Last week, I reposted four old articles that I wrote back in 2005, when a group representing a number of Christian schools in California filed a lawsuit against the University of California claiming that UC’s rejection of several of their courses was illegal “viewpoint discrimination.” In a more recent post, I mentioned that there’s a hearing on motions for summary judgement scheduled for later this month. I also mentioned that the Christian schools claim that all they are doing is “adding a religious viewpoint” to “standard course material.” It doesn’t take a genius to see that the “viewpoint” presented in some of the textbooks used in the rejected courses is explicitly opposed to the actual science of biology. It certainly represents something very far from the “standard” course material for high school biology. (Or, for that matter, biology anywhere in the reality-based universe.) Nevertheless, the Christian schools seem to be determined to argue that they really do teach the “standard” scientific material.

And they’ve got help - an expert witness. That’s right, the Christian schools have found themselves someone who is willing to stand up and argue that a textbook that “puts the Word of God first and science second” really does teach standard science. Who, you might wonder, is the scientist brave enough to stand up to the harsh wind of reality and claim that teaching that, “man is a special creation that is completely separate from the physical universe and the animal kingdom,” is just an addition to “standard” science? Professor Michael Joseph Behe of Lehigh University, that’s who.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority, where comments can be left):

Over the last few days, I reposted a series of four articles that I wrote two years ago. Those articles discuss a California lawsuit filed by a group of Christian schools against the University of California. They are suing in an attempt to force UC to recognize some of their classes as meeting the requirements that UC sets for high school students who are applying for admission to the system. Several subjects are involved in the suit, but as a biologist I’m mostly interested in the biology courses that are involved.

At the moment, the next scheduled event in the case comes on September 24^th, when the judge will hear arguments on motions for summary judgement. I’m not a legal expert, and I don’t spend as much time following Constitutional Law for fun as Ed does, but I’ve got a feeling that the motion for summary judgement filed by the Christian schools will fail, and the case will go to trial. A motion for summary judgement can only be granted if there are no significant disputes about material facts in the case. In this particular case, at least as far as the science books are concerned, there is a significant dispute about the facts.

The plaintiffs (the Christian schools) claim that their courses, “add to standard content a banned book, a religious viewpoint that God created man and woman, or the viewpoint of creation or Intelligent Design,” and that this constitutes “viewpoint discrimination.” (Brief for Summary Judgement p. 20). Someone from the Association of Christian Schools International, one of the plaintiffs in the case, left a comment on a couple of the old articles that elaborated a bit on that - the case, he claimed, is not about creationism, it’s about “illegal viewpoint discrimination.

Read more (at The Questionable Authority, where comments can be left):

The Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin contends in this post that librarians in public schools are “censoring” Intelligent Design by refusing to put copies of Michael Behe and Philip Johnson books on their shelves. Of course, Luskin cites the famous Supreme Court decision Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982), claiming that it holds that the First Amendment is violated when school districts refuse to stock certain books on their library shelves.

The Montana Law Review symposium on the Kitzmiller decision has been posted on line. It includes an article by the DI’s David De Wolf, John West, and Casey Luskin, then a masterful response by Peter Irons, then a rebuttal to that by De Wolf, et al. There’s little here that Thumb readers won’t already know—although it’s always nice to see an article like Irons’, which not only makes all the right points, but does so in a wonderfully readable, non-technical style. We’ve responded at length to the DI’s accusation that the Kitzmiller decision is an “activist” decision, but I did want to say a bit more on this. (It appears on pp. 14-17 of the first De Wolf, et al., article.)

It looks like Wendell Bird‘s lawsuit against the University of California is going to trial. This is the lawsuit bought by some private Christian high schools (Association of Christian Schools International et al., or ACSI) against the U.C. (Roman Stearns, special assistant to the U.C. president, et al.), protesting the fact that the U.C. doesn’t give credit for certain courses taught at these private schools. Not all of the classes involved are science classes, but the science classes at issue make use of Bob Jones University textbooks which are full of fake fundamentalist “science.” Private religious high schools have the right to teach whatever silliness they want (although even many private Christian schools teach evolution without problems), but it is rather dubious to assert that a top institution like the U.C. should be forced to drop all of its standards and give credit for classes that teach creationist falsehoods.

NCSE is not involved in this case so I don’t know much more than anyone else about the details of it. The legal issues are rather different than in Kitzmiller v. Dover – here, the creationists are the plaintiffs, and as I understand it, the constitutional issue is not the Establishment Clause but the Free Exercise Clause. ACSI asserts that the U.C.’s standards amount to religious discrimination. However, I do have a rather direct interest in the case myself, since I will be a Ph.D. student at U.C. Berkeley this fall, and will be a teaching assistant in the evolution course. Will the undergraduates that the U.C. admits be prepared, or will they require tedious remedial education to re-do all the biology they were taught incorrectly the first time around?

Through the grapevine, I have heard a few tidbits about the case that will interest people. It looks like the trial will be another battle of the experts:

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:

This was recently posted on CSEblogs.com – the blogs of Creation Science Evangelism, i.e. Kent Hovind’s ministry. It comes from Paul Abramson who is a longtime supporter and associate of Hovind. I will post it without further commentary, since it is pretty shocking by itself. We don’t know anything more about it than this. It could indicate anything from Hovind committing some sort of serious infraction of prison rules, all the way down to a Hovind fan’s histrionic misinterpretation of some routine event such as a prison transfer. It seems a little hard for me to believe that Hovind would do something worthy of solitary, so who knows.

Anyway, here it is… (from the comments section)

Yesterday, I wrote about Wiley Interscience and the Society of Chemical Industry making legal threats against fair use: Wiley Interscience: Where Science Meets Legal Threats.

Today, Shelley Batts received an apology from them:

We apologise for any misunderstanding. In this situation the publisher would typically grant permission on request in order to ensure that figures and extracts are properly credited. We do not think there is any need to pursue this matter further.

Congrats to everyone who helped get the word out about the threats. You helped Shelley and the rest of the science-bloggers out.

Shelley Batts over at Retrospectacle was contacted yesterday by a representative of Wiley Interscience, who objected to her fair use of part of one figure from a paper. Shelley has posted the exchange on her blog.

Wiley’s legal threats are baseless because fair use allows people “to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.” In addition, this move by Wiley is very stupid given that Shelley was promoting a paper published in one of their journals. She was providing good press for them. But in one stupid move Wiley has turned that good press into bad press.

Because of this I will not be publishing in any Wiley journal for the foreseeable future, and I call on others to do the same.

If you want to email the journal about this, here is the contact information.

Update: Wiley has a record of acting dubiously. (via Afarensis.)

Update: An apology has been issued.

Professor Jay Wexler’s article on the Kitzmiller case, Kitzmiller And The “Is It Science?” Question, 5 First Amend. L. Rev. 90 (2006), has been the source of some glee for Creationist Casey Luskin. In the article, Wexler contends that Judge Jones’s finding that Intelligent Design isn’t science was unnecessary and unwise. Luskin, never one for, you know, legal thinking, immediately pounced on the article to say that Wexler “agreed in print with my position on this question.” Now that I’ve seen the article, I can say that, as is typical for Luskin, this is at best a half truth.

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.

Well, I was having a hard time imagining this one anyway:

Anti-Darwin Suit Dismissed

The Oktyabrsky District Court in St. Petersburg on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by Maria Shraiber, a 15-year-old who argued that being taught the theory of evolution in school violated her civil rights, Interfax reported.

The court also dismissed Shraiber’s request that the government provide her with a written apology for offending her religious beliefs. Shraiber’s representatives vowed to appeal the ruling to St. Petersburg’s City Court. (MT)

Next country to watch: the Dominican Republic.

Convicted felon Kent Hovind’s sentencing was today, and again the Pensacola News-Journal has the story:

Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.

After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:

– Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

– Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078.

– Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.

Not knowing anything about sentencing, I had figured Hovind would get time already served plus probation or something. I guess not. Probably with good behavior this will become 5 years or less of actual prison time. The moral of the story: living in your own personal alternate reality works for only so long. That, and don’t tick off the IRS.

Today, the Baltimore Sun has the first detailed news article on Russia’s 21^st-century Scopes Monkey Trial. It comes complete with monkeys:

The Shraibers announced their plans for the lawsuit at a March news conference that featured free bananas. In July, when they mailed the paperwork to court, they were accompanied by an actor in a monkey suit - a stunt since dubbed “stupid” by Romanov, who asked that the monkey not come near him.

Many were taken by surprise by the Cobb County School Board’s decision to settle the Selman case, give up their practice of putting evolution “warning labels” in textbooks, and pay $167,000 in fees to the plaintiffs. They had fought this case for four years, and succeeded in getting the Court of Appeals to vacate the district court decision for a retrial. Perhaps the third time Cobb’s sticker got in front of a court would be the charm.

Well, the reality was that this was not likely at all.

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.

Because I’ve apparently been living in a cave, I only just heard the full story of the “Tripoli Six”: five foreign nurses and a doctor that the Libyan government has imprisoned for seven years, tortured, and sentenced to death by firing squad for allegedly causing an outbreak of 400 cases of AIDS in a Libyan children’s hospital in 1998. Apart from the problems with torture and firing squads, the major problem here is that these poor people didn’t do it. The infections were caused by poor hygiene practices, like reusing needles, that existed at the hospital long before these nurses arrived in 1998. But the Libyan government is scapegoating some foreigners to distract the populace from the fact that the government is the real criminal here.

What does this have to do with evolution, you ask? Well, out here in the real world (outside of Libya and creationist circles), the way you tell where an HIV strain actually came from, and when, is by doing a standard molecular phylogeny. If you are a creationist who doesn’t believe in this sort of thing then you should really just stuff it, because the criminal courts, relying on their “beyond reasonable doubt” standard, have been using phylogenetic methods as forensic evidence for years (so much so that an HIV phylogeny was used on the TV show CSI).

If you needed another proof that the Founding Fathers were pretty smart guys when they noted that fights over religion are intractable and produce strife because they involve ultimate questions decided according to dictates of conscience, we have yet another proof. In recent weeks there has been a resurgence of internicine fighting amongst the pro-science blogging community over the issue of religion. The Holy Wars threads involve the debate between two camps: I think the camps are neutrally described as follows (feel free to hurl invective my way if you disagree).

The latest from the Pensacola News-Journal is that Kent Hovind is in jail until sentencing in January, and the jury ordered the Hovinds to forfeit over $400k to the government:

This just in from the Pensacola News-Journal:

‘Dr. Dino,’ wife guilty

Jury deliberations took about three hours.

A federal jury has convicted Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, of tax fraud.

Hovind faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. His wife faces up to 225 years. Her charges include aiding and abetting her husband with 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements.

And at the end:

Defense lawyers for the Hovinds rested their case on Wednesday without presenting evidence or calling witnesses.

My question: if the Hovinds weren’t going to put on a defense, why didn’t they just make a plea bargain agreement, avoid the ordeal of a trial, and get reduced sentences?

According to the Pensacola News-Journal story, the Hovind tax evasion trial was delayed last week because his attorney, Jerry Barringer, was ill. See also this earlier story.

Hovind and his wife, Jo, are accused of tax evasion, including failure to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes at his Creation Science Evangelism Ministry, which inlcudes Dinosaur Adventure Land on North Palafox Street.

Hovind, a tax protester, makes a substantial amount of money. But he believes he and his employees work for God, are paid by God and, therefore, aren’t subject to taxation.

Schneider testified this morning that Jo Hovind requested financial help for her bills from Baptist Health Care, claiming that she had no income.

Schneider also said the Hovinds wrote checks to their children from their Christian Science Evangelism account. They also withdrew money from that account for cashier’s checks.

On one day, a $9,000 check was withdrawn for their son, Eric. That same day, another $9,000 check was withdrawn for Eric’s wife, Tanya.

Schneider said Kent Hovind refused to give a tax identification number to the First Baptist Church of Satsuma in Alabama, where he spoke. The church paid him a $738 fee. The tax ID number would have been used on a tax-reporting form.

Well, if you needed any more evidence that creationists are doing their best to drag Europe down to America’s level, here you go:

St. Petersburg court starts investigation of a schoolgirl’s civil suit against teaching of Darwin’s theory

The latest on the Hovind trial: Workers testify in ‘Dr. Dino’ trial. That should be “‘Dr.’ Dino”, of course.

Apparently he has sued the IRS at least 3 times. Not exactly the best way to get them on your good side…

Jonathan Wells (2006) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washington, DC.^Amazon

Read the entire series.

If there’s something embarrassingly dumb to be done or said, it’s probably going to be done or said in the name of “political incorrectness”. That term was first used to bring attention to the political censoriousness at leftist epicenters in the 1990s, but it has mutated into an excuse for saying stupid, outlandish, misleading things. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History was full of misrepresentations, politically-motivated elisions, and a neo-Confederate interpretation of the Constitution that embarrassed serious constitutional scholars. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science was full of silly pro-“intelligent design” notions, and now The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Jonathan Wells has come along to carry this tradition forward—if “forward” is the right term.

An indication of the astonishing degree of misrepresentation and outright lying that The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design employs comes in Chapter 15 when discussing the controversy over an evolution website supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The Thumb covered this pseudo-controversy pretty thoroughly at the time. But here’s how Jonathan Wells describes it:

Well, I’ll give Dr. Dino this: at least he is consistent in his wackiness. The latest from the Pensacola News-Journal:

Hovind’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kafahni Nkrumah, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis at a hearing Monday that his client did not want to enter a plea because he does not believe the United States, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office “have jurisdiction in this matter.”

When pressed by Davis to enter a plea of either guilty or not guilty, Hovind said he wished to enter a plea of “subornation of false muster.”

“Subornation,” according to Webster’s Dictionary, means instigating another to do something illegal. “Muster” is an assembly, often for inspection or roll call.

When pressed by Davis, Hovind said he was entering a not guilty plea “under duress.”

First, I would just like to say that everyone here at PT would like to express their sympathies to the public defender assigned to Hovind. I suppose public defenders see all sorts of weird things, but Hovind will be a handful.

I attempted to gain a little more insight on what “subornation of false muster” is supposed to be – the poor reporter was obviously struggling. The Pensacola News-Journal‘s columnist, who was at the hearing, said it was “a defense I haven’t heard in 30 years of hanging around courtrooms.”

The Pensacola News-Journal is doing fantastic work keeping us up to date on the Hovind story. A longer and more detailed story came out today. Some of the more interesting/scary bits:

Of the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.

At the couple’s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted. Some 20 supporters were in the courtroom.

“I still don’t understand what I’m being charged for and who is charging me,” he said.

Kent Hovind, who often calls himself “Dr. Dino,” has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.

Yet more:

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.

Many people have played important roles in exposing the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design and its religious foundations. On Red State Rabble, Pat Hayes describes the role played by Barbara Forrest in bringing down ID. Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross are the authors of the highly insightful book Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design published in 2004 by Oxford University Press

Pat Hayes wrote:

In the months since the Dover decision, leaders of the intelligent design movement have played and re-played the trial a thousand times. The Discovery Institute and the Thomas More Law Center have had a very public falling out. Intelligent design proponents have come to refer to Judge Jones, a lifelong Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush, as an activist judge.

What they have not done, as a movement whose leaders are nearly all men, is come to grips with the great role played in their embarrassing defeat by Barbara Forrest, a tiny but very determined woman from Louisiana, who simply took their own words and turned them against them.

Jon Buell, the head of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics and publisher of the book Of Pandas and People (Pandas), has written a long essay criticizing Judge Jones’ ruling in the Dover case. That’s hardly a surprise, of course. The judge ruled against his position, how could he do anything but criticize it? Unfortunately for him, his criticisms don’t hold up under scrutiny because they are based on false claims, legal ignorance and, in at least one case, an outright lie. This may be a long one, so let’s get started.

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

The “intelligent design” activists are promoting some new spin about the Dover case. (See previous posts: here, here, and here.) Basically the creationists have decided to blame the current Dover Area School Board for the million dollar legal fees that the district has to pay. The basis for the claim is that the current board rejected a proposal to recend the “intelligent design” creationism policy after the trial was over and before Judge Jones issued his ruling. As law student Michael Francisco of the Discovery Institute says:

In essence, the new Dover school board was fully aware that keeping the policy in place increased the risk of expensive attorneys fees. Manzari & Cooper explain why it now appears that there was collusion between the ACLU, AUSCS, and Dover school board members. If what Manzari and Cooper say is true, this alleged collusion allowed the school board to effectively guarantee the Kitzmiller decision at a purchase price of $1 million dollars. This appropriation of public funds should be cause for outrage. Check out the Manzari & Cooper article for more shocking details.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to read this. It will be fun to see how many times the previous law review articles by DeWolf et al. (summary: “Intelligent design is constitutional because it is revolutionary new science, not creationism!”) are contradicted by the new DI book by DeWolf et al. (which, if it follows the website, will say, “Judge Jones was irresponsible and activist for ruling on the science question!”).

…because paramount has apparently got a serious scriptwriter signed up to do Kitzmiller v. Dover: the movie.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I tend to think the only way to make Dover into a watchable movie would be to basically do an Inherit the Wind remake, which would require some substantial rewriting because the plaintiffs were parents, rather than the defendant being a teacher. But on the other hand, the poor teachers in Dover were pretty seriously oppressed by William Buckingham et al., so it might work.

In other news, Nova is doing a documentary on Kitzmiller v. Dover, which will apparently include some remakes of courtroom scenes.

Everyone has already decided that Tom Hanks should play Judge Jones…

Or bills, in this case. It turns out that there are now two bills in the state legislature - HB 5606, sponsored by Rep. Palmer, which contains the “arguments for and against” language that will inevitably open the door to ID; and a Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Kuipers, that doesn’t yet have a bill designation and which doesn’t contain such language. 5606 has passed the House and has been referred to the Senate Education Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Kuipers. Kuipers doesn’t have to bring that bill up for a vote if he doesn’t want to, and at the moment it appears that he is going to focus on passing his own version of the bill.

All of this leaves things quite unsettled for the moment. The ID language could be added to the Kuipers bill by amendment, or in a post-approval joint conference to reconcile the two bills should it go that far. Kuipers is very conservative himself and is pro-ID, but he appears to want to keep this bill clear of such language so that it has the broadest appeal possible. Whether he can do that remains to be seen.

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

A nice long writeup on Eric Rothschild, one of the lead attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller case, has just come out in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the UPenn alumni magazine. The cover article is entitled “Intelligent Demise” and focuses on Rothschild’s dissection of ID arguments during the trial. Rothschild seems to come off slightly better than fellow UPenn alum Michael Behe…

A second article examines the role a UPenn commission played in debunking spiritualism in the 19^th century.

There is a short list of people whose written opinions on Kitzmiller v. Dover I am particularly interested in seeing. One of them was Michael Ruse, whose review of the decision was just published in this month’s issue of Science & Spirit magazine.

Michael Ruse (2005). “Two Cheers for Darwin.” Science & Spirit, March/April 2006.

Ruse was the philosopher of science in the famous 1981 McLean v. Arkansas case where “creation science” was declared unconstitutional. As we went through the trial in Kitzmiller, the historical resonances between the two cases became more and more pronounced – and that was before Robert Gentry pitched up in Harrisburg in the last week of the trial.

Ruse approves in particular of the philosophy of science in Judge Jones’s opinion. Reading between the lines I think he is giving Rob Pennock a big compliment for threading the needle between being too “demarcationist” (which is what Ruse was accused of, unfairly in my view, by another philosopher, Larry Laudan, in an article which ID/creationists have quoted hundreds of times since – see also Ruse’s reply), while also not falling into the “anything goes” trap that many vehement anti-demarcationists end up with.

A law student, Colin, advises the following event at the University of Kentucky:

On Wed, Feb. 22, the UK School of Law is hosting a seminar on “Religion, the First Amendment, and the New Supreme Court” at 12:00 noon. The speaker at the event is Thomas Berg, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, and Co-Director of the Terrance J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. As the notice says, “Everyone is invited.” I assume that refers to the public as well. It’s in the College of Law Courtroom, and being presented by the Federalist Society.

Normally this would be a ho-hum affair, with a speaker and perhaps a few questions. The event the next week, however, is what would be of penultimate interest to readers of both the aforementioned blogs. It is entitled, “Intelligent Design: Question and Controversy in Law and Philosophy.” The speakers are Prof. Brandon Look (Philosophy, UK), and Prof. Paul Salamaca (Law - Constitutional and Federal, UK). They’ll be talking about the restrictions the First Amendment places on public schools, where Science and Religion end, and whether Intelligent Design is really Creationism re-labeled. It’s called a “discussion” where they’ll both talk about the facts, arguments, and theories of Intelligent Design. The flyer notes that “Everyone’s Welcome” and will also be in the College of Law Courtroom on Monday, Feb. 27 at 4:00 p.m. It is presented by both the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society.

I would expect only the best of discussions from either of these professors. In fact, to take one side, and not objectively study the issue, would seem to contradict the entire method that we’ve built here in Law (Socratic) and also in Science (the basic nature of science is to question everything, even those things previously thought established). As a citizen in the camps of both I have a great desire to see there be some great discussion.

In full context, Ky. has a law on the books that allows the teaching of Creationism in Public Schools, but does not mandate it. In other words, it is not “against” the law to teach Creationism. It is KRS 158.177, and an interesting read. The notation is that it has been “repealed and superseded by the 1990 Ky. Acts” but to my knowledge it’s still published and law in Ky. Recently, Ky. Gov. Ernie Fletcher (who’s in the hospital with an infection right now, so let’s hope he’s going to be okay) also advocated the teaching of it recently in his “State of the Commonwealth” speech. The seminary where William Dembski teaches (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is in Louisville, and only an hour away so an appearance, I think, would not be out of the realm of possibility though not in a speaking role. Finally, the Ky. Law Journal has previously published a note, “NOTE: When May a State Require Teaching Alternatives to the Theory of Evolution? Intelligent Design as a Test Case.” It’s at 90 Ky. L.J. 743. It was published in 2003, and to my knowledge has never been cited.

Francis Beckwith, author of various papers on the constitutionality of Intelligent Design recently visited the comments section of PT. Since Beckwith’s legal arguments are based on the premise that intelligent design is science, I will comment.

Francis Beckwith wrote:

Dear Lenny:

First off, how’s Squiggy? Second, and more seriously, I’ve addressed your question in several of my works, including my book Law, Darwinism, and Public Education. The short answer is that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions to distinguish science from non-science on which philosophers of science agree. So, for me, the issue of what counts as “science” is not relevant. What is relevant is whether the argument offered for the point of view, ID or something like it, is reasonable or not obviously irrational and it does not rely on sacred scripture or religious authority.

Let’s for the sake of furthering the discussion point out that ID is scientifically vacuous. In other words, skip the issue of whether or not it is science, since this presents ID actvists with an opportunity to argue philosophy rather than addressing the issue at hand. That ID is religiously motivated and that ID’s designer is supernatural is self evident. So the question becomes: Can ID be reformulated in a manner which would make it non-religious and still scientifically relevant?
The simple answer is no.

Americans United has filed suit against the El Tajon Unified School District in California over a course there that includes creationism. The twist here is that the school has placed the class in philosophy rather than science and claims to be teaching about both evolution and creationism without advocating either as true. The evidence at this point suggests that is a merely a ruse to get creationism into the school’s curriculum.

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

I just got a shiny, new, titanium-alloy, extra-heavy-duty new irony meter for Christmas. I hook it up to my computer, and wouldn’t you know it, the very first blogpost that comes across my screen happens to be the Discovery Institute Media Judge Complaints Division blog, where Rob Crowther endorses this quote from an op-ed:

“Moreover, based upon the extensive expertise he [Judge Jones of the Kitzmiller case] professes to have acquired in the course of a six-week trial, he defined science and determined that the scientific claims of i