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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.
This case won't be appealed. The school board that introduced Intelligent Design in Dover was unceremoniously dumped on its ass at the last election, and the incoming board has made it clear that it would not appeal a ruling in the ACLU's favor.
Nor, for that matter, would the main ID advocates want this case appealed. The Discovery Institute pulled its support early on, for instance. Sophisticated ID advocacy requires that the public face of the movement be very quiet about its religious motivations, for fear of exactly what happened in Kitzmiller. The old Dover school board was unsophisticated, and much too blatant about its purely religious motivations.
ID advocates have seen Kitzmiller as a disastrous airing of their dirty laundry from fairly early on; the only thing surprising about this ruling is its refreshing breadth, depth, and clarity.
I find it much easier to believe in evolution than to believe that God went through this elaborate lie to trick us. I mean faking a fossil record is one thing but creating the universe with light already in transit so the stars would look like they're been there for billions of years?? Or creating the image of a supernova such that we would think that it exploded billions of years ago but didn't really?
Come on. Get a grip. I believe in God but I cant believe he's a coniving trickster that the fundamentalists seem to think he must be.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
We both permit and support the education our children receive in our area's public school system. IMHO, they're doing a pretty fair job.
We both teach our children what we believe. Our children know that we're speaking about our beliefs, even when we speak of them as facts.
We made sure our kids were capable of critical thought, judgement and self-determination in the area of beliefs. They have their own (for the record, two have ended up Catholic, one agnostic, one athiest - the jury's still out on the youngest two, but they're leaning toward agnostic and Jewish).
If I believe a thing to be true, wouldn't not sharing that with my children be abuse?
No - it is NOT a theory. A defining characteristic of a theory is that it must be falsifiable. ID is NOT falsifiable - so it can not be described as a "theory". It is, best described, perhaps, as a "crackpot theory". Or alternatively, we'd be kind, and say it is "conjecture", "speculation", or "a poor answer to a question which doesn't exist", or any other non-scientific concept.
I'm encouraged to see some sense coming out of a US court on this topic: there's hope for the USA yet!
Be nice if you could learn to spell. The word is "DEFINITELY"!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"