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Guess I'll still be a monkey's uncle!
I was just gone for an hour, but that was time enough for half of my friendslist to go nuts with jubilation. The Dover Intelligent Design case is over... and the judge has boiled ID with its own pudding and buried it with a stake of holly through its heart in no uncertain terms, calling the case the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. (That link leads to the second page, where the quote is. There's good stuff on page 1 too.)
The entire 139 (!) page decision is online. Skimming it brings up some great stuff - the judge wasn't just discussing the unConstitutionality of the Dover anti-evolution announcement, he takes on the intellectual bankruptcy of ID's star "scientists." For instance, pages 74 and following rip the foundation out from under Behe and the argument of "irreducible complexity." Although Professor Behe is adamant in his definition of irreducible complexity when he says a precursor "missing a part is by defnition nonfunctional," what he obviously means is that it will not function in the same way the system functions when all the parts are present... However, Professor Behe excludes, by definition, the possibility that a precursor to the bacterial flagellum functioned not as a rotary moter, but in some other way... As expert testimony revealed, the qualification on what is meant by "irreducible complexity" renders it meaningless as a criticism of evolution... By defining irreducible complexity in the way that he has, Professor Behe attempt to exclude the phenomenon of exaptation by definitional fiat, ignoring as he does so abundant evidence which refutes his argument.
On page 84, he lights into Of Pandas and People: Plaintiff's expert Provessor Padian was the only testifying expert witness with any expertise in paleontology. His testimony therefore remains unrebutted. Dr. Padian's demonstrative slides, prepared on the basis of peer-reviewing scientific literature, illustrate how Pandas systematically distorts and misrepresents established, important evolutionary principles.
Page 93 starts the groundwork showing how ID=creationism and how the former Board members were blatently pushing religion on the students, using meeting minutes and memos as proof, while the defense against that appears to have been a lame reptition of "I don't remember saying/doing that." My favorite zinger is on p. 97 - It is notable and in fact incredible that Bonsell [a board member] disclaimed any interest in creationism during his testimony despite the admission by his counsel in Defendants' opening statement that Bonsell had such an interest. Simply put, Bonsell repeatedly failed to testify in a truthful manner about this and other subjects.
(Which Commandment is the one about false witness?)
This section also shows up the second step in the wedge, had the first been successful. Bonsell didn't just want to bring creationism into science, he also wanted to inject religion into the social studies curriculum, as evidenced by his statement to Baksa that he wanted students to learn more about the Founding Fathers and providing Baksa with a book entitled Myth of Separation.
Pay attention to that, folks. That is probably going to be the next battleground.
My favorite quote is on page 121, and is suitable for calligraphy and framing, or putting on T-shirts: One unfortunate theme in this case is the striking ignorance concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members. Conspicuously, Board members who voted for the curriculum change testified at trial that they had utterly no grasp of ID.
And under fast-breaking news, I'm seeing reports spread across Google news that Representative John Conyers (D-MI) is calling for the censure of Bush over the wiretapping issue and calling for an investigative committee to see if Bush has committed impeachable offenses.
And here it is on the Library of Congress page: H.RES.635
Title: Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
ETA: The link keeps blinking in and out: I'm using http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:13:./temp/~bdCwgo::|/bss/d109query.html| If that doesn't work, go to the Thomas Main Page at http://thomas.loc.gov/ pick Conyers out of the list of Representatives, click "Go" and scroll down to item 13. While you're there, check out #s 636 and 637 too.
The entire 139 (!) page decision is online. Skimming it brings up some great stuff - the judge wasn't just discussing the unConstitutionality of the Dover anti-evolution announcement, he takes on the intellectual bankruptcy of ID's star "scientists." For instance, pages 74 and following rip the foundation out from under Behe and the argument of "irreducible complexity." Although Professor Behe is adamant in his definition of irreducible complexity when he says a precursor "missing a part is by defnition nonfunctional," what he obviously means is that it will not function in the same way the system functions when all the parts are present... However, Professor Behe excludes, by definition, the possibility that a precursor to the bacterial flagellum functioned not as a rotary moter, but in some other way... As expert testimony revealed, the qualification on what is meant by "irreducible complexity" renders it meaningless as a criticism of evolution... By defining irreducible complexity in the way that he has, Professor Behe attempt to exclude the phenomenon of exaptation by definitional fiat, ignoring as he does so abundant evidence which refutes his argument.
On page 84, he lights into Of Pandas and People: Plaintiff's expert Provessor Padian was the only testifying expert witness with any expertise in paleontology. His testimony therefore remains unrebutted. Dr. Padian's demonstrative slides, prepared on the basis of peer-reviewing scientific literature, illustrate how Pandas systematically distorts and misrepresents established, important evolutionary principles.
Page 93 starts the groundwork showing how ID=creationism and how the former Board members were blatently pushing religion on the students, using meeting minutes and memos as proof, while the defense against that appears to have been a lame reptition of "I don't remember saying/doing that." My favorite zinger is on p. 97 - It is notable and in fact incredible that Bonsell [a board member] disclaimed any interest in creationism during his testimony despite the admission by his counsel in Defendants' opening statement that Bonsell had such an interest. Simply put, Bonsell repeatedly failed to testify in a truthful manner about this and other subjects.
(Which Commandment is the one about false witness?)
This section also shows up the second step in the wedge, had the first been successful. Bonsell didn't just want to bring creationism into science, he also wanted to inject religion into the social studies curriculum, as evidenced by his statement to Baksa that he wanted students to learn more about the Founding Fathers and providing Baksa with a book entitled Myth of Separation.
Pay attention to that, folks. That is probably going to be the next battleground.
My favorite quote is on page 121, and is suitable for calligraphy and framing, or putting on T-shirts: One unfortunate theme in this case is the striking ignorance concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members. Conspicuously, Board members who voted for the curriculum change testified at trial that they had utterly no grasp of ID.
And under fast-breaking news, I'm seeing reports spread across Google news that Representative John Conyers (D-MI) is calling for the censure of Bush over the wiretapping issue and calling for an investigative committee to see if Bush has committed impeachable offenses.
And here it is on the Library of Congress page: H.RES.635
Title: Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
ETA: The link keeps blinking in and out: I'm using http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:13:./temp/~bdCwgo::|/bss/d109query.html| If that doesn't work, go to the Thomas Main Page at http://thomas.loc.gov/ pick Conyers out of the list of Representatives, click "Go" and scroll down to item 13. While you're there, check out #s 636 and 637 too.