The Verdict? In favour of Science!
Copyright Newsweek 2005
The judge presiding over the Intelligent Design case in Dover has just passed his judgement over the evolution vs. ID case. You can follow the news here, here and here at NS, SciAm and MSNBC respectively. Short story of the 139 page verdict? ID is unconstitutional and is just creationism resurrected, the defence ‘expert witnesses’ (the parents of the children sued the school over the ID issue, so ID proponents are effectively the defendants) hung themselves and the case from their testimony (read how did that happen here). With help from the defendants and good old Biology, the judge have sufficient material to systematically dismantle the defendant’s case and expose ID for what it really is, a plan to discredit science.
So, is the journey from creationism, creation science and finally to intelligent design over now? Would efforts be concentrated to reverse the decreasing trend of American scientists and engineers graduating from schools at last? Far from it.
From what can be gleaned from MSNBC and NS, the IDists view it as a battle lost, but the war yet to be won. So what are they up to now? Protraying themselves as the oppressed ones by accusing the judge as an ‘activist’ in the whole situation, claiming that critical thought and discussions (or debate) on scientific issues are being suppressed. The Discovery Institute, the spearhead behind the Wedge Document tries to squirm its way out of it.
To quote Casey Luskin, an attorney at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, "Discovery’s policy has always been that we don’t think intelligent design should be mandated. We’ve always opposed what the Dover school district did," Luskin said. "We do think intelligent design should be preserved as a constitutional right. I don’t think this decision is going to stop teachers outside the Central District of Pennsylvania from teaching intelligent design." Translation? Now they want to allow teachers to have to decide whether to teach and discuss ID (note, teaching ID is now judged to be unconstitutional in the verdict) in class, so they’re probably gonna fight this out from the freedom of speech angle.
IMHO, they would do far more in promoting that and much more, including promoting free and frank discussion of science by throwing the current Administration (and their conservative President) out of office! Besides, ID discussions don’t belong in the class, for Pete’s sake! You want to know why the entire scientific community discredits ID? Because it’s unscientific! (more like pseudo-science or meta-science!) But being stubborn headed fools they are, they’ll just keep on trying. Although they’re trying to advance a lost cause, in today’s current unpredictability, you can never tell what lies ahead. Only time will tell. In the meantime let’s see what else they’re going to come up with.
