Gordy Slack was on the radio in the Bay Area yesterday and the show is now online. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but I’m sure it was good, since Gordy is quite a thoughtful guy. Gordy is also doing a reading at Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave. SF, CA, on Monday, 7/16. 7:00 pm – I might go myself if I get the chance…

Fri, Jul 13, 2007 – 10:00 AM
Author Gordy Slack
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The show welcomes author Gordy Slack for a conversation focusing on his book, “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design and a School Board in Dover, PA.”

Host: Dave Iverson

Guests: Gordy Slack , author of “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design and a School Board in Dover, PA.”

From NOVA Upcoming Summer & Fall 2007 Programming:

NOVA shows on PBS on Tuesdays @ 8 pm ET/PT (check local listings):

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (w.t.)
November 13, 2007 at 8 pm ET check local listings

One of the latest battles in the war over evolution took place in a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania called Dover. In 2004, the local school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to their high school biology students. The statement suggested that there is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore had to have been designed by an intelligent agent. The science teachers refused to comply with the order, and alarmed parents filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the separation of church and state. Suddenly, the small town of Dover was torn apart by controversy, pitting neighbor against neighbor. NOVA captures the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al., which was closely watched by the world’s media. With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as “What is evolution?” and “Does intelligent design qualify as science?” For years to come, the lessons from Dover will continue to have a profound impact on how science is viewed in our society and how to teach it the classroom.

Produced by NOVA WGBH Science Unit and Vulcan Productions, Inc. Additional production by The Big Table Film Company.

The PNAS Early Edition webpage has just posted a series of papers from the December 2006 National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium, “In the Light of Evolution: Adaptation and Complex Design,” organized by Francisco Ayala and John Avise. The series of papers, on topics ranging from color vision to beetle horns, is now available (I will post the list below the fold). Eugenie C. Scott (aka Genie) was invited to speak at this meeting about evolution education and the history of opposition to it, and the speakers wrote papers to be published in PNAS and a forthcoming NAS volume.

Genie brought me on as a coauthor on the paper she was asked to write. This became:

Although many have read the transcripts of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial (HTML version | PDF version) and found them interesting, reading the transcripts does not give the full sense of what it was like to be in the Kitzmiller courtroom. In real life, in addition to the witness answering questions, the lawyers and witnesses were constantly referring to exhibits that were digitally projected onto a large screen on the right wall of the courtroom. Usually the exhibits were just documents, but when the science witnesses testified, their powerpoint presentations contain fossils, flagella, and everything else in between. I think it is safe to say that the testimony is much easier to understand when read with the demonstrative exhibits available (the exhibit lists and a few exhibits are available online).

However, it takes a lot of work to convert the slides to web format, add captions, embed them in HTML, etc. But as a first step, I and others at NCSE have done this for Kevin Padian’s testimony (testimony+slides | just slides).

I have been forgetting to mention that Darwin descendant Matthew Chapman‘s book 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin^®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania has just appeared in the bookstores. Here is the publisher’s website with background material, an interview with Chapman in New Scientist, the Amazon page, a review, and Chapman’s February 2006 article on the Kitzmiller trial in Harper’s.

This just in:

I was recently interviewed by Karl Mogel for his podcast show The Inoculated Mind. Topics include flagellum evolution and Kitzmiller v. Dover, and Casey Luskin’s inability to admit error. Have a listen if you get a chance.

Tomorrow, Talk of the Nation/Science Friday is doing a show with Edward Humes, author of Monkey Girl (blog, website), Randy Olson, director of Flock of Dodos, and yours truly, author of this spiffy blogpost.

We are in the second hour, so it should be on from 12-1 Pacific time. Apart from the radio, NPR is streamed live from many websites, and the Talk of the Nation archived shows are put online a few hours later.

Those of you who can’t get enough of the Trial of the (21^st) Century are very lucky. This spring, three books are coming out about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Out yesterday was Ed Humes’s Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. On April 1, we will have 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin^®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania by Matthew Chapman. And on May 18 we will have Gordy Slack’s The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA. Yet more books/documentaries/movies are in the offing.

A literary genre, “stream of unconsciousness”, flows from the pen of Casey Luskin. A recent instance of this concerned responses to me, Ed Brayton, and Tim Sandefur concerning Luskin’s claims that legal principles would cause higher courts to “disapprove of” the Kitzmiller decision because of the amount of text Jones copied from the plaintiffs’s proposed findings of fact. I take a look at Luskin’s response and point out some problems in Luskin’s accuracy of recount, structure of argument, premises, and show that Luskin’s asserted “errors” on Jones’s part are either nothing of the sort or don’t signify anything that a higher court would find to be reversible error.

Check it out on the Austringer.

Back in November I was interviewed and photographed by the San Francisco Chronicle for the “Facetime” section of their Sunday newsmagazine. A month or two went by without anything coming out, so I figured I’d been dropped as an uninteresting nerd or some such. Well, I figured wrong, the article is out and my soul is laid bare, including my two cents on religion if anyone’s interested, and the influence of my dear beloved grandmother, college roommates (but see below), and this very group of Panda’s Thumb bloggers on my somewhat strange life. The reporter, Sam Whiting, conducts the “Facetime” interview by asking rapid-fire questions for 20 minutes, and then they excerpt the juiciest bits, resulting in a short piece that really cuts to the chase. Mission accomplished, I’d say.

The well-known liberal rag the National Review has a column from John Derbyshire on Kitzmiller plus one year. It’s worth a read:

Barbara Forrest has written an article that will supposedly appear in January’s print edition of Skeptical Inquirer but is available online now. Titled, The “Vise Strategy” Undone, it’s a recount of the events leading up to and including the Dover trial. And it contrasts William Dembski’s pre-trial fantasies about forcing “Darwinists” to testify under oath (his self-described “vise strategy”) against what actually happened, which is that pro-science testimony carried the day while Dembski and most of his crew chickened out.

Although we’ve all been inundated with tales of Dover for the last year, this article contains a lot stuff that was new to me. This part was my fave:

Dover’s problems actually started in 2002. Bertha Spahr, chair of Dover High School’s science department, began to encounter animosity from Dover residents toward the teaching of evolution. In January 2002, board member Alan Bonsell began pressing for the teaching of creationism. In August, a mural depicting human evolution, painted by a 1998 graduating senior and donated to the science department, disappeared from a science classroom. The four-by-sixteen-foot painting had been propped on a chalkboard tray because custodians refused to mount it on the wall. Spahr learned that the building and grounds supervisor had ordered it burned. In June 2004, board member William Buckingham, Bonsell’s co-instigator of the ID policy, told Spahr that he “gleefully watched it burn” because he disliked its portrayal of evolution.

That’s so wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.

(Cross-posted to Sunbeams from Cucumbers.)

The University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities has put online the videos from this fall’s “Difficult Dialogs” series. Included are talks by Ken Miller, Judge Jones, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and Michael Behe. We had some previous discussion of the Behe talk here. (Apparently Behe was the ID guy who “discovered” that lawyers file a lot of paper with the court before, during, and after a trial, including Proposed Findings of Fact, which of course would be obvious if one had looked at the Kitzmiller documents archive that NCSE has maintained since the trial began.)

The funny thing about the Discovery Institute’s Media/Judge Jones Complaint Division is how it deals with defeat. Oftentimes we will see weeks and weeks of vigorous posting about this or that political fight – but then, if they lose, they often just completely ignore it, like nothing happened.

Today the magazine The Lutheran has made its interview with Judge Jones freely available on its website. October’s cover story is on science and religion, and includes a series of stories on the Lutheran perspective on the evolution/creationism issue. My parents get The Lutheran, so now my strange job has landed in their mailbox. There is no escape!

The Jones interview is notable for including some details on Jones’s experience in becoming a judge – quite an involved process – and on his religious upbringing, which has not been treated in depth elsewhere. We also get some more on his views on the relationship between the judiciary and politics, which Jones has made into a bit of a personal quest following the post-decision claim that Jones had “stabbed in the back” his political allies.

Reference: Mark A. Staples (2006). “‘Not science’: Judge John E. Jones: Lutheran tells about his history-making, intelligent design decision.” The Lutheran, October 2006.

Well, this is probably a slight to revolutionary minds everywhere, but Seed magazine has seen fit to include me in their “Revolutionary Minds” series that they are starting in the October issue which just hit the newsstands. See the NCSE writeup for more. Here is Seed‘s description:

Revolutionary Minds: Portraits of young, visionary iconoclasts who operate in a world in which cross-pollination and the synthesis of ideas are the norm.

Check out the introduction to the “Nine Revolutionary Minds” article:

Every generation has its salon, its emblematic gathering of emergent thinkers. The 20s saw the likes of Matisse, Pound, Hemingway gathered in Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment. The 50s saw Paul Bowles’ “Tangerinos,” with giants Allen Ginsberg, Truamn Capote, and William Burroughs taking up resident in Tangiers. In the 60s there was Andy Warhol’s Factory, the studio where his iconic silk screens were produced and where Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and so many others could be found on any given New York night.

OK, OK, just what the heck is a guy like me doing here? Well:

Nick Matzke will gladly give a quick tutorial about evolution and history of creationism – even if it means lecturing at 3 a.m. while strolling along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, PA. It was there, last November, that Matzke helped the plaintiff’s lawyers cream for their final corss-examination of intelligent design (ID) proponents.

This is, in fact, a true story.

Well, it’s only Monday, but I think I’ve already got the Silliest Thing I’ve Heard All Week: that the creationist/cdesign proponentsist/intelligent design textbook Of Pandas and People is banned from libraries.

In addition to watching the news on Kansas, we have been meaning to post these to PT but haven’t quite gotten to it, so here is a collection of recent commentary on ID/creationism, Kitzmiller, etc. Much of this has already been noted on the NCSE News page.

Coultergeist – Jerry Coyne reviews Ann Coulter’s book Godless in The New Republic, with about as much respect as she deserves (pass-through link, free registration required). I can’t claim responsibility for the science in Coyne’s essay like Dembski did for Coulter, but I did get to comment on a draft, and Coyne (who is personally targetted repeated by Coulter) did tell me that TNR wanted the review of Coulter’s book to be in the same style that Coulter herself wrote. So that explains the invective (although it appears to me that Coyne wasn’t able to turn his scientific side off completely, there are some low-invective zones). If you want to give the ol’ irony meter a spin, check out this post from an ID blogger who is defending Coulter from Coyne:

I think Coyne might have over-reacted just a tad to the part about Ann Coutler “attacking” him. But again, fact-distorting and insult-hurling have always been favorites for Coyne and the evolution community.

Folks may find these online videos or recordings interesting:

The DI’s David DeWolf in April, complaining about the Kitzmiller decision and ignoring all of the substantive points made by Judge Jones.

Joel Cracraft, Nick Matzke, Barbara Forrest, and a creationist guy in February at Columbia University in February. See especially my talk, where I give the 20-minute version of the “how I helped out in Kitzmiller” lecture I have given various places.

The American Enterprise Institute Forum that took place last October during the Kitzmiller case, and where TMLC attorney Richard Thompson took the DI to task for changing their tune. These videos were temporarily online at CSPAN but the AEI has a permanent archive and supplemental materials.

An April meeting of the San Francisco Commonwealth Club with a matchup of Casey Luskin and Cornelius Hunter vs. Eugenie Scott and Eric Rothschild, with two other guys providing constant distractions. Listen especially for Luskin’s admission that ID lost big in Kitzmiller, and Eric Rothschild’s dissection of various vague nonanswers by Cornelius Hunter.

An online “webinar” put up by Pepper-Hamilton, the law firm that contributed major pro bono support for the Kitzmiller case. Participants include Eric Rothschild, Steve Harvey, and Kenneth Miller.

York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, who some say is H.L. Mencken reincarnate, takes on Ann Coulter here.

The schedule for the special symposium on “Intelligent Design on Trial: Lessons from the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism case,” on Monday, June 26, 2006 at the Society for the Study of Evolution meeting at SUNY-Stony Brook has been updated (see below).

Further update: Rob Pennock informs me that the symposium will be videotaped, with the intention of putting it on the internet after the meeting.

In other news, although some helpful suggestions have been made, I am still seeking housing for June 24-27, since I was invited only after dorm housing had closed. Like I said, I’ll pay my share and bring a sleeping pad or something. Surely there is a penniless grad student out there somewhere. Email me: matzkeATncseweb.org. (Update: found housing and received several kind offers. Thanks very much.)

Also, I just noticed that in just one day PT became the top google hit for “SSE 2006”, while the actual meeting website is ranked #6.

Update: just see the newer post for the revised schedule. (Update: I have added the info on the keynote speakers for June 26, and we are going to try and get the event recorded.) Alrighty, who is coming to the 2006 meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), aka SSE 2006, aka Evolution 2006 at SUNY Stony Brook?

Well, it looks like I am going (Note: I may need to bring a sleeping bag and crash on someone’s floor, housing looks fully booked – see my note and contact info) – because someone or other recently realized I ought to be there for this:

Monday, 26 June – Sessions.
Symposium title: Intelligent Design on Trial: Lessons from the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism case.
Organizers: Robert T. Pennock, Michigan State University and Brian Alters, McGill University
List of Speakers

* Robert T. Pennock , Michigan State University, “The Ground Rules of Science”
* Barbara Forrest, Southeastern Louisiana University, “On Being a ‘Hybrid Expert’: Detailing the Intelligent Design ‘Wedge Strategy’ in Federal Court”
* John F. Haught, Georgetown University, ŸEvolution and Faith: “What is at Stake?”
* Brian Alters, McGill University, “But is it Good Pedagogy?”
* Brian Rehm, Kitzmiller Plaintiff & Current Dover School Board member, “From parent and teacher to plaintiff and director”
* Kenneth R. Miller, Brown University, “Fossils, Genes, and Mousetraps - The 21^st Century Case for Evolution”
* Lauri Lebo, Lauri Lebo, Lead Local Reporter in Dover, “Beyond ‘He said, she said:’ How to be fair when the debate isn’t balanced.”

Format: Morning Session: 60 minute slots (45 minute talks / 15 min Q&A). Afternoon Session: (30 min, 60 min, 30 min talks, then 30 min joint Q&A). This will be a full day event.

Monday, June 26, 7:00-8:30 pm – SSE Education Committee Public Outreach Lecture

Speakers: Eric Rothschild & Steve Harvey, Pepper Hamilton LLP.
Title: “In Defense of the First Amendment: An Up-Close Look at the Landmark ‘Intelligent Design’ Case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District”

In other words, we’re getting the band back together!

The Anti-Defamation League has put up the transcript of a fantastic speech given by Judge Jones back in February. Jones gives his perspective on what it was like to be the judge in the Kitzmiller case, and then uses it as a platform to talk about the larger issues of judicial independence, legal precendent, and separation of powers. It’s quite a read – I don’t think the creationists have yet realized how much they marginalize themselves with kneejerk attacks on a class act like Jones.

It’s always risky business to divine what the founding fathers might think about current developments, but I’m certain, I’m entirely certain, that by deciding the Dover case the way that I did, I performed my duties as a district judge in exactly the way that the founding fathers had in mind when they created the Federal Judiciary in Article III of the Constitution.

In fact, I will submit to you that had I decided the Dover matter in a different way, I would have then engaged in just the kind of judicial activism which critics decry. That is, to have ruled in favor of the School Board in this case based on the facts that I had before me at the conclusion of the trial, I would have had to have overlooked precedents entirely and thus impressed upon the facts of the case my sense or the sense of the public concerning what the law should be, and not what it is.

This is ad hoc justice based upon either my preferences or biases or the perceived will of the majority. Taken to its extreme, it is anarchy at any level that to rule in such a fashion represents the true work of an activist judge. And so the real criticism of my decision, and this is one which I will readily accept, is that I did not render an activist decision.

See also the NCSE news story summarizing other recent news coverage on Jones.

Check it out. Judge Jones made Time‘s list of 100 most influential people. Appropriately enough, he’s in the “Scientists and Thinkers” category. Since people will be reading his ruling and reading about the case for as long as evolution vs. creationism remains an issue in public education – which will be a good long time, just think how long it took for everyone to get used to heliocentrism – I think this was a highly appropriate choice.

Jones’s reaction is reported by the Associated Press:

Jones’ likeness is on the cover along with those of President Bush, Pope Benedict XVI and Oprah Winfrey. “I was dumbstruck,” he said, but he kept the honor in perspective.

“This will pass and I will be back to the more mundane things,” Jones said. “Andy Warhol said everybody gets 15 minutes of fame….I may be in minute 14.”

Well, at least until the half-dozen books, the PBS documentary, and the movie come out.

Also, if you haven’t seen it, have a listen to this radio interview that Judge Jones did with WHYY last month.

Here in the pounding-nails-into-the-ID-coffin department of the Panda’s Thumb, we are still hard at work. Longtime PT posters Andrea Bottaro, Matt Inlay, and I have just published a “Commentary” essay in May 2006 issue of Nature Immunology. (Update: Subscription no longer required. Thanks to NI.) See the NCSE announcement and more background at the NCSE Evolution Education and the Law website.

The article is:

Bottaro, Andrea, Inlay, Matt A., and Matzke, Nicholas J. (2006). “Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover ‘Intelligent Design’ trial.” Nature Immunology. 7(5), 433-435. May 2005. (Subscription no longer required: DOI | Journal | Google Scholar | PubMed | Supplementary Material)

Therein, we review the now-notorious episode in the Kitzmiller case where, during Eric Rothschild’s dissection of Michael Behe, Rothschild challenged Behe’s claims about the scientific literature on the evolutionary origin of the immune system by piling up on Behe’s podium a stack of books and articles on the evolution of the immune system. Behe responded that he had not read most of it, but dismissed it out of hand, and this cavalier attitude seems to have been one (of many) factors that impressed Judge Jones and persuaded him to issue the thorough, detailed ruling that he did.

Via Red State Rabble, we learn that Judge Jones was protected by the US Marshalls back in December, after his Kitzmiller Decision pulled back the curtain from ID and identified it for the warmed over creationism that it is. The reason for that protection? Threatening emails he received following his decision about ID creationism.

More details below the fold…

On January 28, 2006 Kansas Citizens for Science and the National Center for Science Education sponsored “Intelligent Design, Kansas Science Education, and the Law” at the Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence, Kansas.

Featured speakers were three of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case: Eric Rothschild and Steve Harvey of Pepper Hamilton LLP and Richard Katskee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Other speakers were Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, Dr. Steve Case, co-chair of the Kansas science standards writing committee, and moderator Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center of Science Education. Special guest Pedro Irigonegarary, representative for mainstream science at the Kansas Board of Education “Science Hearings” in May 2005, also spoke.

There were two themes of the forum. One was that the decision in the Dover case clearly showed that the Intelligent Design movement was the latest incarnation of creationism: Intelligent Design is not science but rather a disguise for religiously-based creationist beliefs. Thus the Dover school district policy was declared unconstitutional.

The second theme was that if the Kansas science standards were held to the same criteria and scrutiny as the Dover policy, the Kansas science standards would also be unconstitutional. ID movement leaders claim that the Dover criteria would not apply to the Kansas science standards because the standards merely “teach the controversy” without teaching ID. However, if the history and context of the standards are examined, this claim is shown to be false.

The presentations were educational, engaging, and consistently to the point . You can now listen yourself to all or part of the speeches and the question and answers session with the panelists. Audio files in mp3 format as well as other information can be found *** here *** at “ID, Science Education and the Law” on the Kansas Citizens for Science discussion forums.

This was a very interesting, timely, and relevant event, and we invite you all to share it with us. We look forward to your comments, either here or on our discussion forum.

Thanks,

Jack Krebs
President, Kansas Citizens for Science

Since the Dover ruling came out, the ID crowd has repeated ad nauseum the claim that Judge Jones should have ruled solely on the legal issues of the case and had no authority to rule on the scientific status of ID. The most recent example is this post by new DI Media Complaints Division contributor Michael Francisco. Despite being a second year law student at Cornell, Francisco seems entirely unaware of Federal court rules regarding the evaluation of scientific testimony and of the fact that judges make such decisions every day because they must.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

Check out tonight’s InfidelGuy radio program (airs at 8PM EST) featuring Barbara Forrest.

Dr. Barbara Forrest, author of “Creationism’s Trojan Horse” reappears on the program to discuss her thoughts about design, evolution, and the recent court case heard in Dover, Pennsylvania. Dr. Forrest provided key testimony at the trial herself, and we’ll hear first hand how it all unfolded!

(Hat tip to ELGS over at Internet Infidels Discussion Board).

I need the help from PandasThumb readers:

Anyone who has a reference to news media referring to Judge Jones as a “devout Christian” is encouraged to add them to the comment section. My Google searches so far have been without much success.

You may wonder why am I asking you your help in this matter?

The reason is that on the Discovery Institute’s Evolution News blog, West is arguing that the media is portraying Judge Jones “as a conservative Republican who is devoutly religious”. While I have various news reports in which Jones is described as a Bush Republican appointee to the court, I have failed to find any references to Judge Jones being a devout Christian. Other than a New York Times article, West provides little information as to which particular newsmedia he has in mind.

West’s true colors become apparant quickly however:

West wrote:

The point here is to challenge the media’s effort to turn Judge Jones into something he’s not in order to defend a biased and sloppy ruling.

While West may believe, as the losing party, that Judge Jones’ ruling was biased and sloppy. I and others have in depth documented the various flaws in West’s claims. Given the well argued ruling, what else is one to do but to attack the character of the Judge.

On the Discovery Instute’s EvolutionNews blog site, West presents his 3^rd part: Dover in Review, pt. 3: Did Judge Jones accurately describe the content and early versions of the ID textbook Of Pandas and People?

Timothy Sandefur has already shown in depth how West erred in his understanding of the legal rules guiding Intervention so I will focus on a comment made by West and show it to be without much legal merrit by looking at the Judge’s ruling on FTE’s (Foundation for Thought and Ethics) motion to intervene:

West wrote:

Before addressing the merits of Judge Jones’ assertions regarding Pandas, something needs to be said about the legal and ethical propriety of Judge Jones placing so much weight on this early textbook in his judicial opinion. Frankly, it is astounding that Judge Jones treats Pandas as central to his decision given that he refused to grant the book’s publisher, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, permission to intervene in the case in order to defend itself.

First, for the sake of the reader and of West, let’s first look at Judge Jones legal decision to deny the FTE to intervene. After all, understanding the legal rules is essential in understanding (the legal propriety of) Judge Jones’ ruling.

First of all in his March 10, 2005 Order, the Judge outlined the requirements for intervention:

The Judge points out that there are two types of interventions under federal rules:

Judge Jones wrote:

As FTE submits, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide for two types of intervention: intervention as of right and permissive intervention. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 24. We will discuss the two types of intervention in turn.

On EvolutionNews, John West attempts in 2^nd part of a multipart series (does anyone remember the multi-part series that was going to address the criticisms of Meyer’s Hopeless Monster paper?) to argue why the Judge in the Kitzmiller case was wrong.
West still seems to misunderstand some of the relevant issues.

For an earlier article in which I discuss West’s similar flaws see Activist Judge or just poor reading skills and Sandefur’s Why Kitzmiller is Not An “Activist” Decision and Further Thoughts on West’s Attack on Judge Jones

Steve Story pointed out to me that I had failed to provide a reference to Alschuler, who is a distinguished criminal law expert at the university of Chicago

The Dover Intelligent Design Decision, Part II: Of Science and Religion

Albert Alschuler wrote:

The Dover court is wrong, however, when it says that anything that “implicates” religion also “endorses” it.

Alschuler is talking about a part of the endorsement analysis presented by Judge Jones where Jones considers the letters and editorials introduced, as prima facia evidence of endorsement.

Judge Jones wrote:

Accordingly, the letters and editorials are relevant to, and provide evidence of, the Dover community’s collective social judgment about the curriculum change because they demonstrate that “[r]egardless of the listener’s support for, or objection to,” the curriculum change, the community and hence the objective observer who personifies it, cannot help but see that the ID Policy implicates and thus endorses religion.

As the Judge argues, the letters and editorials provide substantial additional evidence that the community perceives the ID policy as endorsing a particular religious view.

In a Press Release at Reasons to Believe (RTB) Dr Ross and Dr Rana comment on the recent ruling against Intelligent Design. RTB has never be a proponent of Intelligent Design, recognizing it for what it really is.

Creation Scientists Applaud PA Judge’s Ruling Against ‘Intelligent Design’-Dressing Up ID Is No Substitute for Real Science

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

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.

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)

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.”

Judge Jones wrote:

Plaintiffs’ science experts, Drs. Miller and Padian, clearly explained how ID proponents generally and Pandas specifically, distort and misrepresent scientific knowledge in making their anti-evolution argument.

and yet the DI continues to argue (and misrepresent)

Jonathan Witt wrote:

Dover’s Darwinist Judge Rules Against Competing Theory of Intelligent Design

Only a small problem here: there is no competing theory of intelligent design. This is not only obvious to scientists but also to many ID proponents who have lamented about the lack of much of any scientifically relevant contribution of ID.

The Judge seemed to have grasped how desperate ID proponents are in their flawed arguments that ID is somehow scientific. While Judge Jones commented on Panda’s he may as well have been commenting on “Icons of evolution” or various other ID propaganda.

In this light the following observations by Judge Jones gain even more relevance

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.

The real purpose behind the ID policy has been well established by Barbara Forrest et al. No wonder the DI has to dismiss this excellent review of the history of ID as ‘mythological’.