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Good times, good times
Dec. 20th, 2005 10:42 pmIt's true: Judge John Jones's opinion in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Intelligent Design education case (PDF) is riveting reading. It starts out a little dry as he reviews the legal precedents, from the Scopes Monkey Trial on; then he goes into specifics, and you can see the indignation gradually working its way into the narrative.
In the middle part, he goes beyond the legal parameters of the case in a noble effort to debunk once and for all the claims of "Intelligent Design theory" to the status of science (you can sense his annoyance at being driven to hear all this testimony; I guess he figured he'd extract some good from it).
Then, the last major section, concerning what actually went down in Dover, Pennsylvania, is a detailed, hilarious and scary description of a school board packed with imbeciles and run amok. The conclusion flatly calls some of the (ex-)board members liars and uses the phrase "breathtaking inanity".
The Discovery Institute's misleading efforts, and countless confused newspaper op-eds, have given many people the impression that the Intelligent Design movement serves as a label for a kind of happy middle ground between creationism and scientific materialism, advocating a harmony between theistic religious belief and good science. I will happily admit that such a harmony can exist, and while it is not my cup of tea, other people are welcome to it. But the middle section of the opinion gives a powerful summary of the evidence that ID is not it, and I hope it gets read.
In the middle part, he goes beyond the legal parameters of the case in a noble effort to debunk once and for all the claims of "Intelligent Design theory" to the status of science (you can sense his annoyance at being driven to hear all this testimony; I guess he figured he'd extract some good from it).
Then, the last major section, concerning what actually went down in Dover, Pennsylvania, is a detailed, hilarious and scary description of a school board packed with imbeciles and run amok. The conclusion flatly calls some of the (ex-)board members liars and uses the phrase "breathtaking inanity".
The Discovery Institute's misleading efforts, and countless confused newspaper op-eds, have given many people the impression that the Intelligent Design movement serves as a label for a kind of happy middle ground between creationism and scientific materialism, advocating a harmony between theistic religious belief and good science. I will happily admit that such a harmony can exist, and while it is not my cup of tea, other people are welcome to it. But the middle section of the opinion gives a powerful summary of the evidence that ID is not it, and I hope it gets read.