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

I comment on this exchange below:

>>> Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> 01/10/06 2:14 PM >>>
David Opderbeck wrote:

> Yes, but it has little to do with the argument that it was "essential"
> for Judge Jones to make sweeping findings about whether ID is
> "science." As you note, Ted, ID could be considered "not science" and
> yet have a valid secular purpose, such as presenting philosophical
> arguments about evolution. The legal issue isn't whether ID meets some
> definition of "science." The issue is one of motive. As you've
> correctly noted, the motive here wasn't really to present
> philosophical arguments about evolution, it was to promote a
> particular religious viewpoint about creation.
>

But in this case the defendants did not raise this valid secular purpose
argument other than by arguing that since ID is science, teaching ID
satisfies the secular purpose requirement.
The legal issue is one of purpose, motives of the legislator may include
religious aspects and still not violate the establishment clause if
there is a valid secular purpose.
As such, the defense's claim that such a valid purpose overrides and
religious motives of the board needs to be addressed. Showing that the
claimed purpose is a sham, essentially settles the matter.

Ted's point:
Yes, Pim, *in Dover* the claimed purpose was indeed "a sham," and that's a
shame b/c ipso facto it's a miserable test case for the legitimate
discussion of philosophical aspects of and problems with evolution. That's
why TDI ran a mile away from the case.

But it would not be a sham, if (e.g.) I were teaching high school physics
again (as I did a quarter century ago) and I wanted to talk about the "fine
tuning" of the universe, in the context of talking about the big bang (which
some high school teachers do). Nor would it be a sham to discuss the issue
of Scientific American from a couple of years back, in which they proclaimed
rather ambitiously and unobjectively on the cover that the multiverse
hypothesis was well established--and then to criticise this from the design
perspective, since many physicists and cosmologists themselves take that
view (e.g., George Ellis, John Polkinghorne, Alan Sandage, and ASAers
Jennifer Wiseman, Owen Gingerich, Deb Haarsma, and Joan Centrella).

That would be a perfectly legitimate secular intellectual enterprise, but
since an emphasis on "fine tuning" is part of ID (a part, admittedly, that
the many creationist supporters of ID want to forget about b/c it requires
one to assume the general validity of the big bang), Judge Jones says that's
now out of bounds.

The trial is just one more piece of evidence, to me, that our current
notion of what counts as public education in this nation is part of the
problem, not part of the solution.

Ted
Received on Wed Jan 11 08:47:57 2006