Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Intelligent What? Not Science.

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This is the best news that I have heard in ages, from the Boston Globe Online:

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday ruled that intelligent design is “nothing less than the progeny of creationism” and should not be taught in public schools.

The ruling, handed down by a judge appointed by President Bush, is a major legal setback for proponents of intelligent design, which holds that living organisms are so complex they cannot be explained by evolution and must be the work of a higher power. Christian right leaders have argued that it should be taught in school systems across the country.

The ruling, the first legal test of intelligent design, comes after a six-week trial in which expert witnesses and parents on both sides of the dispute took the stand to argue their positions on a Dover, Pa., school board policy requiring science teachers to inform students of “gaps” in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and to share competing views, including intelligent design.

Intelligent design proponents, mindful of legal barriers against teaching creationism in public schools, have long argued that their theory passes constitutional muster because it is not based in religion. They use the term “intelligent designer,” rather than God, to describe an omniscient force behind life on Earth, and they draw on a pool of scientists to raise questions they say Darwin’s theory fails to answer.

But in a sweeping 139-page opinion that went far beyond the legality of the Dover policy, Judge John E. Jones III concluded that intelligent design is religious and that its inclusion in public school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling rebuked prominent intelligent design theorists, saying their assertion that evolution cannot coexist with religious beliefs is ”utterly false.” Jones also harshly condemned the Dover school board members who backed it.

Those school officials, Jones charged, “time and again lie[d] to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose” behind promoting the theory of intelligent design, which he said was to promote religion.

Jones is a lifelong Republican who ran for Congress and narrowly lost more than a decade ago. He has described his mentor as Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as homeland security secretary. Bush appointed Jones to the bench in 2002.

Click here to read more…

Update 30th December

The actual judgement can be read by clicking here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Boxer says

    This story is like Watergate – it gives me more confidence in the US. It likes to stand on the brink now and then, and then step back.

    Intelligent design would seem to be promoted by people who in many respects are the evidence that there wasn’t much design involved at all. If there was any design, the indications are that there is a pretty strange sense of humour is out there somewhere.

  2. rog says

    Now that intelligent design, or creationism, has been shown to be false we can properly bury the notion of social, economic and environmental designers.

    Let the games begin!

  3. Phil Done says

    You’ve got to stop hanging around on Tim Blair – mate it’s endless. You have to remember about 50% of the place won’t go with you on any issue anyway.

    OK let’s take another tack then – give us your manifesto Rog .. .. positive question

  7. Phil Done says

    grrrrr – Yes Mam .. .. grrrrr.. ..

    OK on topic – I don’t get it.

    Intelligent design is out.
    AGW is out
    Greenies and lefties are out
    Kyoto is out
    Public service, ABC, Australian anything is out
    NGOs are out
    Zimbabwe is out
    Climate scientists are out

    GM is in
    Forestry is in
    The market is in
    Iraq is in
    George Bush is in
    Nuclear is probably in

    On what basis do you decide what’s in and out? I reckon it must be a left-right thing. But if you were fair dinkum hard right you’d support intelligent design. Does George support evolution – as we know he’s always right.

    Isn’t evolution a bit leftie and socially levelling. Where’s the proof? Why don’t evolutionists put up their data on the web for us to analyse – what are they hiding. Anyway we’re not evolving – we’re devolving – Tim Blair’s blog is the living proof.

  8. jennifer says

    Darwinian evolution fits the libertarian, capitalist view perfectly. It is all about competition, survival of the fitest, individualism and then … marvel at the resulting beauty and innovation and resilence of the systems.
    It is also all about the bottom’s up approach – rather than top down manifestos.
    Also, it is real and there is evidence for it.

  9. jennifer says

    I have just dug out a reprint of a paper published in the journal Constitutional Political Economy, Vol 12, pg. 51-75 (2001) titled ‘Eighteenth-Century Evolutionary Thought and its Relevance in the Age of Legislation’. The abstract concludes: The essay supports the idea of legal generality, free speech, property and contractual freedom as normative implications of the evolutionary viewpoint.

  10. Neil Hewett says

    Why hasn’t the marchfly evolved into a painless parasite?

    For millions of years primates have levelled their fatal intolerance to these suicidal blood-suckers.

    Assuming a normal distribution for pain, the agonising variants are surely splattered in the passion of the moment. Likewise, the less painful element would more likley be brushed away by the grace of good counsel.

    Flannery has argued that Bennett’s Tree Kangaroo has evolved dark abdominal hair to better elude the hunting prowess of ground dwelling rainforest hominids, but for as long as aborigines have walked this land, they would have splattered marchies.

    And yet, despite all, they remain suicidally painful.

  11. Boxer says

    Marchflies. They serve a very useful purpose, they are a lifeform that everyone can hate, so they provide a sense of unity amongst humankind. I’ve even known a vegan to bash a few to death. Why has Europe spent most of the last 2000 years at war? No marchflies. Hence evidence of intelligent design.

    Perhaps they evolved eating other genera of animals that don’t have articulated arms like humans. So the painful bite was a good way to sink a large sunction pipe into the victim and get a quick feed, and most victims can’t brush them off as easily as we can. There have never been enough humans in Aus to apply significant evolutionary pressure on marchflies. So marchflies are poorly adapted to humans. Therefore, if we had more humans in Aus then the marchfly would evolve a painless bite, your back would be covered in the little buggers and you would become anaemic, the marchflies would kill us all off, and the painful bite would re-evolve. Further evidence of intelligent design. The good thing about bs is there’s just no end to it.

  12. Naomi McGlone says

    The argument stands that Intelligent Design shouldn’t be taught in schools, as it is believed that there is not enough scientific evidence to back it up.

    And yet we are expected to allow our kids to be taught a load of bs put out by evolutionists that has been thoroughly disproven again and again by creationist scientists.

    Evolution is as much a religious belief system as creationism – they are both based on faith. Only, creationism makes more sense. Evolutionists would have us believe – in good faith – that something started out of nothing…

  13. Davey Gam Esq. says

    I recently read a neat remark by Francois Jacob, a French Nobel Prize winning biologist. He said that both religion and science are, essentially, modelling. The difference is that scientists try to fit their models to reality, whereas religious gurus try to fit reality to their model. However, in the area of bushfire ecology, I have noted some published papers which seem to follow the religious, rather than the scientific path. Might it be the same in climatology, or do I digress?

  15. rog says

    When you consider that the march fly has been around for 90M years, seen all the global warming/cooling cycles come and go, why should they worry about a few irritated johnny-come-lateleys?

    Seasons greetings to all, including the resident tree huggers

  16. Phil Done says

    Yes guys the dialectic has been strong and feisty in the clinches. Merry Xmas to left, right, far right, centre, greenies and independent thinkers.

    Thanks to Louis and Rog for an always spirited defence (or was it attack?). Did Louis get across the Nullarbor or did he take the GunBarrel ?

    And lastly thanks to Jen for the cyber-wall to scribble our graffiti on.

    Look forward to your considered responses, rampantly biased ramblings, incoherent dribble, and jocular invective in 2006.

  19. Ender says

    Naomi – “And yet we are expected to allow our kids to be taught a load of bs put out by evolutionists that has been thoroughly disproven again and again by creationist scientists.”

    Sorry that is just not true. Nothing in evolutionary theory has been proven wrong by creation people. They are not scientists.

    To all a Merry Christmas…..

  20. Rachel says

    im a student at a local high school and i believe that with in religious scholls it should be heard that there are many theories in the world about evolution…although public schools should be the same but taught more about the non inteligence design thoery…