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United States District Court judge John E. Jones delivered a ruling against the teaching of the theory of intelligent design in American schools today, stating that the inclusion of these teachings in public schools violates the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state. What is your position on this issue? This is a weblog search feed for bloggers who are discussing evolution and intelligent design. [FEED]
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Pharyngula
“The Discovery Institute has responded to the Kitzmiller decision, hurling out a thunderbolt of a press release. What else would they do?“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,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading think tank researching the scientific theory known as intelligent design.
Their criticism has two predictable prongs: it was an activist judge, and this is censorship. Both objections have already been preempted by Judge Jones.
He was not an “activist judge”, but was responding to reckless activism by “ill-informed” creationist activists. Judge Jones, by the way, was appointed by GW Bush.
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, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
It was also not censorship. The judge goes out of his way to say that the creationists should be free to continue to study their ideas…they are just so poorly formed and without foundation that they do not meet the standards required to justify teaching it in a public school.
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.
The DI is going to have to go shopping for a new schtick. “Intelligent Design” has just been rubbished in the courts. Can we expect “Sudden Appearance Theory” to suddenly become fashionable?”
Pandagon: Creationists get spanked
“In midst of everything, a small victory for the forces of reason and law against a tide of fundamentalism–a Dover, PA judge has ruled that teaching religion in the science classroom and thinking you can get away with it by calling it something else, in this case “Intelligent Design”, is unconstitutional. As you can imagine, PZ Myers is stoked. The judge is a hero today for those of us aligned against the avalanche of bullshit the religious right heaps out on a daily basis–he refuses to play along with the notion that teaching religion and calling it science makes it science.What really makes my heart do the pitter-patter dance it does when someone gets into a righteous fury while defending the truth against horseshit is this part of the decision where Judge Jones calls out the supposedly moral troops for their non-stop lying.
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.
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.
Cue your favorite team’s fight song. Reading this decision, I’m struck again by what I’ve stated before about how the actual religious beliefs of the religious right are so easily tossed aside if it furthers their cause of trying to further their theocratic goals. In this case, we have a series of board members who lied about their intentions in official capacities as board members and of course when they pushed their case in court. That, I do believe, is a sin that is specifically forbidden by the 10 Commandments. Unless of course someone snuck in and replaced the commandment against bearing false witness with one saying, “Thou shalt try to sneak your religion into the classroom, even if it’s a violation of the law.”"
Evolution - Intelligent Design Deja Vu
‘Intelligent Design’ Deja Vu: “School boards across the country are facing pressure to teach ‘intelligent design’ in science classes, but what would such courses look like? Thankfully, we need not tax our imaginations. All we have to do is look inside some 19th-century textbooks.”
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