Re: Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dove...

David Opderbeck wrote:

> /So in other words, whether or not something is science will make the
> difference between valid secular purpose and no valid secular purpose.
> /
> This doesn't follow from anything you've said, and I've provided
> several hypotheticals already to show why this isn't so. I agree with
> you that something can have some religious implications and yet have
> an overriding secular purpose under the Lemon test. But again,
> "purpose" is "motive."

Whether purpose is motive has no importance. If there is a valid secular
purpose then the purpose prong of Lemon will not be triggered.

>
> Let's try another hypo: the school board members in the town
> of Ishkabib are uninformed about the ID debate. They read some ID
> literature and are convinced it is good "science." Accordingly, they
> adopt a policy that Ishkabib schools should include ID in the science
> curriculum. There is no history of efforts to enact scientific
> creationism policies in Ishkabib. There is no indication that the
> Ishkabib school board intended anything but to enhance the science
> curriculum of the Ishkabib schools. The record establishes, and the
> court finds, that the Ishkabib school board members were motivated
> only by a perhaps misguided desire to expand the science curriculum.
>
> Would the Ishkabib ID policy violate the "purpose" prong? Not under a
> proper reading of what "purpose" means.

Lacking a valid secular purpose, the purpose prong will fail.
But in this case there is a clear record: The defendants argued that
teaching ID served a valid secular purpose and thus the purpose prong
should not be triggered. In their argument they insisted that since ID
is science, them requiring ID to be taught could not be faulted under
the purpose prong.
In other words, their defense was based on a valid secular purpose, for
this it is essential that it is shown that this secular purpose in
insincere and a sham. Since the issue was that ID is science, this would
require showing that ID failed as a science.
Received on Thu Jan 5 23:21:04 2006