Dover Lawsuit

It's clear that the DI's political strategy on Dover is to spin it as a danger to academic freedom, but this position is utter nonsense. They are crowing over a brief filed in the case by a group of scientists, no doubt prompted by the DI, claiming that if the court rules on the nature of science it could destroy careers and have far-reaching effects. But history denies this. The 1981 McLean v. Arkansas ruling directly engaged the question of what is and is not legitimate science, ruling that "creation science" was religion, not science, and therefore could not be taught in public school…
The more I observe the ID public relations effort, the more I come to think of it as the Ministry of Truth from 1984, busily editing old newspapers and magazines to remove inconvenient statements and facts that might undermine their current accepted history. Time and again we come across a statement by one ID advocate that says one thing, then later on another ID advocate claims that iD advocates have never said what the first one said. But of course, this is not Oceania, it is America and we can still consult the unaltered archives of history to prove them wrong. Let me give you a textbook…
Yesterday, John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, took the witness stand in the Dover trial and a line of questioning by Richard Thompson inadvertantly demonstrated why ID is not falsifiable. According to the York Daily Record, Thompson was trying to make the argument that because God could have made the genomes of humans and monkeys look very similar, the idea that they are related by common descent is merely "conjecture": If there is a God, then he could have made the monkey and the human with similar genetic material. In the fifth day of Dover Area School District's trial over…
I did a technorati search to see who else was writing about the Dover case and came across this badly reasoned post by someone named Josh Bozeman. While insulting the parents who filed the suit as "idiots", he throws out some real whoppers himself. He begins: The idiot 8- that's how I'll refer to the 8 families who sued in Dover, PA over the school boards 1 MINUTE statement that students would be able to check out a book on intelligent design from the school library IF they WANTED to, and that was the end of it...it's called the freedom to have open discussion, for students to see other views…
The ACLU-PA has made transcripts of the first 3 days of the trial available, and presumably will continue to make them available as the court does so. You can find links to them in PDF format at this page.
After Rob Pennock's testimony the other day, Casey Luskin - who now works for the Discovery Institute - wrote an attempted critique of Pennock's claims concerning digital evolution. Pennock is the co-author of a paper published in Nature based on research from the Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State (Go Spartans, crush the Wolverines tomorrow), where Pennock has a faculty appointment. In that paper, they used a digital evolution program called AVIDA to model the evolution of complex features, features that would fit Behe's definition of irreducible complexity. Not only did irreducibly…
The Panda's Thumb mascot, Prof. Steve Steve, found his way into a picture in the York Daily Record yesterday, taken outside the courtroom: The guy in the leather jacket is Charles Darwin's great great grandson.
As much as the ID crowd wants to separate themselves from old-fashioned creationists, they must realize that to the rank and file there simply isn't much distinction between the two. The folks in the pews don't really care whether it's traditional young earth creationism or vague "intelligent designer", they just want anything that denies evolution and stands up for God Almighty. Hence, you have supporters of the ID policy in Dover showing videos publicly from the uber-fraud Kent Hovind. The article also quotes PT contributor and inveterate power drinker Burt Humburg.
The ACLU-PA blog has a report on yesterday's testimony from Carol Brown, a member of the Dover school board for ten years until she resigned in protest when the board voted to put ID into science classrooms. On the witness stand, she described a long process by which the board, led by William Buckingham, head of the curriculum committee, and Alan Bonsell, chairman of the school board, tried time and again to find a way to get their religious views into the classrooms. She recounts that board members repeatedly said that they didn't believe in the separation of church and state and wanted to…
Mike Argento, a columnist for the York Daily Record, the local newspaper in Dover, Pennsylvania, had some amusing thoughts on the testimony of Rob Pennock: Wednesday morning, as day three of the Dover Panda Trial meandered into discussions of stoner logic and street cred, one of the lawyers for the school district, Patrick Gillen, asked Robert Pennock, a philosopher of science from Michigan State University and a serious, serious brainiac, whether the idea of "intelligent design" was a Big Ten theory. Pennock -- who, I can't stress this enough, is an incredible brainiac -- looked puzzled. It…
As a measure of the desperation felt by the Discovery Institute over the case in Dover, one could hardly find a better metric than this dishonest attack piece by John West on Barbara Forrest, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case and the author of Creationism's Trojan Horse. West makes it appear as though Judge Jones has declared that she is an unreliable witness. In fact, the opposite is true, but some background is necessary to understand what happened. The TMLC attorneys made what is known as a Daubert motion to prevent Dr. Forrest from being able to testify at the trial. It's…
The Discovery Institute clearly recognizes that its purpose is not science but public relations. It is incredibly obvious that their strategy at the moment is to sell the ridiculous spin that the Dover lawsuit will oppress scientists and forbid them from discussing or researching ID. Here's the latest example: The ACLU is also trying to get the federal judge to decide by court order the very nature of science, essentially telling scientists what ideas they may or may not research and discuss as a part of legitimate scientific inquiry. Efforts to get the government to shut down free inquiry…
The ACLU-PA blog records a rather amusing objection by the Thomas More Law Center attorneys yesterday. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Mrs. Eveland, was on the witness stand and was being asked about school board meetings that she attended where the ID policy was being discussed. This was the meeting at which school board member William Buckingham asked, '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Isn't someone going to take a stand for him?" while encouraging the board to find a textbook that wasn't "laced with Darwinism". Mrs. Eveland wrote a letter to the local newspaper after that…
The ACLU-PA blog has a report up about the testimony this morning of my friend and fellow MCFS co-founder Rob Pennock. It included a little levity: The morning session included several light moments. Dr. Pennock testified that referring to a "designer" rather than "God" is like referring to "Ambassador Wilson's wife" rather than "Valerie Plame Wilson." As the gallery laughed, Judge Jones chuckled and said, "As an example." Also, when opposing counsel Patrick Gillen asked if he had ever heard evolution referred to as a "big tent theory," Dr. Pennock said curiously, "I can't say that I've ever…
The most important issue in the Dover case is whether "intelligent design" is a genuine scientific theory or whether it is just old-fashioned creationism given a new label - old wine in new skins, to use a Biblical metaphor. Here's powerful evidence for the plaintiffs, presented by their attorney during his opening argument and projected on a screen for all in the courtroom to see. First, the definition of "intelligent design" from the book, Of Pandas and People, the book that the Dover school board recommends and makes available to students: "Intelligent Design means that various forms of…
Genie Scott and Nick Matzke of the NCSE are podcasting from the Dover trial. Mp3s are available on the NCSE's Kitzmiller website. For some reason, the downloads seem to be running at sub-dialup speeds (I'm currently getting one at 1.3k per second - ouch), but they're still probably worth the download.
Here's another excellent resource for timely updates on the Dover trial. The ACLU of Pennsylvania has set up a blog with frequent updates on what is going on in the courtroom. Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute is also blogging live from the trial on the DI blog. His post on Ken Miller's testimony yesterday was rather off the mark, as one would expect. He makes the superficially compelling argument that Ken Miller argued both that ID was not falsifiable and was falsified. But this ignores a fairly obvious logical distinction. Witt writes: In friendly questioning from the plaintiff,…
The Dover trial has begun. After opening statements, the first witness was Ken Miller, a Brown university molecular biologist. Rob Pennock, president of Michigan Citizens for Science and author/editor of several books on Intelligent Design Creationism, is scheduled to testify on Wednesday. The media coverage is pretty high for this trial. I just finished an interview with Detroit radio station WWJ and all of the major newspapers and TV outlets will be covering the trial. Nick Matzke of the NCSE is on the scene and will hopefully be providing daily reports I can link to. Jonathan Witt of the…
The Discovery Institute really is frantic about the Dover case and it's making them tell some real whoppers. The latest one is from DI director John West: Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute, which sponsors research on intelligent design, said the case displayed the ACLU's "Orwellian" effort to stifle scientific discourse and objected to the issue being decided in court. "It's a disturbing prospect that the outcome of this lawsuit could be that the court will try to tell scientists what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not," West said. "That is a flagrant assault on free…
The Federal court case over teaching intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania - potentially the most important legal case in this area since 1987's Edwards decision outlawed the teaching of creationism in public school science classrooms - begins on Monday (sidenote to Dan - no continuance as of today, so it looks like you owe me dinner). To help folks keep up with developments in the case, the NCSE has put together a webpage with links to news stories, briefs filed by both sides, expert witness reports, and much more. This page will be continually updated during the trial. The ACLU also…