December 18, 2005 - December 24, 2005 Archives
On evolutionnews Rob Crowther quotes “a legal scholar” who is offering an interesting legal analysis of the Ohio situation.
Crowther informs us the scholar is Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf.
Crowther hardly does DeWolf justice here. In addition to being a law professor, DeWolf was also the lead counsel for the Discovery Institute’s Amicus Curiae brief in the Kitzmiller case. In addition, DeWolf is one of the authors of “Teaching the Controversy: Darwinism, Design and the Public School Curriculum”.
Neither the Amicus Brief nor the “Teaching the controversy” fared to well in the Kitzmiller decision. In fact, the Amicus Brief may very well have been the reason why the Judge decided to rule that intelligent design is not science.
Amazingly, Witt continues his fallacious arguments and further undermines the Discovery Institute’s official position as submitted to the Court in its Amicus Brief
What is the creature on the left? If you said, “cockroach”, give yourself a lump of coal. But if you said, “termite”, give yourself a PEZ dispenser with your favorite cartoon character. It is in fact a specimen of Mastotermes darwiniensis, a large and primitive termite that lives in Australia (they get all the cool critters). It looks like a roach because termites evolved from roaches, and this particular genus contains primitive members that still resemble their roach cousins in many respects. On the flip-side, roaches of the wood-eating genus Cryptocercus have many termite-like features, including obligate gut flora and parental care of nymphs. The termites that we’re familiar with – the little white things that eat houses – are simply the nymph stage of an otherwise roach-like insect, and Cryptocercus nymphs look an awful lot like termites themselves.
A biologist going by the name of “Mr. Darwin” has a great post up about the evolution of termites from roaches, and the various lines of morphological, molecular, and fossil evidence we have. And there is a cool picture of cute little Cryptocercus nymphs feeding from their mommy’s anal secretions. Go check it out.
On Seattle based Discovery Institute’s EvolutionNews (sic) Blog, Jonathan Witt continues the confusion by not only apparantly distancing himself from the Discovery Instute’s Amicus Brief filed in the Kitzmiller case but also by showing his unfamiliarity with the actual ruling by Judge Jones:
Witt Wrote:To get around the substantive differences between intelligent design and biblical creationism, Judge Jones had to fixate on motive (both real and imagined); he had to assume that if he can identify one motive, he has magically ruled out the possibility of another motive playing a crucial role (in this case, the desire of ID scientists to follow the evidence wherever leads, even if it means upsetting a few Darwinists); and he had to mischaracterize ID as a religion-based theory when instead it’s a theory based on scientific evidence that, like Darwinism, has larger metaphysical implications.
Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber points to a new Steven Fuller article in the Times Higher Education Supplement (where there’s also a paper by Brighouse himself). Although Fuller’s remarks are intended to be only peripherally about Intelligent Design, they contain a number of odd statements that suggest the author’s strange views of both science and ID. (For example, according to Fuller, Newton’s life “teaches that the Bible can provide a sure path to great science.” He leaves unexamined other possible lessons that could be drawn, including the obvious ones that genius often transcends the limitations of its time, or that deistic motivations are irrelevant in the presence of empirical validation.)
Fuller makes a big deal about ID’s use of analogies in place of evidence, suggesting that this represents some kind of conceptual breakthrough:
John West as a post criticizing Judge Jones' Kitzmiller decision for being "activist." I've already explained why his arguments are baseless, and so has Pim van Meurs. But I do have a few more comments.
Casey Luskin has announced that (in effect) the January 3 debate on the evidence for intelligent design, which Bill Dembski previously accepted, is off. Luskin wrote
Discovery and its fellows are delighted to debate Dr. Princehouse and/or Kenneth Miller or whomever and want only to do so in a neutral forum with reasonable and MUTUAL agreements on topic, location, timing, and the other modalities associated with civilized debate. One side does not simply announce a place, and a time a few weeks’ hence, and demand that the opponent show up. Otherwise it looks like a publicity stunt.
As of this writing, however, Dembski has not notified Princehouse of his withdrawal, so we don’t know if he’ll be there or not.
Nevertheless, the show will go on. The Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University will sponsor Ken Miller’s appearance at Strosacker Hall on January 3 at 7:00 p.m. If Dembski doesn’t appear, he doesn’t appear, but we’ll all be there and we’ll be sorry he missed the party.
Note that the event will be webcast: details to follow.
RBH
“ID is rapidly going international and crossing metaphysical and theological boundaries,” Dembski wrote. “The important thing is ID’s intellectual vitality.”
Source: Link
Seems that Bill understands that ID never really was science…
Or in the words of DeForrest Kelley (Dr McCoy)
[PvM:You may have to cut and paste the link since the site does not allow direct linking.]
1. He’s Dead Jim 2. He’s Dead Jim 3. He’s Dead Jim 4. He’s Dead Jim
On the Discovery Institute’s blog, West revisits the statement by Judge Jones and reaches some poorly argued conclusions:
West Wrote:Take the following remarkable passage from his opinion:
the Court is confident that no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial area. Finally, we will offer our conclusion on whether ID is science not just because it is essential to our holding that an Establishment Clause violation has occurred in this case, but also in the hope that it may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us. [p. 63] (emphasis added)
My favorite essay arguing against intelligent design isn’t one of Gould’s, or Dawkins’, or Sagan’s. Rather, it’s one that has portions I disagree with, but the eloquent prose simply can’t be beat:
“The analogy which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art, and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.
You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between every thing which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation.”
These come from an 1814 essay by Percy Bysse Shelley, analyzing the claims in William Paley’s Natural Theology, a text which explores arguments very similar to those used by modern-day ID advocates. So similar, in fact, that although some of the minor details have changed, Shelley’s refutation of it can be easily used today.
As this essay demonstrates, and as recently highlighted in this post, it behooves us to know our history—and none know this better than those who teach the subject. University of Iowa history professor Douglas Baynton wrote an interesting letter to the Washington Post this past Saturday, offering a unique perspective on the “controversy” regarding Intelligent Design by using 19th century geography texts to speculate about how a course using intelligent design might look.
(Continued at Aetiology)
[Note: I’d planned to post this Tuesday, but didn’t want it to get lost in all the Dover issues. I think, given the decision and the role the history of the ID movement played in that, it’s even more relevant today that this history is considered.–T]
Barbara Forrest, the official chronicler of the history of the ID movement and one of the stars of the Kitzmiller decision, will be talking with Ira Flatow today on NPR’s “Science Friday”.
The show is broadcast live at 2 pm EST. Listen in then or later via podcast.
(Today is also the annual Birds and Birding show on Science Friday. What a bonus!)
Update: Commenter Michael Hopkins provides the link.
Someone sent me this in email. Says it all, doesn’t it? If anyone has seen the original posted on a newspaper website or something, please post the link.
Some kind of trophy for the most absurd reaction to the Kitzmiller decision must go to Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics And Religious Liberty Commission. In this article in the Washington Post, Land is quoted as saying:
“This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.”
Reaction to the Dover decision keeps coming in. Former Discovery Institute Attorney Seth Cooper has posted this essay claiming that Judge Jones mischaracterized Cooper's actions on behalf of the DI in the Dover case. Golly! That sounds serious.
Meanwhile, Paul Nelson offers these thoughts on why ID folks shouldn't be mired in despair. Along the way he offers up a single sentence of the decision which, in Nelson's opinion, shows the Judge being something less than meticulous.
And over at Slate, William Saletan takes up the thankless task of trying to poke holes in Jones' masterful opinion. He accuses Jones of relying on a false dichotomy between science and religion.
Short reply: Cooper is wrong, Nelson is desperate and Saletan is being silly.
I have posted longer replies to all three over at EvolutionBlog. Cooper here. Nelson here. Saletan here.
It seems that Dembski has decided to ‘decisively’ move the goalposts of ID further out and although in earlier writings he did mention the possibility of ‘front loading’, he also considered such possibilities to be unlikely and ‘deistic’ in nature.
Now he may have clarified his position:
Dembski Wrote:Let’s cut to the chase: Is the designer responsible for biological complexity God? Even as a very traditional Christian and an ardent proponent of ID, I would say NOT NECESSARILY. To ask who or what is the designer of a particular object is to ask for the immediate intelligent agent responsible for its design. The point is that God is able to work through derived or surrogate intelligences, which can be anything from angels to organizing principles embedded in nature.
For instance, just because I hold to both Christian theism and ID doesn’t mean that God directly designed and implemented the bacterial flagellum by specifically toggling its components. It could well have happened by a process of natural genetic engineering of the sort envisioned by James Shapiro. The design would be no less real, but God’s role in the design would be distant, not proximal.
Philosophers have long distinguished between primary and secondary causes. The problem is that under the pall of methodological naturalism, secondary causes have been identified with purely materialistic processes. But it’s perfectly legitimate for secondary causes to include teleological processes. I develop all this at length in THE DESIGN REVOLUTION.
Anything from angels to organizing principles, I clearly see the scientific value of ID here. And the logical conclusion from Dembski’s admissions about front-loading is that natural explanations would be able to explain the origin of such features as the bacterial flagellum. Thus, lacking any further evidence, science would be unable to reach a conclusion of ‘intelligent design’ as the evidence would be hidden beyond our observations. In other words, Intelligent Design has moved itself further into the realm of scientific vacuity.
Not bad for a days work though. Boy do I wish Dembski had testified at the Dover trial.
I find it fascinating that Dembski on the one hand seems to be arguing that complex specified information requires a supernatural origin while on the other hand arguing that CSI can in fact be explained by natural law alone. Whether or not a supernatural designer was responsible for the front loading is a question science cannot answer. Which is exactly why Intelligent Design makes for poor science and good apologetics. As such, I start to understand more and more why Dembski has returned to apologetics.
Given the recent scientific progress, it may not come as a surprise to see ID proponents retreat to front-loading.
With the recent resounding defeat of Intelligent Design in Dover, ID supporters may actually have to try and do some science to support their claims. On the basis of past efforts, the prospect does not look good for them. Richard von Sternberg, the Intelligent Design-friendly editor who was responsible for publishing Meyer’s woeful review paper, has recently had a paper published with anti-Darwinian James Shapiro (who has said he is not an ID supporter).
In this they try to address the bete noir of creationists, both young earth and intelligent design varieties, “Junk” DNA. The fact that the vast majority of the genome is probably parasitic junk is hard to reconcile with an intelligent designer, so a lot of effort is expended to show that all that DNA must be doing something essential. Sternberg and Shapiro try to show that one major class of non-coding DNA, highly repetitive DNA, is essential for genome function. However, all they end up demonstrating is shoddy scholarship.
Back in January I seem to remember the Thomas More Law Center declaring “A Revolution in Evolution Is Underway.” But today, according to the Associated Press, “Santorum says will break ties to law firm that represented school district on intelligent design.” Now, Santorum was on the TMLC board, and encouraged the Dover Area School Board early on – see for example his January 23, 2005, op-ed in the Allentown [PA] Morning Call, entitled “A Balanced Approach to Teaching Evolution,” (helpfully now hosted on the Discovery Institute website) wherein Santorum wrote, “The Dover Area School District has taken a step in the right direction by attempting to teach the controversy of evolution.”
But, I guess that’s what poor Thomas More gets for repeatedly citing Santorum and his attempted amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act – Santorum’s name came up 36 times in the trial transcripts, in fact.
Science has just named its top breakthrough for 2005. You get one guess after this hint: it starts with “E.” That’s right, it’s evolution, and it is based on all of the remarkable advances in evolution in 2005, such as the comparison of the human and chimpanzee genomes, which just happens to have been featured in the Kitzmiller trial. I’m still hoping Science reprints a chunk of Jones’s opinion, like they printed the McLean opinion in 1982.
Update: The full issue is now online. Holy moly, Jawless Fish Have Form of Adaptive Immunity. That’s big news if you’re into that kind of thing.
I have a theory, which is mine, that there is an entity or intelligence (which I will not name, since that would be unscientific) which resides in the Arctic and makes midwinter use of reindeer in a complex specified task. This theory of mine guides my research, which may not be mine, but as long as it can be interpreted to support my theory of an Arctic Artificer, I can appropriate it as mine, which is just as good.
My theory predicts that there is a peak of artificer activity in late December. The hypothesis that reindeer activity generates a polar distribution force for the delivery of artifacts generated by the Arctic Artificer is consistent with a large body of evidence. It also makes testable predictions. For example:
- It predicts that reindeer ought to begin to spread out their levels of activity throughout the day and night in midwinter, to be better prepared to handle the complex specified task, which requires 24 hours or more of sustained activity. Reindeer activity could be monitored to test this prediction.
- It predicts that reindeer activity should be correlated with late December deliveries of artifacts to households around the world.
- It predicts that the polar distribution force is regulated, at least in part, by solar radiation. It might be possible to observe the incidence of solar radiation in the arctic, and to block the effects of reduced solar radiation with some really bright lights.
If the hypothesis is corroborated by these and other experimental tests, it might facilitate the delivery of artifacts, and/or the early detection of the appearance of the Arctic Artificer. Which would make my theory really important, and ha-ha-nanny-boo to those who deny the existence of an artifact production center somewhere near the North Pole.
I am pleased to report that there is a paper in the prestigious journal Nature which has evaluated my prediction A, and even though the authors had no idea that they were testing Arctic Artificer Theory, I can stretch this tenuous link to a tiny and irrelevant prediction which could also be interpreted to support many other alternatives as support for my grand theory, which is mine and reflects the glory of the Artificer, blessed be his unnamed name. (Oh, and if you can't guess what I'm talking about here, here's a clue.)
But seriously, there really are observations of circadian activity in arctic reindeer that suggest something interesting is going on in reindeer brains in midwinter and midsummer. It doesn't really support any claims of toyshops at the North Pole, but you knew that already.
Continue reading "A possible link between reindeer, daylight deficiency, and artifact delivery" (on Pharyngula)
University of Chicago Law Professor Albert Alschuler posted some comments on the Kitzmiller decision that are embarrassingly bad in many places. I can do no better than Brian Leiter in refuting them---his post deserves to be read in its entirety. But I do want to emphasize one point. Alschuler accuses Judge Jones of declaring that "[t]he first amendment makes intelligent design unmentionable in the classroom." As Leiter says, this is not even close to what Judge Jones said. Unfortunately, I expect this accusation to be repeated over and over again by those who profit greatly off of their image as a persecuted minority, hounded by evil atheist courts. All we can do is reiterate that it is not true.
The Court found that the government of Pennsylvania---acting through a local school board---has no authority to endorse a religious viewpoint by declaring that Intelligent Design is scientifically valid. But any individual in the Dover school district is free, today as always, to declare his personal belief in Intelligent Design, to tell other people about Intelligent Design, and to encourage people to read Of Pandas And People. What they are not free to do is to propagate ID on the government's dime and on the government's time. They are not free to spend taxpayer money on it, or put the government's seal of approval on it. But they are absolutely free to propagate it on their own time and in their own ways---indeed, it would be entirely illegal for the government to stop them from doing so.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how dangerous it is to confuse your right to do something with your power to do something with government money or with government authority. These two things are worlds apart. The Free Exercise Clause entirely protects the former. The Establishment Clause, however, severely restricts the latter---as it ought to.
The Discovery [sic] Institute has brought forth Prof. David DeWolf of Gonzaga University to evaluate the Kitzmiller case. Interestingly, DeWolf doesn't complain about Judge Jones' finding that the Dover ID policy violated the Establishment Clause. But he is bothered that Jones "went on to address the question of whether intelligent design is science." But this is not improper for a court to do.
Not long ago, as previously noted on the Thumb, Cal Thomas made noises in USA Today wondering whether “Darwinists” would show up for a debate on the merits of ID as a scientific enterprise.
That canard was rebutted by Patricia Princehouse of Case Western Reserve University and Ohio Citizens for Science, who said in a letter to USA Today:
The question is, will the designists show? Calls go out every day to present scientific data at scientific conferences. The designists are always busy that decade. Meanwhile, the scientific data supporting evolution continue to pour in on a daily basis and produce spinoff applications that create new medicine, more productive crops, cleaner water and better living for billions of people worldwide.
The Darwinists show up to work every day in thousands of labs around the globe. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Beckel, your guys are the ones who don’t show.
January. Cleveland. The “science” of ID. Put up or shut up.
In response, some of the expectable wingnuts came out of the woodwork, but finally Bill Dembski accepted the challenge to “put up or shut up”. While some of the formal details are not yet agreed on, Dembski has agreed to the time, date and venue:
Strosacker Hall on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, 7-9 pm January 3, with Ken Miller to represent the “Darwinist” position. We plan to webcast the event: details will follow as we have them. Miller will be there regardless of details.
We look forward to seeing Dembski’s affirmative evidence for the intelligent design conjecture. (I myself am hoping to see some validation data, reliability assessments, and calibration runs on Dembski’s design detection methodology, “specified complexity”. Anecdotes about political operatives and science fiction movies are a pretty thin empirical base for a putatively paradigm-changing methodology.)
RBH
I’ve got about 30 minutes to kill, so I might as well give some general thoughts on the IDists’ reactions to the cataclysmic Dover decision.
Panderichthys is a widely recognized transitional form in tetrapod evolution (you know, one of those transitional fossils we're so often told don't exist). A description of a specimen with a well-preserved pelvic girdle has just been described in Nature, and it tells us some more about the history of tetrapod locomotion.
Panderichthys is an interesting animal—it definitely looks more like a fish than a salamander, but its fins are stout and bony, and other characteristics of its skeleton clearly ally it with the tetrapods. In the shift from an aquatic to a fully terrestrial life, the limbs and their supporting pectoral and pelvic girdles had to undergo major changes. In fish, the pectoral girdles are coupled to the skull, while the pelvic girdles are small and 'floating' in the musculature. To bear the animal's weight, the pectoral girdles lost their connection to the skull, and both became thicker, stronger, and more closely bound to the axial skeleton. The fins themselves had to change from a fan of slender fin-rays to more solid load-bearing digits. In Panderichthys, we see a mixture of these changes in process.
Continue reading "Panderichthys rhombolepis" (on Pharyngula)
Well, this is an interesting feeling. I am sitting in Starbucks, in downtown San Francisco, slurping a Frappucino, blogging on my laptop, across the street from the KQED studio (KQED is the San Francisco public radio station that I listen to every day), waiting to go on KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny. Could you get any more stereotypically-NPR-junkie-ish than this? I mean, apart from being in Minnesota at a Garrison Keillor event?
The show is obviously on Judge Jones’s Intelligent Decision on Intelligent Design. KQED’s audio is streamed on the web, so catch the show if you can. Apparently Casey Luskin will also be on. I imagine he has a few issues with the decision…
Whenever NPR needs a reliably ignorant voice from the Religious Right, they turn to their man at the Heritage Foundation, Joe Loconte. His most recent contribution, Intelligent Design Has a Place in the Classroom, is typical.
Contains No Original Ideas: Loconte’s main argument just echoes the testimony of Michael Behe at Dover, saying that intelligent design today is just like the Big Bang 70 years ago: originally resisted by scientists because of its religious implications, then ultimately accepted because of the evidence…
Read more at Recursivity, and leave comments there.
Last summer I travel to Fairbanks, Alaska to attend the Evolution 2005 conference at the University of Alaska. During my travels, I visited North Pole and stopped by Santa Claus’s house. Santa was there that day and eager to hear my Christmas list.
I can’t say exactly what all I asked for because otherwise it won’t come true. However, the jolly old man came through for me earlier this week. Yes, Dover, there is a Santa Claus.
On my way out I feed Donner, who was looking a little warm in the surprisingly hot Alaska afternoon.
I have many more pictures from my Alaska trip and will post the rest of them when I catch another break.
Since the charge of "judicial activism" is, predictably, being sounded by those who differ from Judge Jones in Kitzmiller, I thought it worthwhile to explain a little about what this term means. As I'll explain, while there are cases where judges certainly engage in what can be called "activism," it is more often the case that the charge of "judicial activism" is basically meaningless, or, worse, refers to the very concept of "judicial review" itself. Opposition to the institution of judicial review---led, in the modern day, by Robert Bork and his followers---is, in the views of many lawyers (and I'm one of them), a very, very serious threat to the American Constitution. The liberty and security of the people is in vastly more danger from legislative activism: the fact that legislatures routinely ignore their constitutional limitations, ride roughshod over the rights of the minority, do virtually anything a legislative majority demands of them, and then scream holy hell when a judge has the temerity to enforce the Constitution's limits.
William Dembski, somewhat startled by the Dover ruling is looking for a positive note and seems to have found one which I can share:
This galvanizes the Christian community,” said William Dembski, a leading proponent of the theory and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think-tank that promotes intelligent design research. “People I’m talking to say we’re going to be raising a whole lot more funds now.”
Nothing would impress me more if these increased contributions could finally lead to a scientifically relevant contribution of Intelligent Design.
Although, as the Beatles said it so well with their song “[Money] can’t buy me love”, the same may very well apply to scientific relevance. In the same article, Zylstra provides us with a comment which may help us understand Dembski’s return to apologetics
Zylstra Wrote:“The strength of intelligent design is as an apologetic - that God is the creator, but not a scientific explanation.”
The National Review weighs in on the Kitzmiller decision, going for their usual simplistic black & white dichotomizing. David Klinghoffer thinks the choice is God or Darwin. The split is between god-hating atheistic evilutionists (apparently, Judge Jones must be in that group, but I don't know anything about his religious beliefs) and good Jesus-loving Christian creationists, with no conscionable position in between.
To support his claim, he trots out a parade of the wicked: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Paul Mirecki, and…PZ Myers. Ooo-whee, I find myself in august company!
Continue reading "True Christians™ don't do science" (on Pharyngula)
Over at National Review Online, Prof. Lee Strang complains that "the recent Dover case shows just how far the Supreme Court's establishment-clause case law has strayed and also serves as a cautionary note to others who would include intelligent design in the public-school science classroom." He believes that the Everson case has led courts to "purge religion from the public square." This, of course, is nonsense, although very common nonsense.
This gem is too precious to be lost during the reaction to the Dover Decision.
Do you know how the Discovery Institute likes to say the Designer might not be God, but perhaps a Space Alien or Time Traveller?
Here’s a typical instance from Phillip Johnson:
“It certainly could be God, a supernatural creature, but in principle it could be space aliens of high intelligence who did the designing,” he says.
Well, look out, Phil - here comes Discovery’s Jonathan Witt, with what can only be described as a Freudian Slip.
Over at the shell-shocked Discovery [sic] Institute's blog, Casey Luskin lists ten complaints about the Kitzmiller decision. Much of it is predictable foot-stamping ("ID's not, not, not religion!") but it's worth some quick responses nevertheless.
The purpose of this thread is collecting the many remarkable/amazing/unbelievable quotes and reactions to Judge Jones’s decision yesterday in Kitzmiller v. Dover.
I’ll start with a tidbit indicating that there might even be some trouble brewing at the Discovery Institute, from nothing less than a Discovery Institute board member, Mike Vaska:
One question I received from a reporter yesterday asked, essentially, if the fight against intelligent design is over with yesterday’s decision. MSNBC has an article along a similar theme today, and those interviewed in the article say the same thing I did: it ain’t over by a long shot. (PZ has some similar sobering thoughts on the topic). While I do think the decision handed down yesterday will make it more difficult for anyone contemplating introducing ID into the classroom, as suggested in the MSNBC article, all that means is that the focus will have to shift a bit. I suspect we’ll see more of “teach the controversy” and less push to teach intelligent design–something the Discovery Institute has already moved to, anyway.
Additionally, while ID has been the major thorn in the side of pro-science groups, it’s obviously not the only bad science out there: just the best-funded. As discussed a few days ago, we still have huge challenges to deal with regarding science education in this country–and ID is but one facet of that. We still have groups that regularly spew misinformation about HIV/AIDS, vaccination, global warming, etc.–and certainly, the evolution deniers won’t be going away. Answers in Genesis is working on their “creation museum”, the Discovery Institute is still crying about the decision, and certainly ID proponents around the country are going to regroup and work on a revised strategy. This isn’t something that’s going to go away, and it’s not time to rest on our laurels.
My central passion is working on teaching good science, and getting both students and the general public interested in and educated about scientific topics–and that won’t change just because we’ve achieved a major victory against one faction of the anti-science movement. Thus, while I whole-heartedly salute and appreciate the efforts of all of those involved with this trial, the fact remains that we still have much more work to do. I hope many of you who’ve become interested in these issues during the Dover trial will stick with us as we deal with future challenges as well.
A one-shot blog carnival of material related to Judge Jones’ decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover lawsuit is now available at The Questionable Authority. If there are links that aren’t there that you think should be, feel free to leave them in the comments over there.
Now that Ed Brayton and Burt Humburg have told the story (direct link to Skeptic article) of how the Pandas drafts were discovered -- trust me, it was obvious if you really paid attention to the available historical sources -- I will share one other event that is leading me to suspect that I may have psychic abilities.
Burt Humburg and I wrote an article about the Dover trial that includes a lot of background information and behind-the-scenes stuff that most are probably unaware of. It will be in the next issue of Skeptic, but in light of today’s ruling, Michael Shermer, the editor of the magazine, decided to make it available on their website immediately. You can see it here.