Federal Judge Rules Against Intelligent Design

evil agent writes "CNN is reporting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that Intelligent Design cannot be discussed in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. Dover Area School Board members had previously mandated that Intelligent Design be included in the biology curriculum. According to the judge, 'our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'" Update: 12/20 23:40 GMT by J : eSkeptic has a look back at the trial and what led to it. And the Discovery Institute has issued a press release.

Links to more information:

[TripMaster Monkey]

Lots of additional coverage on this decision is available at The National Center for Science Education [ncseweb.org] and The Panda's Thumb [pandasthumb.org], and the full text of the decision can be found here [uscourts.gov] (PDF warning).

From the decision:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of 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. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Damn...what a smackdown.

An important part of the ruling

[BushCheney08]

Something that the CNN article doesn't mention is that one of the judge's findings is that ID does not meet the criteria to be considered science.

From a Bloomberg article: [bloomberg.com] In his opinion, Jones said the key issue is ``whether Intelligent Design is science,'' and said, ``we have concluded that it is not.''

Full PDF of decision here

[tpjunkie]

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/images/12/20/kitzmille r.pdf [cnn.net] Also, this decision is unfortunately only binding for the dover area school district, not the rest of the state.

More articles

[nahgoe]

BBC [bbc.co.uk] and Wired [wired.com]

Re:And evolution is?

[Anonymous Coward]

ID is not a theory, per se. Science requires that its theories be falsifiable - that there is some measurement or experiment that may be performed to invalidate it. ID is not falsifiable, whereas Evolution is. While there is no direct evidence of Evolution, there are mountains of indirect evidence - same with the Big Bang theory, same with Relativity. All of these are falsifiable, but we've yet to make a direct observation that 'proves' them. That's science, and if you can't grasp that, then it's clear that the education system fails whether we teach ID or not.

Re:Article didn't mention HOW it's unconstitutiona

[smooth wombat]

The NY times article (no reg required) has the following bit which was not in the CNN article:

"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

The link [nytimes.com] to the NY Times article

Re:Don't go jumping up and down just yet

[the_humeister]

He also gave a reason why ID isn't science.

(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

Summary misleading

[kansas1051]

To be fair, the judge (in his 123 page opinion) didn't rule that "intelligent design cant be taught in Dover" as stated in the summary. Instead, the judge ruled that the school board had no non-religious reason for requiring the teaching of intelligent design, and thus the school board was effectively forcing Dover students to be taught religion (as intelligent design has no non-religious purpose). Although this is all semantics, the judge didn't ban intelligent design, and I'm sure teachers could still discuss intelligent design should they be so included. All the judge did was state that the school board (which was voted out of office) had violated the 1st amendment in requiring public schools to teach intelligent design.

Re:Affect In Kansas?

[taustin]

No. It isn't even usable as case law in the same federal district at this point, though it can be cited to support a particular line of thought. If it were to be appealed, and upheld, then it could be used as binding case law in the same district. The only way it can affect courts outside that district if if the Supreme Court rules on it.

Re: Affect In Kansas?

[Black Parrot]

> Since this is a federal court ruling, does it affect the ID stuff going on in Kansas?

Not legally, since it's in a different federal district.

If Kansas goes to court the judge may or may not look to the Dover case for precedent. Fairly often we get conflicting rulings on an issue in different districts, and no one knows where things stand until the supreme court takes a side on it.

OTOH, I'm sure this will "affect" Kansas to the extent of having the creationists on the state board of education call a strategy meeting...

Re:Full PDF of decision here

[kmcrober]

That's not entirely accurate; the decision has weight in its own federal court, not school, district, which I believe is the Middle District of Pennsylvania. It would normally, and only roughly speaking, be persuasive in the rest of the Third Circuit (PA, NJ, DE, and the Virgin Islands) only. But these creationism cases are (thankfully) few and far between, so it will be read as persuasive and influential in all future cases on the topic. For instance, this judgment includes a discussion of past creationism cases outside of the circuit. That influence will be magnified by the scope of this ruling, which is more detailed than I'd have expected.

Re:And evolution is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a little research, a search for evolution of the eye turned up this link:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html [pbs.org]

...

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species.

...

Re:Intelligent Design is not Hocus Pocus

[sickofthisshit]

Uh, because your science fiction scenario has nothing to do with anything ever observed in the universe to date?

There are plenty of totally irrelevant fantasies that one could indulge in regarding the history of the universe and life on Earth. Part of being scientific is to actually limit oneself to ideas that have a basis in careful observation, and not just any fantasy that drifts into one's mind.

Re:A bit of mischaracterization ...

[theodicey]

No, you're wrong about all this. The decision applies to science classes, not to history or religion classes. Also, teachers can still explain what Intelligent Design is.

The only thing a science teacher is forbidden from doing in the classroom is exactly what the decision says: presenting Intelligent Design as an alternative [explanatory framework] to evolution.

Some Points to Consider

[Gallenod]

1. This particular "activist judge" was appointed by President G.W. Bush in 2002.

2. It's unlikely that the current Dover school board will appeal the decision, making it unlikely that this particular case will ever get to the Supreme Court.

3. That leaves the "sticker" case in Georgia, with it's more narrowly expressed disapproval of evolution as the case most likely to get to the Supremes. At last report, it appeared the appeals court might be inclined to overturn the Federal court decision against the stickers (http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/16/evolution .debate.ap/index.html [cnn.com]).

4. Some ID proponents advised against the former Dover school board pressing this case, as they felt it didn't have a good chance. Other school boards, however, will now simply become more careful about how they attempt to introduce ID into the classroom.

While Dover was a slam dunk for science, this particular fight is far from over.

Re:ID in schools

[DaveV1.0]

"Except theology courses are not allowed in modern public schools"

Actually, this is a false statement. Or at least partially false. If one is going to teach a class on religion or theology, it must be comparative and must not endorse one over the other. The reason there are no theology classes is that those that wish to have said classes want the classes to be biased in favor of their religion.

Re:And evolution is?

[BorgDrone]

What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.

The macro/micro evolution distinction is no more than a human contruct, there is no difference between the two in nature.

Having not followed this very closely in the last 10 or so years, I may be out of date, but this is the missing link that would confirm all of the Origin of Species theory, and to my knowledge this link has never been found.

This has been observed, e.g. several new mosquito species have evolved in the London subway.
see here [talkorigins.org] for more info.

String theory

[benhocking]

Of those theories, string theory is the weakest. However, it has much more support (both scholastically and scientifically) than ID, in that it has intrinsic features that can be disproven. Naturally, it is very much a work in progress, and will hopefully result in interesting break-throughs. Of course, it shouldn't be taught at the high-school level yet, but not for the same reasons that ID shouldn't. I'd have no problems with it being mentioned; however, which is part of what was prescribed against here.

Furthermore, the federal judge in question was not ruling off of his own understanding of what is and what is not science. Unlike the board that proposed these changes, he heard from many, many scientists before making his decision. In fact, that was part of the problem. If you followed the case, you'd know that one of the board members admitted to ignored the advice of those who did know what they were talking about, in lieu of what they themselves personally believed. As the judge stated, it is the board that was being activist, and not the judge.

Re:Teach all

[Kelson]

The problem is that Intelligent design fails a number of tests for scientific theory and for general education.

For one thing it hasn't been tested thoroughly by the scientific community. I doubt natural selection made it into the equivalent of a high school curriculum in the first few years after Darwin proposed it. You don't teach the really out-there new ideas in physics or chem class, either, you teach the ones that have the most backing. You might touch on "new research suggests X" but that's about it. Of course, that's not a reason to disallow it, just a reason that it's not ready to go into the standard curriculum yet.

More importantly, Intelligent Design fails the science test. The key tenet of Intelligent Design is that certain things are too complex to be explained by natural processes. The scientific approach is to say, "We don't understand how this works yet, but we do know this part, and we're working on filling in the gaps." ID says "These gaps can't be filled, so it must be God." Instead of seeking to explain the unknown, it just stops with "God did it."

And now for the legal questions. They technically claim it's "a designer," which could be an alien or something, but that means the alien had to have been designed, and that designer had to be designed, and so on, and you end up having to assume a prime mover -- and you're back to God. Add in the fact that much of IDs philosophy and support grew out of creationist movements, and it becomes clear that it's explicitly religious. That means by teaching it, schools would be promoting a religion, and you run into the separation of church and state. (Remember, freedom of religion requires freedom from religion. If you're a Christian, and the state requires you to participate in a Muslim prayer every morning, you don't have freedom of religion.)

So ID isn't mature enough to be in a high school science curriculum. It rejects the basic goal of science. And it fails the establishment test. That's two reasons not to bother teaching it in any high school, and one not to teach it in a public school.

Fear not, for I have RTFA

[Overzeetop]

and it says:

"Jones wrote that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."

But, he wrote, "our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

So you need not fear that this ruling is a gag order on creationism in the classroom. It is merely a ruling which forbids the required teaching of ID as an viable, alternate scientific theory to evolution because, well, its not scientific. Teachers are still free to dicuss alternate scientific theories, and to footnote pseudo-theories during their lectures.

I feel that this is just fine. If they don't want to teach the real ID, they can just burn in hell for their sins. I, on the other hand, am planning for the day I don my eternal pirate regalila and dring from the beer volcano and see the stripper factory with my own eyes.

Re:Still not the end of the matter

[NialScorva]

The judge was put off by the lying of the defense's expert witnesses as well. It's a 139 page decision. Pages 18-36 or so discuss how ID is nothing more than a recasting of creationism as an attempt to bypass earlier SCOTUS rulings. Pages 36 to 64 is a summary of why a hypothetical objective observer, both juvenile and adult, would assume that the disclaimer is a religious endorsement. Pages 64 to 89 is a three part summary of why ID is not science, cannot be science, and is a masquerade of creationism. Page 89 starts the section on the religious motivations of the board. I'm currently on page 94, but it only gets worse for ID from what I've read.

Basically, the judge documents the ever changing face of creationism through scientific creationism to ID as it constantly presents the same unconstitutional ideas. This doesn't hold as a precedent elsewhere, but can be considered in other jurisdictions as influencial. The judge makes it clear that there's a pattern of recasting creationism to avoid the pitfalls that judges point out. That's what is really going to hurt the ID crowd.

How's this?

[Acy James Stapp]

A simple google search for "evidence evolution" yields numerous pages. From the very first one (I'm feeling lucky!)

Link 1: Observed Evidence of Speciation http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l [talkorigins.org] has eight fruity fly speciation events. Most interesting to me is the Apple Maggot fly, which originally fed on hawthorn trees, but is speciating at this very moment; there are now two different races of the fly, one of which feeds on apples and other rosacea and one on thornapples. They mature at different rates and due to this do not interbreed even though they are still able to hybridize.

Link 2: 29 evidences for macroevolution http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ [talkorigins.org] This is the one I was looking for. If you read and understand this and fail to accept that evolution is occuring and can account for the diversity of species on earth then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Acy

Re:Intelligent design ISN'T SCIENCE...BUT...

[NumenMaster]

What bothers me is that Evolutionists base so much of their "science" on a leg bone or a tooth found somewhere with NOTHING else around, you claim "here is the missing link. You call that trash science. What are you people so afraid of? Why do you so degrade those that want equal time for their opinions about Intelligent Design? As your flawed theories (as in THEORY of Evolution) are proven false, I expect all of you to come right here and say "I was wrong..." First, it is quite obvious you took very little science in college, if you actually went to college. Such statements are exactly what we're 'afraid' of hearing in science classrooms. To simply state that anthropology is something as simple as finding a leg bone or tooth screams ignorance. Perhaps a class in physical anthro would do you good. Secondly, we're 'afraid' of a small group of uninformed school council members telling teachers that they must also teach a religious, non-scientific concept in a science classroom. We're 'afraid' they'll misinform students that 'theory' is not fact. Theories ARE fact. Calling something a 'law' will rarely, if ever, happen again. Why? Because one can always improve upon a theory and not alter the result. Calculus is a method to do things that would take mounds of work in algebra. Algebra is still a reality even though there is an improved method to do things. Unfortunately, the word 'theory' is overused by everyone in almost every sense. "My theory is she's going to call in sick tomorrow." That, my friend, is not a theory. It's a hypothesis. But this was just one small example. Why do we degrade? We don't. ID is meant to be taught in church, dinner table, religious class, sociology, or Sunday School. ID is not meant to be taught in science class. Why? Because it is anything but science. And by the way, there is absolutely no threat of evolution being proven wrong. There is FAR too much phenotypical and genotypical evidence to prove otherwise.

Re:Well good

[Loki Giggling]

Belief in evolution is a form of religion,(definition #4) as it cannot be proved through any scientific methods on
It is a testable theory. And many tests have been devised and tried and non have disproven it yet. Remember a theory can generally not be tested as correct, but science can try and prove theories wrong with tests.
how life began and must be taken on faith, as we don't even know the conditions in which the first life came to be, as these are theories too.
Hold on. Evolution is not a theory about how life began. It is a theory about how things 'could have' evolved from simpler life forms into different more complex life forms.

Re:Links to more information:

[Alsee]

Bodyslam smackdown:

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.

He outright called them liars! I wonder if there's any chance to hit them up with perjury charges.

More:

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause.

And the coup-de-gras against the evolution equals atheism cranks:

Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

And for some in-your-face irony for anyone who attempts to attack the judge as some sort of leftwing atheist liberal pinko commie demonic-Democrat, the official US Court system website has Judge John E. Jones' biography [uscourts.gov] which begins:

Judge John E. Jones III commenced his service as a United States District Judge on August 2, 2002. He is the 21st judge to sit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Judge Jones was appointed to his current position by President George W. Bush in February, 2002, and was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on July 30, 2002.

For once George Dubbya actually appointed someone competent to the job! Three cheers for President Bush! Hip-hip-Hooray! ... ... ...
Ummm... well ok... only one cheer for Bush :)

-

Re: And evolution is?

[Black Parrot]

> What it does not account for is macro-evolution, that is, the changing of one species into another at the chromosomal level by purely natural selection.

No modern biologist thinks evolution is purely a matter of natural selection. If you knew the subject matter at the freshman level you'd know that lots of other stuff, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect, also have influence on what evolution produces.

Re:OK, I'm curious.

[jjohnson]

I believe the lies to which the judge referred had to do with the defendents sitting in court claiming that ID was not religiously motivated science, and then making public statements outside of court saying that it was, and that their actions were for the greater glory of God, and that the source of their material was think tanks directly offering ID as a Christian-safe theory of how we all came to be here.

Re:Riddle me this Batman

[scheming daemons]

ID doesn't have to be proven , it has to be provable . There's a big difference.

Evolution is provable/disprovable. ID is not.

ID doesn't meet the rigorous scientific standards to be called a "theory".

Re:Religious studies

[TheRaven64]

BTW Don't forget that even the Catholic Church recently came out and declared their support for evolution.

This is because any sensible religious person realises that there is no contradiction between evolution and ID. Evolution explains a mechanism, nothing more. It doesn't tell you why things happen, just how. Whether evolution is driven by random actions, or the FSM is the realm of philosophy, not science. Assuming the existence of an intelligent designer[1], science can tell us whether it's more likely that they said 'let there be stuff,' or if they created a simple system containing all of the necessary components to develop into a more complex one. Proponents of Intelligent-Design-as-an-alternative-to-evolution are worried that there is a God, and her final objective might not actually be them.

[1] A philosophical postulate, not a scientific one.

Re:And evolution is?

[grub]

Wrong. Human and apes evolved on different branches from a common ancestor. Yours is a common mistake used by Creationists when they ask "If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?!"

Re:Well good

[Xaositecte]

You seem to have confused the Word Theory [reference.com].

Evolution is a Theory in the Scientific Sense, "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."

This is why it counts as "Science"

Intelligent Design is a theory in the colloquial sense, which is what most of the definitions that include "Idle speculation" are referring to. There is no Scientific Backing for Intelligent Design, which is why, if it's taught in a classroom, it should be a theology class, not a Science Class.

Re:Just a theory?

[m50d]

The problem I see here is the reason why so many people are confused. You are using the word evolution in two different ways in the same argument. Changes within a species are observable and testable within our world today. Speciation, or evolution of one species into another, is not observable and has never been found in the fossil record.

It's observable - speciation in bacteria is less clear since those from different species still exchange DNA, but given a few weeks in the lab I can show you populations diverging to the point that if we discovered the two in the wild we'd consider them separate species - it's happened, and it's certainly in the fossil record as much as anything is in the record - island populations that are now a different species but the fossil record shows the same species as the one on the mainland lived there.

Re:Religion and Theism

[truedfx]

What makes someone atheist is not believing in God(s). As it happens this is the default position of someone who is not religious, as without observed evidence of logical proof, it is irrational to believe in God(s).

I think you're confusing atheist [reference.com] and agnostic [reference.com], the latter being the logical default position, since there's no proof God doesn't exist either.

Re:An important part of the ruling

[darkmeridian]

Science is not about proving statements but rather disproving them. ID proponents say, "Theories are just guesses. And it's the theory of evolution that we are against being taught as fact." But science requires a theory to be at least falsifiable. There has to be a way to prove it wrong. Statements that are: "Tails I win, heads you lose" cannot be science because it cannot be disproven or proven. So ID is not even a theory. It's a random guess no one can confirm or deny.

Those who moderate, can't comment.

Re:Well good

[jedidiah]

> You clearly do not understand what a scientific theory is, nor what
> science is. You never hear real scientists saying "Evolution is fact!"
> because it isn't.

        One of my university Anthro profs (who was one of the first people
to examine Lucy), did this very thing when confronted by a student
that couldn't handle the whole evolution idea. Genuine scientists are
infact very confident that evolution happened.

        I suppose this is what separates the real scientists from philosophy
majors that like to split hairs.

Re:Well good

[Mr_Huber]

It is perfectly correct to teach the fact of evolution, for it is a fact. It is an observed phenomenon, or fact, if you like. The Theory of Evolution is the theoretical construct explaining how evolution operates, the mechanism involved and the consequences of these mechanisms. So far, it has survived every challenge thrown at it by the fossil record, genetics, comparative biology, chemistry, physics and even computer science. And it has grown more powerful for it. The current incarnation of the theory bears as much resemblance to Darwin's original proposal as modern quantum electrodynamics bears to Ben Franklin's work with electricity.

The phenomenon of evolution is well established and as solid a fact as gravity, electromagnetism or heat transfer. The theory describing it is, in some ways, better off than the theory of gravity or electromagnetism. We know those two are inconsistent and at least one is due for a revision. There are no such open questions on the theory of evolution.

Evolution does not require faith. That's the thing about science, it works even if you don't believe in it. Disbelieving in the quantum nature of electrons won't make a lick of difference in how your computer operates. Likewise, disbelieving in evolution does not mean that advanced antibiotics suddenly stop having any effect. (Now, current diary practices, that's another story.)

Given your statements, it is clear you have not bothered even the most cursory attempt at understanding science. You seem so enmeshed in your dogma, you refuse to understand anyone else's position, casting well reasoned positions as mere articles of faith. Science is not a religion, no matter how much you wish it to be so.

Really, just because you insist on wielding a hammer, do not treat us screws and bolts as nails.

Re:Well good

[Thangodin]

Newton's theory of gravity is just a theory too. Does that mean that we can just decide not to believe it and fly?

This is just a semantic trick. The use of the word theory in science differs from the way it is used. Normally, a theory is a theory until it is verified. I have a theory that a car is in the driveway: I look out, see the car, and the theory becomes fact. But scientific theories are more complex, and we persist in calling them theories simply because we can never have all the evidence. We cannot go back in time and witness every step of evolution. But this does not mean that they are mere matters of opinion. Evolution is supported by all the evidence that we have and not contradicted by any evidence. As a scientific theory it is a resounding success, one of the gold standards for scientific truth, with an extraordinary power to explain and predict events in the world of biology. This is as close to certainty as human beings can get, so calling it a fact is not an exageration. After all, that car in the driveway could be a cardboard cutout of a car that just looks like one from the window. Or maybe it's made of paper machier.

On the other hand, if you want to assume an attitude of radical doubt about everything, go ahead. But I would think your religion would be the first thing on the block. You should know the philosophical implications of your postmodernist position--the first thing that goes out the window is faith.

...if you are so sure ID is incorrect, where is the fear coming from that it cannot even be mentioned and discussed by rational thinking people.

I'm pretty sure that crack is bad for you too, but why don't we give equal time to a crack dealer to tell kids of the benefit, and let them decide for themselves? Because they're kids! We send kids to school to get the correct information so that they can make informed choices, not so that they can choose what they want to believe. We don't let neo-nazis teach them that the holocaust was a myth either, because it's a lie, but chidren don't have enough knowledge of history to know this. Children are not rational thinking people. That's why they are not tried in court as adults.

Stop trying to exploit the ignorance of children for your own religious and political ends. It's evil. Stop doing it.

Re:Well good

[jc42]

You never hear real scientists saying "Evolution is fact!" because it isn't.

Actually, you do - with important qualifications.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote several papers that said just this. Of course, he said a lot more. (He had a column to fill, after all. ;-) He and others have made a distinction between the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution.

What he pointed out in several articles was that by the early 1800's, when Darwin was sailing on the Bugle, it was already widely accepted that biological evolution was a historical fact, thoroughly documented in the fossil record. What was missing was a good explanation of this fact. People examining fossils could see the general outline of the evolutionary process; they just didn't understand how it worked.

Facts are what we observe, combined with the easy inferences from the observations. To be scientific, you need not just a lot if facts, you also need explanations of those facts. Such an explanation is first called a hypothesis before it has been tested, and then a theory after it has passed sufficiently many tests.

What Darwin did was to propose an explanation for the observed fact of biological evolution over geologic time. His explanation was unusual in that the mechanism didn't require any guiding intelligence. But it did have explanatory power, and also made testable predictions. So, while the religious folks derided Darwin's heresy, the scientists set about trying to poke holes in his explanation.

In the 1860's, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was really just a hypothesis, not a theory. But now, more than a century later, it's a true theory. We've had plenty of opportunities to test it, and it has passed the tests quite handily. So now it's a true scientific theory. Biological research these days is mostly concerned with working out the details of the mechanisms. Nobody seriously expects that the basic theory will be overturned.

Not that it hasn't been modified along the way. Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, and could only write vaguely about the mechanism of intelligence. He observed that this mechanism was imperfect, something that any plant or animal breeder would agree with. He also proposed that some variations were "random", which need not have been true, but which we now know is essentially true. He also proposed that the inherited code was not modified by an organism's environment, contrary to others such as Lysenko, and it turns out he was right in this, too. True, environmental things may alter your DNA, but not in any "directed" fashion.

But most importanly (and ignored by most creationists and ID proponents), his theory invoked a very non-random directing force, natural selection. This was difficult for him to observe, but we've since watched and tested it innumerable times, and again it turns out he was quite correct.

OTOH, he didn't guess about viral transduction. And he didn't anticipate Barbara McClintock's idea of the way that eukaryotic cells arose via merger of independent single-cell organisms. So he did miss a few important things that have since modified his theory a bit. But none of these things have significantly weakened his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Of course, we are now on the verge of implementing designer genes ...

read the Judges comments in the pdf.

[settledown]

This is a very specific case, even though this forum has "evolved" into a god vs. darwin debate. The school board members used devious tactics to get other board members to vote for the ID inclusion in science class. This Judge did NOT say that ID is a waste of time, did NOT say that evolution is anti-religion, did NOT say that ID isnt a worthwhile discussion. ID does not belong in Science class, and it was put their by board members with an agenda that didnt serve the best interest of Dover school district. sidebar- The pope himself said that evolution does NOT contadict Catholisism (paraphrase)

Re:Learning to Learn

[dreamer-of-rules]

Although ID is not supported by real evidence, the court ruling does not prevent you from considering it. It does not prevent you from teaching your kids the fallacies of ID as alternate points of view, or even as the True God's Test of Faith.

The ruling prevents public schools from teaching ID as science, because the judge has correctly seen that ID is religion-in-disguise, and our Constitution is understood to prevent the "establishment of religion".

Children do need to learn critical thinking, however, it is undeniable that they are very impressionable, and not very skilled at thinking critically. Spending a half-hour listing the talking points of ID as a viable alternative to evolution and common descent, is a really horrible way to teach "critical thinking". Next up, spend a half-hour in biology class talking about the soul, and where it resides, and how much it weighs. Promote critical thinking!

Re:This is an attack on Free Speech

[Dread_ed]

Starting with the New Teastament for the nature of Christ is a faulty and intellectually ill-fated idea.

It is akin to reading the dictionary before you know the language.

The nature of Christ is fully explained and established earlier on in the Old Testament. In direct words and more importantly the basic ideas, mechanics, and characteristics of who the Lamb of God is supposed to be, Christ is explaind as God and Man. Even the attacks of Satan in an attempt to prevent the sacrifice of Christ on the cross have attacked the humanity and the Divinity of Christ.

"...because the churches were based on households and the priest was the head of household""

This ia a non-sequitur because the Bible constantly declares the male to be the head of household. This is established from the beginning of the Bible and obvious in its prevalence. Maybe contemporary Christians of the early scriptures had social conventions that made women the head of household, but the scriptures hold a different position. It was not "taken away" per-se, as males have had the sole responsibility of the priesthood from the Old Testament to the New.

If you had read the New Testament you would have also learned that many early churches were filled with people that were comitting sinful acts like incest, bestiality, thievery, etc. Does the presence of these activitivities make them right according to the Bible? When these prectices were condemned in a letter to the Church was Paul "taking away" the ability of these people to practice procreation with animals, children, and same sex partners? Of course not; however they were practiced. Just because some people in the early centuries misunderstood things dosen't mean that in retrospect we cannot make things clear. Just because some people in the early centuries believed certian things (the Gnostics for example) doesn't mean that they are consistent with the Bible.

I think what you have is a secular viewpoint that is infused with historical happenings, and very little understanding of the doctrinal side of the Bible. There is no other way to explain your obvious, and seemingly contradictory, depth of knowldege about the historical happenings with regard to the early church combined with your absolute lack of knowledge of the doctrinal tenents of the Bible itself.

Re:Bogus - My Attemp to Explain

[Dirtside]

The constant that I can think is the speed of light. Apparently, c has decreased over the last 100 years, as measured in the various experiments that have been performed. I haven't heard about it in a while, so it might have been disproven.

It was disproved probably three or four days after the "hypothesis" was proposed, in 1981. Read this [talkorigins.org]. And do some other searching; the speed of light has not decayed at all. Don't take this the wrong way, but the whole idea is nothing but creationist propaganda :)

Re:Well good

[brontus3927]

There is a way to disprove that statement, it's called radiometric dating. Which leads ID propenents to pick at parts of it they don't understand and show them as facts that radiometric dating isn't valid

Re:Well good

[pthisis]

It is only very recently that ID has become an active movement associated with (neo)Creationism. It happened somewhere in the 1980's, i believe. See the wikipedia article.

The ID label as used now was introduced in the 1980s, and it doesn't simply refer to traditional clockmaker views of the universe or other philosopies positing a common-language intelligent design (and such philosophies are just that--philosophy and not science).

The core ID textbook, "Of Pandas and People", is published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics--a group "promoting and publishing textbooks presenting a Christian perspective" according to their IRS application for tax-exempt status. The book itself was originally a Creationist work that had the equivalent of a global search-and-replace from "Creationism" to "Intelligent Design" performed after the Supreme Court's 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard decision banning the teaching of Creationism in public schools.

The wikipedia article on ID that you point to says "the vast majority of the scientific community views intelligent design not as a valid scientific theory but as neocreationist pseudoscience or junk science".

Re:And evolution is?

[chihowa]

Quite simply, when it comes down to it, neither Evolution nor Intelligent Design can be actually "proved" logically - which is why they both are scientific theories.

So your definition of a scientific theory is something which cannot "be actually 'proved' logically"? That's a pretty broad and useless definition, not to mention that it is not the generally accepted one [wikipedia.org].

Re:Well good

[krmt]

And he didn't anticipate Barbara McClintock's idea of the way that eukaryotic cells arose via merger of independent single-cell organisms.

Great post, but this attribution is wrong. McClintock was responsible for finding that genes could move (using maize as her model system). Lynn Margulis came up with the idea of endosymbiosis leading to eukaryotic cells.

Re:And evolution is?

[Alsee]

"thought to be the precursor to the eye" and "could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue" are not very scientific statements. As stated before. THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE WAS A POOL OF GOO THAT EVOLVED INTO WHAT IT IS TODAY.

Well lets consider glaciers. It is "thought" that the sun evaporated water from the ocean. And it is "thought" that that water fell as snow at the poles. And that snow "could have" built up over thousands of years into very deep glaciers.

And there are layers of dust and pollen and volcanic ash that are "thought" to have settled out of the atmosphere and that the layered of such particles "could have" arisen from seasonal snowfall cycles over tens of thousands of years.

And it is "thought" that the pattern and composition of volcanic dust in the glacier happens to exactly match up with the historical and prehistorical records of major volcanic eruptions becuase that dust *did* come from those volcanoes and laid down over tens of thousands of years. And it is "thought" that the patterns of pollen match up with other global records over tens of thousands of years because that pollen *did* accumulate during the steady buildup of that glacier over tends of thousands of years.

And it is thought that the presence and levels of LEAD and other trace minerals in the upper layers of glacial dust "could have" been caused by the historical and prehistorical development of human mining releasing such contaminants into the the air.

And as you say, THERE IS NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF THAT THIS IS HOW GLACIERS ACTUALLY FORMED.

If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a pile of sticks and some glue up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, perfect box.

If anyone is a real thinking person then prove that you cant throw a bunch of water vapor up in the air and it will come down as a glued together, complex perfect snowflake.

The argument you were attempting to make (badly) is the stupid old argument that "the second law of thermodynamics says disorder must increase and therefore proves evolution impossible".

Of course the second law of thermodynamics only apples to average disorder increasing, and it does not apply at all when there is an energy flow through a system.

As I pointed with with snowflakes, it is actually quite normal and common for nature to spontaneously greate complex order and structure out of total chaos when there is an energy flow - in particular the sun provides an energy flow through the earth to drive both snowflake formation and biology and biological evolution.

The nature of life, the structure of life, and the existance of life can only be explained as an engineering miracle that was created. PERIOD.

Statint your ignorance and your lack of understanding is not a disproof of anything.

It is quite well understood how the evolution process creates structure and complexity and information. In fact I have personally witnessed exactly how this process operates and exactly how powerful it is at creating order and complexity and information.

The information is created/added during the secotion step of the evolution process.

If you have a replication (with mutation) and then selection in a repeating cycle, the mutation step creates a bit of random noise, and the selection step converts that noise into ordered/directed information by filtering out any portion that is contrary to the selection direction.

Roll a hundred dice. Do a slection step to "kill" the half with the lowest number showing, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred... you will have a hundred dice showing 4's, 5's, and 6's. "Kill" the half with the lowest number showing again, replicate the remaining 50 back to a hudred again... and you have a hundred dice showing 5's, and 6's. Repeat a third time and now you "magically" have 100 dices all showing perfect sixes.

We started with perfect chaos rolled dice, and

Re:And evolution is?

[Dster76]

Or, if you're not sure of the significance of the ditty, think of what either answer means.

Now you've totally lost me. What is the `ditty' you're referring to? `Ditty' is English for `a short song'.

I'm going to try to inject some sense into this part of your otherwise sensible post. Turing, from the assumption that all problems are solvable by some recursive procedure, derives a contradiction. I'm guessing, from the meagre comments you made, that you are thinking of asking God this question:

Does the machine that Turing constructs, in his reductio, halt when given its own index as an input?

Of course, either answer, yes or no, leads to a contradiction. So, we reject the assumption that all problems are solvable by a recursive procedure.

This has about as much to do with the problem of an omniscient mind as the following.

Ok, smartypants God, suppose I construct a box with the following properties: there is a monkey in it if and only if you don't exist, and there is no monkey in it if and only if you are a guy from New Jersey named Jimmy who pumps gas, is a moron, and is about as omniscient as a rock.

Well, is there a monkey in my box? Remember, God has to answer yes or no.

Oh wait - no he doesn't.

Re:Well good

[einhverfr]

But evolution doesn't work the same way - show me one repeatable experiment where an animal actually independantly mutates to a genetic advantage. I understand that evolution supposedly takes thousands if not millions of years for this to happen, and so this experiment may not be possible. However, without repeatable experiments (instead of just circumstantial evidence), we can only make educated guesses as to what happened (whether that result is ID, evolution, FSM, or whatever).

Welcome to the 18th Century and the theories of Lamarck :-P When can we actually get rid of this nonsense? Darwin was supposed to have more or less debunked Lamarck's nonesense.

Also note that current evolutionary theory is missing one or two critical questions that we may not have an answer to in the near future, but your objections have largely been overruled by modern research.

Part of the problem is that any life-form larger than a bacterium is not in a position to mutate spontaneously for genetic advantage. Yes, this behavior has been experimentally studied in bacteria, but it doesn't show up in anything larger. So for larger organisms you have a different process.

Spontaneous mutations occur and affect the general viability of offspring. Many of these are disasterous and probably result in very early miscarriages, or stillborns, etc. (though spontaneous mutations aren't very common). But the rest goes into a sort of community gene pool. This genetic diversity inherent to the community is extremely important.

Now suppose we have an environmental change. Say there is a drought, you poison a population of insects with an insecticide, there is a sudden abundance or shortage of foot or water, a population explosion of predators, etc. Now, the genetic variances between the individuals in the community start to become valuable. For example, birds with a smaller beak might die first in a drought because the seeds that are available to eat might be too big. A shortage of food might favor some members more than others, poisoning might be more likely to kill those who are genetically susceptible to the poison first, etc. So these environmental changes don't cause an individual to spontaneously mutate. They cause the composition of the community gene pool to change. This is basically a summary of puntuated equalibrum theory regarding evolution.

Now, if you have a sudden and long-term increase in food, you will see animals specialize according to their talents. So within a given population of a species of finches, those with bigger beaks might decide to eat different seeds than those with smaller beaks. This specialization is generally temporary because the resource availability is cyclic, but after a mass extinction this may be different. This leads to the communities partially separating and becoming subspecies. Now the missing piece is the question of what causes species to separate to the point of becomming genetically incompatible under these circumstances? Is migration and physical separation required? Or are other factors more likely to cause this? This is a big unknown and we don't have enough data to answer it. However, at the current rate of extinctions, maybe in a few hundred years, we can start watching ;-)

Re:Well good

[einhverfr]

Firstly, just because someone doesn't support evolution as fact doesn't mean they are an idiot. There are many highly respected scientists (including evolutionists) that have noted severe flaws in the theory of evolution.

Most of them are working off of outdated resources. Seriously-- evolution via Darwinism isn't wrong. It is woefully incomplete however, and you need at least some of the work that has been done within the last couple of decades to really make it work. Even so there are questions we don't have answers to. This doesn't mean that the basic theory is flawed anymore than 19th century classical physics is flawed because it predicts the wrong color light from glowing iron (the answer to this problem is Planck's Constant, which largely suggests that energy exists in atomic quantities). It isn't wrong. It just doesn't have all the answers.

There are still some areas I look at regarding evolution and still see a lack of answers. In these cases the current answer is simply "we don't know." However, most of the ID stuff strikes me as deeply unparsimonious and problematic for that reason. I.e. one does not need to posit the existance of one or more gods or the lack thereof to accomplish scientific theory. Any attempt to do so is theology and not science. If you want to subscribe to ID, that is fine, but scientifically, one doesn't have a strong case. Why would people look to science as a substitute for theology anyway? How is this different from looking to theology as a substitute for science?

Re:And evolution is?

[Dster76]

Are you really this dense?

Are you really this pretentious? I really was trying to be civil and understand what the hell you're on about. As I mentioned in my first post, I'm not defending God - in fact, I said that I found most of your other comments helpful. Do you always insult people who try to engage in discussion with you?

Tell me, God, ``Yes'' or ``No,'' will you answer, ``No''?

For the last time, what question, in this scenario, is God supposed to be answering?

So, there we have it. A question that even God can't answer.

Is the existence of unanswerable questions supposed show that omniscience is incoherent?

Omniscience is concerned with knowledge, not questions.

Re:Devoutly ironic

[Anthony]

It is quite common it seems. Ian Plimer (a bit rough around the edges) described this behaviour in Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism [amazon.com]

Rather sad behaviour really

Re:ID != creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh but in fact, ID == Creationisim, as can be shown (and was observed in the court case) as the early manuscripts for the much vaunted "Pandas and People" have the word "creation" in the exact same places as the later ID based version places "Inteligent Design"

please see:
http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?p=80 [ncseweb.org] for the evidance.

Re:Well good

[Liam Slider]

That's because Evolution is a fact. Long and well observed. The mechanisms themselves, such as Natural Selection, are what are classed as Theories. The fact the living things change, adapt, and develop into different living things over time...that is absolutely at the level of hard scientific fact, and that is Evolution.

Re:And evolution is?

[yndrd1984]

If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot?

These are called design constraints. They are found in just about every design activity you can think of.

Every design has constraints, but none of them require the optic nerve to go where it does. Squid eyes, for example, have no blind spot, can see in very dim light, are more sensitive to color differences than ours and move the lens rather than bending it (preventing focusing problems, like the ones that lead to reading glasses) - and have no known major downside.

From a ways back: Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?

I really don't understand how you could say "It either works or it doesn't". There's a huge, obvious groups of people that have partly working vision:

People that need corrective lenses or lasik surgery
People that need cornea transplants
People that use glacoma medication
People with macular degeneration and other diseases

Even if they eventually go blind (it doesn't work), they go from normal sight (it works) through a period of slowly degrading vision (it partly works). If vision was always all-or-nothing, we wouldn't have "needs corrective lenses" on driver's licenses or have distinctions between "legally blind" and "completely blind".

As for intermediate stages, any vision is better than no vision. Just knowing which way the sun or moon is helps with navigation, and freezing when a shadow falls on you can help you avoid predators - and neither one of these uses even requires a real eye.