Guest Post by Morbo
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading U.S. District Judge John E. Jones’ opinion (.pdf) striking down the teaching of “intelligent design” in Dover, Pa.
As the Carpetbagger reported on Tuesday, Jones declared ID instruction a violation of the separation of church and state. He could have done that in 10 pages. But Jones’ opinion is 139 pages long. There’s a lot more going on here.
Jones declares flatly that intelligent design is not a science. My favorite part of the decision is where Jones tears Lehigh University professor and ID guru Michel Behe to shreds, pointing out in clear and concise language why the snake oil Behe peddles isn’t science.
ID backers, Jones pointed out, set the bar impossibly high by always finding ways to dismiss evidence that backs up evolution — while their own claims remain unfalsifiable.
“[T]he purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations. ID is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in this world. While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory.”
Jones also exposed the mendacity of the Dover board. He says that people in the community were poorly served by a board that was hell bent on raising contentious church-state issues. He openly called board members liars, noting that some of them, while on the witness stand, offered testimony that conflicted with what they had said during depositions. One gets the impression that ticked Jones off. Wrote Jones,
“The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”
Intelligent design advocates are whistling past the graveyard, insisting that Jones’ decision is no big deal and pointing out that it applies to only one area of Pennsylvania. They overlook the fact that this ruling is a slam-dunk.
This was the first legal challenge to intelligent design creationism, and ID proponents didn’t just lose, they were creamed. There is virtually nothing in this decision for them to hang their hat on. The Thomas More Law Center, which litigated the case on behalf of the Dover School Board, completely and utterly botched it. (It serves the board right for hiring a law firm founded by a pizza magnate.)
What made this so much sweeter is that Jones was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush. So please, let the kook right call for his impeachment. (And I must say, I admire Jones for having the gumption to write an opinion this powerful. Any hopes he might have had about taking Samuel Alito’s place on the 3rd Circuit just evaporated.)
We know this issue isn’t going away. ID is on the march in Kansas, Ohio, Minnesota, New Mexico and other states. We still have a lot of work to do to preserve good science education and the church-state wall. Jones’ opinion is an excellent start, but that’s all it is — a start.
One final thought on this: Readers probably know that in November Dover residents voted out the pro-ID board and replaced it with a slate that favors teaching evolution. The new board plans to not only drop intelligent design but expand instruction about evolution, which had been limited to one day. Imagine that — the central organizing principle of modern biology was relegated to one day! The new board plans to rectify that as well. Bully to them.