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elfsLooking at our culture, there are only three arenas where the Intelligent Design argument can be made:
We are left with the second and third. Facts and evidence are often of little use in the realm of popular opinion, but in a court of law, facts and evidence are everything. Forget the theatre of "popular debate"; what a judge knows how to do is weight facts and evidence. And here we have the results of intelligent design getting an honest airing before a dispassionate arbiter: after hearing both sides present their facts and evidence in the case, the judge unambigiously decided that one side was without merit, dishonest and deceptive; more importantly, he decided that the dishonesty and deception was in service to an attempt to circumvent Constitutional guarantees that children in the hands of state agents would not receive unique religious indoctrination.
To answer the question posed in the subject, the answer is simple: the judge knows enough. He knows as much as you or I. I doubt that judges going into any given civil case understand all of the issues before him, be that case about insurance contracts, property mortgaging, or science: his duty is to be taught the issue as presented by both sides, and then make a decision based upon the facts presented (and to determine the veracity of the facts presented) in accordance with the one thing he is expected to know: the law.
One of the important aspects of science is that once a discovery is made, the paper describing that discovery is a recipe any other competent individual can follow to reproduce the results, using the materials found in nature. You don't need a PhD. You don't need the label "scientist" to be able to do it. You just need to be able to read. Judge Jones understood that, and he also understood that so far there hasn't been a single paper from the Intelligent Design proponents that puts forth any results or study that has that important characteristic.
Judge Jones put that hook into the mouth of Intelligent Design and yanked it up onto shore. It might flop about for a while, gasping for air, but it'll never be the same again.
- In the papers and journals of scientists,
- In the realm of popular opinion, and
- In a court of law.
We are left with the second and third. Facts and evidence are often of little use in the realm of popular opinion, but in a court of law, facts and evidence are everything. Forget the theatre of "popular debate"; what a judge knows how to do is weight facts and evidence. And here we have the results of intelligent design getting an honest airing before a dispassionate arbiter: after hearing both sides present their facts and evidence in the case, the judge unambigiously decided that one side was without merit, dishonest and deceptive; more importantly, he decided that the dishonesty and deception was in service to an attempt to circumvent Constitutional guarantees that children in the hands of state agents would not receive unique religious indoctrination.
To answer the question posed in the subject, the answer is simple: the judge knows enough. He knows as much as you or I. I doubt that judges going into any given civil case understand all of the issues before him, be that case about insurance contracts, property mortgaging, or science: his duty is to be taught the issue as presented by both sides, and then make a decision based upon the facts presented (and to determine the veracity of the facts presented) in accordance with the one thing he is expected to know: the law.
One of the important aspects of science is that once a discovery is made, the paper describing that discovery is a recipe any other competent individual can follow to reproduce the results, using the materials found in nature. You don't need a PhD. You don't need the label "scientist" to be able to do it. You just need to be able to read. Judge Jones understood that, and he also understood that so far there hasn't been a single paper from the Intelligent Design proponents that puts forth any results or study that has that important characteristic.
Judge Jones put that hook into the mouth of Intelligent Design and yanked it up onto shore. It might flop about for a while, gasping for air, but it'll never be the same again.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 06:22 am (UTC)Looking at our culture, there are only three arenas where the Intelligent Design argument can be made:
1. In the papers and journals of scientists,
2. In the realm of popular opinion, and
3. In a court of law.
Additional arenas would include legislative bodies and school boards, to name only two.
But I'm quibbling only with your rhetoric; I agree with the substance of your argument.
Cheers,
- Eddie
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 08:18 am (UTC)Well, no, but it may help put ID where it belongs: as a valid philosophical perspective on why life evolved as it did. It is in trying to extend it into addressing the "how" questions that it has floundered, just as trying to use scientific evolutionary theory to deny any possibility of intelligent guidance would be going beyond its valid parameters. If a science text were to make such a statement, if it somehow made it through the review process, I'd expect it to be struck down in the courts also...well, at least I hope it would, given the precedent set.
Evolutionists' problems in the public opinion realm are at least somewhat of their own making. Sticking to the science and only the science is what works; veering the debate into the theist/antitheist arena, as Dawkins and others haven't seemed to be able to resist, is just muddying the waters unnecessarily & turns off a lot of casual visitors to the debate.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 03:45 pm (UTC)My theory was that we should let ID be taught in biology as soon as the churches start letting scientists offer weekly rebuttals to the mass.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 04:38 pm (UTC)Heh. I did this great problem on the heat in heaven and hell based on biblical passages when I was a Physics major. Turns out heaven is a LOT hotter than hell...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 07:04 pm (UTC)http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/jonesbio.htm