Scar wrote:

Atheistoclast wrote:We also need an ID explanation for the causal basis of gravity.

Oh look, someone has just overdone the trolling and crossed the Poe line...

Atheistoclast wrote:

Blood wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:Did Santorum completely miss Kitzmiller vs. Dover school district? The fucking debate is over!

The ID community in the USA just pretends that Dover never happened. If somebody brings it up, they say that the trial was lost not because of the inherent flaws to ID, but rather because an "activist judge" stepped beyond his duty, or some other BS.

Santorum is a major proponent of ID and is big buddies with its movers and shakers. He wrote the introduction to the book Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement, where he called "Darwinism" a "false philosophy" that needed to be challenged in classrooms. I'm sure that he learned absolutely nothing from the Dover trial.

Dover was a travesty of justice. The judge valued his own career and reputation rather than the truth. But history will see him in a very bad light as someone who caved in to special interests and powerful organizations. He will forever be execrated.

Judge John E. Jones III wrote:
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID [intelligent design] would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child. (page 24)

A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants' protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (page 26)

The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. (page 31)

The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. (page 43)

Throughout the trial and in various submissions to the Court, Defendants vigorously argue that the reading of the statement is not ‘teaching’ ID but instead is merely ‘making students aware of it.’ In fact, one consistency among the Dover School Board members' testimony, which was marked by selective memories and outright lies under oath, as will be discussed in more detail below, is that they did not think they needed to be knowledgeable about ID because it was not being taught to the students. We disagree. .... an educator reading the disclaimer is engaged in teaching, even if it is colossally bad teaching. .... Defendants’ argument is a red herring because the Establishment Clause forbids not just 'teaching' religion, but any governmental action that endorses or has the primary purpose or effect of advancing religion. (footnote 7 on page 46)

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (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 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. (page 64)

[T]he one textbook [Pandas] to which the Dover ID Policy directs students contains outdated concepts and flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case. (pages 86–87)

ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID. (page 89)

Accordingly, 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. (page 132)

In the months following the decision, Jones received death threats and he and his family were given around-the-clock federal protection.