Thoughts in a Haystack: Down and Out in Dover

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Down and Out in Dover

The Discovery Institute is so predictable that Judge Jones went ahead and did exactly that:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID . . . (p. 137)

And the DI's press release says:

The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work . . .

Besides being vastly amusing for falling with such a loud thump coming out of the public relations starting gate, the DI's attempt to catagorize the decision as a blow against the freedom of science must be a new high water mark in even its low rhetoric. How many scientific ideas do you know that "spread" through "open debate" in high schools? And yet, that is all the decision puts restrictions on, as Jones made clear:

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom. (p. 137)

So the DI's press release is nothing more than another dose of bombast, just as transparent as the tired list of purported evidence for design trotted out for all formal occasions: digital code in DNA, molecular machines and "fine tuned" laws of physics. If, as Casey Luskin of the DI says:

As we've repeatedly stressed, the ultimate validity of intelligent will be determined not by the courts but by the scientific evidence pointing to design.

Then what possible complaint do they have with the decision that limits itself to venues that do not produce scientific evidence? And why is the DI turning down money from the Templeton Foundation for research and still pushing the idea of teaching it in public elementary and high school classes, as allegedly "voluntary" instruction under the supposed "academic freedom" of public school teachers to raise the issue?

I think Judge Jones is right. The Discovery Institute is manifestly in error. Just in more ways than even the Judge pointed out.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 2:43 PM