to find its weaknesses and trying to disprove evolution theory as it stands because *this is what science is about*. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory because it does not set out anything that's falsifiable. Things that must be taken on faith are by definition not falsifiable.

Finally, saying "Evolution is only a theory" also grossly misses the point about what a scientific theory is. People who don't know what a scientific theory is often equate it with a "hunch" (sort of like how detectives have theories in TV shows, which are actually hunches). This is not what a scientific theory is.

For a broader understanding of what a scientific theory is and is not (it is NOT 'fact' as you state, and no scientist worth their salt would claim theory to be a fact), start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Re:Well good

[smellsofbikes]

I'm not precisely disagreeing with what you've said. But a lot of scientists do indeed say that evolution is a fact, seeing as they watch it happen on a daily basis in microbiology laboratories and drug/chemical testing facilities all across the world. The theory of evolution posits HOW it happens. In a similar way, gravity is a fact. There is a theory of gravity that posits how IT happens, and that is, in my opinion, a much weaker theory than evolutionary theory. But it doesn't mean gravity's just a theory. It means our explanation for it is just a theory.

Evolution is a fact. We're just filling in the details, and that's the theory part.

Re:Don't go jumping up and down just yet

[cytoman]

You quote out of context, and you should be ashamed of yourself for being so dishonest. The judge said that he is not discouraging those people who study ID, and he says they have deep beliefs in what they are doing. But, this is the most important thing, he says that ID is *not science* and therefore *should not be taught in a science class*.

Stop spinning things by taking it out of context, and be honest for once.

Re:And evolution is?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Oh please. There are examples of intermediary steps in eye development throughout the animal kingdom, from simple eye spots all the way to mammalian eyes. Each step is fully functional and does what the organism possessing it requires it to do.

Here's a couple of questions for you:

If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot? Nerves in the mammalian eye actually lie on top of the retina, and where they gather together and plunge through the back of the eye to form the optic nerve, no light can be sensed. This is a design flaw any fallible human engineer would catch and correct...so what does this say about the superhuman Designer of ID fame? (And before you maintain that the eye needs to be designed in this manner, consider the eye of the octopus and squid, which is actually designed correctly (nerves lie under the retina, avoiding the problem of the blind spot).

Cats have eyes that can see clearly in what we perceive to be total darkness. Some squid have twelve different types of color sensing cells (as opposed to our three). Eagles have acuity of vision undreamt of by man. Bees and some birds can see into the ultraviolet. Pit vipers can see into the infrared by virtue of their pits (infrared-sensitive eye pits). Before you ask 'what good is half an eye, consider what good your eyes are to you, deficient as they are.

Re:And evolution is?

[Fareq]

"because I lack the ability to understand an evolutionary system of a grand scale, I have therefore conclusive proof that God must have created the world... After all, everything too complicated for me to understand is just God's miracles"

Every change had to confer a survival advantage

[Trinition]

Every change had to confer a survival advantage

Why?

All that needs to happen is for a change not to cause the organism to die before it can pass its genes on. If there is a mutation, even a harmless or slightly detrimental one, so long as the organism still successfully reproduces, then it passed its genes on. Its unmutated counterparts may still reproduce at a better rate, causing its own numbers to diminish relatively.

But if that disadvantage then mutates again to something that is then a great advantage, then this organism can regain its losses and procreate even faster than its nonmutated counterparts.

Sometimes to reach a gloablly optimal path, you have to take a locally suboptimal path. So long as one mutation doesn't completely destroy an organism, the mutation, even if immediately unhelpful, can serve as a stepping stone to future, more helpful mutations or advantages in changing environments.

Imagine it like this. Suppose a mutation makes a human very nerdy looking. Girls don't like that. Their chances of reproduction drop sharply. The occasional nerd of the opposite sex may come along allowing this breed to trickle on. Then computers are invented and these nerds have anew environment in which to flourish. Their nerdy traits make them very successful, which in turns attracts a large number of mates, allowing what was a negative mutation to carry on in greater numbers!

OK, that one was a stretch :)