Re: Judge Jones' decision

Well you've got your work cut out for you. This decision is over reaching
and committed to fallacious claims. One could spend quite some time
dissecting it. This is not the first time that the legal process has so
degraded. I think the service you could do Ted would be to show how easily a
legal decision can go off the deep end. The warfare thesis now has the legal
stamp of approval.

> Judge Jones' decision in the Dover case is available here:
> http://www.pepperlaw.com/pepper/pdfs/DoverOpinion.pdf
>
> I am finishing an essay about it for the magazine, Religion in the News.
> The following is my summary response. It goes without saying, this is
> only
> my opinion and reasonable people might reasonably differ with me! Because
> of my crazy schedule this week, I regret that I probably won't be able to
> respond to any comments sent my way, but I will be sure to read them at
> some
> point; they will not be ignored.
>
> ted
>
>
> "The judge's decision is very understandable. Given the situation in
> Dover, he really had no choice but to rule that the school board tried to
> inject a reference to intelligent design for religious reasons, that they
> had no clear secular purpose for doing so. ID is not creationism, but in
> this situation it was just too hard to tell. "The evidence at trial
> demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism," the
> Judge wrote, and I can't blame him. The judge ruled that "it is
> unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public
> school science classroom." Perhaps this leaves open the possibility that
> a science teacher might still be allowed to discuss aspects of ID. If
> not,
> this would be unfortunate, because the decision overlooks the fact that
> there is a small but growing refereed professional literature about
> intelligent design in the philosophy of science. Pennsylvania science
> standards call for teachers to discuss the nature of science, which is a
> reference to philosophy of science. The line between philosophy of
> science
> and science itself is not sharp, and historically traffic has flowed in
> both
> directions. A science teacher could in my opinion have a legitimate
> secular
> purpose in discussing various philosophical objections to aspects of
> evolution that have been raised by scientists in the 146 years since
> Darwin's book was published: the general education of a science student is
> well served when such topics are introduced. I cannot criticize the judge
> for overlooking this, however, since the defense did not make this
> argument.
> They kept insisting that ID is science, not philosophy of science, despite
> the paucity of scientific literature favoring ID."
>
Received on Tue Dec 20 16:32:59 2005