Dover and Intelligent Design
Published by Blandus February 7th, 2006 in UncategorizedIn the case of Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District. . .
both are .pdf.
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In the case of Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District. . .
both are .pdf.
Also read:
Panda’s thumb article on Behe destroying his own IC theory:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/06/behes_meaningle.html
Gould’s Criticism of Behe’s theory:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/ruse_irredcomplex.html
Aliff’s critique of ID in general:
http://www.gpc.edu/~jaliff/GAJSci63-3.pdf
Page o’ links on Behe:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Catalano/box/behe.shtml
I’ve argued with Behe in person, and wasn’t impressed. (Go read the panda’s thumb article, and use search within the comments for “Hillsdale”, and feel free to laugh about the puff of smoke business that he told me.)
Wow, bob. You’re Johnny on the Spot with those links. It’s going to take me a day or two to read through everything and weigh in.
Thanks for the good intel.
Madness?
Bob,
The Aliff critique is not available recently, so I couldn’t review it.
The Gould article used a lot of words, but didn’t really say much. In fact, the main point of his argument seemed incoherent as he claimed two proteins necessary for clotting were not really necessary for clotting. Gould then tromps into theology and criticizes Behe for the theological implications of his admittedly carefully crafted scientific arguments. This is science? Furthermore, the Doolittle (love that name) quote Gould uses is counter-claimed by the very article cited by your first link to the PT article.
The PT article did not seem to understand the gist of what Behe was arguing in that article. I think the PT article was inappropriately extrapolating from the kind of “quote-mining” exercise they ofter accuse the other side of performing.
Overall, not (yet) a convincing set of links for discrediting Behe - which I assume was your point?
I am not familiar with all of the availible evidence for or against either side. All I can do is look at the arguments I have access to and they most commonly come down to something like:
ID: this is possible and questions current theory.
EvoDarRMNSetc.: no it is not possible because we make the definitions to say it is not possible.
This violates my populist notion of fairness and causes me to listen to the claims the ID folks are really trying to make.
A. Behe
Behe falls back across the board on his Irreduciable Complexity (IC) argument when pressured, that is, there is a huge difference between his assertions in Black Box, and the positions he takes after pressure by Ken Miller, Keith Robison and others. A good example would be clotting or the Kreb Cycle, where I would venture to say that any reasonable reader of Black Box (or my edition thereof) would think that Behe is arguing that something as complex as the Kreb’s cycle is irreducible complex. Likewise, Behe has had to back up severely on his position on the immune system and clotting. Overall, Behe is just looking for god of the gaps, he’ll boldly assert that something like clotting is IC. on its face, then he gets hammered by Miller and friends, and tries to back up to finding a new, smaller gap. You can see a little of this in footnote 16 in Kitzmiller when you see Behe weaseling away from the Pandas book (and by reference, his positions in Black Box).
B. Kitzmiller as a whole:
The Defense witnesses really bit the big one with their complete and total inability to legally distinguish their ID argument from Creation Science. (page 35) References to only Young-Earth creation science, while ignoring the ~200 year history of Old-Earth creation science was a horrible legal tactic on the defendants part, and left the legal end of things pretty open and shut to a quick comparision to Epperson/Aguillard precedent.
For the rest of ID’s future in the legal system, the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document will be a giant legal mill stone around its neck. It basically makes any secular purpose argument for ID untenable legally.
C. Judge Jones was severely angry.
There is no doubt, whatsoever that the school board’s deception and simply insane behavour (the mural burning) lead to a particularly long, and pointed oppinion. The school board in Dover behaved horribly, to the point where it pains me to hear them consider their positions as Christian.
D. ID as a whole: a quick rehash:
1. ID is currently fringe science, with a statistically insignificant percentage of biologists supporting it, and virtuallly no journal article support (see page 88 of kitzmiller). If it belongs in school curriculum in its current state, so does string theory, health classes based on Mary Baker Eddy, ebonics, etc. String Theory is just as “possible” as ID, but would be completely and obviously irrespnsible to teach as an alternative to Newtonian Physics at any level less than 500-700 level Physics.
2. The big problem with ID is a lack of predictability which is compounded an introduction of supernatural causation as an artificial restraint on inquiry. The restraint comes when a hypothetical ID biologist throws up her hands and decides that supernatural causation is at work, when further inquiry would reveal a completely natural cause. The history of science is full of examples of immature assumption of supernatural causation.
3. In comparision to ID, evolution has no practical downside for science. It serves as a nice organizing scheme, and gives useful modeling for things as diverse as predator-prey interaction, antibiotic resitance, difference between chimp and human genomes, etc.
For the record, I had no intention of starting “a new round of Intellegent Design discussion.” But if there is to be a discussion, rather than a “ID is dumb” data dump, I’d be interested in Bob’s views of Behe’s critique of the judge’s reasoning re: If ID is science.
It seems that Judge Jones committed all the fallacies Behe accuses him of. He uncritically accepted all points of contention of the plaintiffs and justified it with questionable logic. The theme of every argument in this section of his judgement seems to be:
(1) ID says X.
(2) The Plaintiffs disagree, so ID is all bad.
With further reflection, I’d also like Bob’s take on why the judge thought that he needed to rule on the “scientifiality” of ID. It is clear from his findings, and other news reports, that certain members of the administration and board were doing things they shouldn’t have been doing. It seems like a more conservative approach would have been to rule that a hammer is a hammer.
A hammer is “bad” if it is used to kill someone – but really, you don’t have to rule that “hammers are bad,” you only have to rule that it was wrong to use a hammer to perform this wrong action. Jones went so far as to define the general usefulness of a particular hammer – what it could and could not be used for outside of the specific case at hand – when he has no training or experience in construction.
It seems like, since “Judge Jones was severely angry,” he took it upon himself to define what you could think or not think. In the context of his decision, he believes ID equals something related to Christian doctrine. This is why he goes on to uncritically accept the plaintiffs arguments. The judge does not view the two sides (now speaking of ID and non-ID, not the school board and “injured” parents) as scientists of reasonably good faith attempting to accurately describe and explain physical facts of the universe. Jones seems to view any ID claim as coming from Christian doctrine – and because of this association, any ID claim is without merit.
It is frightening to me as a Christian to think that a legal justification for rejecting any proposal I make is, “Well, he is one of those serious, Bible-believing Christians,” without any consideration of the merits of my arguments. ID? – part of those idiot Christians, reject it. Abortion? – idiot Christians, permit it. Adult stem cell research? - Dark Age Christians, marganalize them. Homeschooling? – Christians, outlaw it and don’t let them into public colleges. The list goes on. . .these attitudes are widely available in the public at large, but to think that they carry the force of law and are not simply bigoted opinions. . . For the first time, rhetoric aside, I wonder how worried I should be about the future (generational) safety of my family in this country.
My fear is not over whether ID turns out to be “true” or “accepted.” It is over the need this legal official felt to put Christians in their place. It doesn’t matter if he “regularly attends church.” His written legal decision seems to speak for itself.
First, and most importantly, it’s really hard for the legal system, or for that matter, scientists to see ID as having two sides, or even a controversy. Pharyngula just linked to a decent article about the lack of controversy:
http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/teach-controversy.html
At the very minimum, I hope Blandus agrees that it is pretty hard for the ID side to argue that they have an accepted alternative.
I think it is very important to remember that Judge Jones is only a district court judge, bound to follow Lemon/Aquillard/Everson, etc. That’s why he had to touch on the scientific validity of ID. Not to mention that he has to at least discuss or mention the various factual issues raised in the testimony in his role as the fact finder. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he followed precedent OK, and will not be overturned on appeal.
I’ll agree that the Lemon test seems canted against Christians with its “entanglement” prong, however, as a scientist; I’d like to point out that if ID is accepted within the scientific community, it should meet both prongs of the lemon test. Also, for that matter, the slippery slope type argument of an increasing bias against Christians seems a bit much. That is, just because government sponsored speech or curriculum, in schools, needs a secular purpose, doesn’t restrict private speech whatsoever. There is no reason to think that otherwise valid arguments against abortion or for home schooling are receiving or will receive less weight due to the speaker’s personal belief system.
All “Intelligent Falling” jokes aside, would anyone be comfortable teaching a theory of literary criticism or grammar that was accepted by an equally low percentage of persons in the language arts field? (Compared to the percentage of biologists that accept ID)
Interesting.
It’s true that other disciplines would not and do not accept alternative positions with so few adherents.
Madness.
Bob,
Please explain further why Jones had to “touch” on the scientific validity of ID. It seems like he did a little more than that - he ruled what could and could not be discussed in an expert field of which he is not an expert. I am somewhat ignorant of the legal process - is this really what judges do? Hand down from on high opinions for which both sides agree that they are not qualified to make? After all, if Dr. Behe is not a real “scientist,” what makes Judge Jones or Law-student Bob qualified to evaluate the scientific claims he makes?
I am not making a slippery-slope argument - we are not sliding “to” anywhere. It seems to me that we already have legal justification for saying, “Blandus is a Christian, therefore his testimony is tainted and inadmissible.” Thank you for allowing me to speak in my own home, but I still see the removal of my ability to contribute to society’s formation of laws and standards based on nothing more than my religious creed as an erosion of my American Liberty.
How can I see this differently?
A. In basically all legal procedings, there is a fact-finder, either a judge, in this case, or a jury. There are a variety of guidelines as to who can testify as an expert witness and what constitutes admissable evidence (hearsay, autheniticity, etc requirements), and the fact finder has to decide matters which they are inherently not experenced in. I would guess that it is almost unheard of for the fact-finder to be particularly experenced in the matter that they decide, all they can do is weigh the credibility of the evidence as best they can. As you can imagine, even simple criminal cases can overwhelm the intellectual faculties of a juror, but, ehh, it’s the way the system works. Typically, Criminal defendants and Civil suit plaintiffs are allowed to choose between a jury or bench (judge) trial. In technically complex litigation, it is usually, though not always, to both sides advantage to have a bench trial, but in any case it’s the plaintiff’s choice (though the judge her/himself will be randomly selected). So, yes, this is what judges do. It happends every day on a wild variety of cases, not just religion/education related law. It’s the system. If anything, judges tend to render more competent and rationale decisions than juries (if jurors are asleep, drunk, or mentally deficent, you really have no recourse.)
In this case, Jones did not exceed his role whatsoever. He used the applicable precendents, like a good district court judge. He weighed evidence as to the scientific validity, and came to the exact conclusion that all but a handful of scientists would. I would lay heavy odds that virtually any district court judge in the country would have ruled the same, and if they hadn’t, I doubt that their ruling would survive on appeal.
B. As to the slippery-slope:
There is absolutely nothing in the federal rules of civil procedure or evidence that touches on the religious beliefs of witnesses. Noone will every keep you from testifying based on your religion. I think you’re confusing the ~50 year old precedent that school curriculum must not endorse a religious position with an overall position against christianity. They are completely, totally, seperate areas.
Christians can suggest curriculum changes that even refer to their own moral schemes without any problem whatsoever. That is, you can argue against a Language Arts reading list that you feel is morally degenerate, or a health class curriculum that omits any discussion of condom failure. The problem for both christians and flamboyantly homosexual atheists comes in when you argue for something that isn’t objectively good curriculm for purposes of advancing your moral agenda.
Right now, its hard to make a case that arguing for I.D. curriculum in science classes (I have no issue with in Philosophy of Science, or similar classes) has any point other than to ram creationism into schools as soon as humanly possible. I hate to sound like a broken record that keeps saying fringe science, but I keep thinking that I’m just not coming up with a good enough comparison to teaching some other unaccepted theory. Another attempt:
What if I prayed to rocks, devoutly believing that modern medicine was evil. Perhaps I could find a handful of medical doctors that had faith-healing theories that supported my position. I form Bob’s Institute for the Advancement of Healing, and the founding charter says: “We agree that modern medicine is a great curse on humanity. We want to find small gaps in medical theory and exploit them to eventually allow prayer to rocks in schools.” I have not actually done any experiments that are significant, or had anything significant published in a peer-reviewed journal. But, I convince the local school board to put stickers in all the health books saying, “This book contains references to modern medicine, which is only a theory, not a fact. Your health instructor has a list of alternative books you may check out from the library to encourage critical thinking about medicine” I then encourage teachers to commit equal classtime to discussing faith-healing, using materials that insinuate rock prayer, espicially to granite, but never mentioning granite specifically. I make availble a number of books in the school library that trivially discuss minor failings in modern medical theory as disprooving modern medicine.
Would you object to that? If there was a law suit, should my rock-prayer agenda be relevant at all?
*Correction:
Prayer to rocks is certainly acceptable already, I should have said mandatory prayer to rocks, not allow.
“Not-So-Quick But Nonetheless Dirty Review of the Kitzmiller Decision”
By Casey Luskin, IDEA
Not that it is the main point of my post, but my wife had a required lesson/unit on “alternative medicine” in medical school.
Whether ID is science isn’t semantics
Judge John Jones gave two arguments for his conclusion that ID is not science. Both are unsound, says Alvin Plantinga
By Alvin Plantinga
(March 7, 2006)
Simple question for Bob: are school boards required to teach the science that “most scientists” accept? Simple answer: no. If my school board wants to teach geocentrism, more power to ‘em. So, now the question is whether teaching ID violates the establishment clause. I think the answer to that question is, under current interpretations of that clause, yes, since most people will see it as endorsing Christianity. But, this interpretation of the establishment clause is crazy and should be altered. Besides, having an education wholly without God is surely an endorsement of atheism. . .