Judges (or juries) are not experts on much of what comes before them. That is why parties are asked to present their experts along with the science that allows their conclusions. Judges (or juries) then decide cases based on, usually, a preponderance of the evidence as they see it presented to them. Judge Jones was saying, in its simplest form, he didn’t believe the evidence met the required preponderance in his mind and he explained why he felt that was so.

ID can prevail in the courts if a judge or appellate court becomes convinced of the science. That means scientists need to present evidence that convinces a court by a preponderance of the evidence that the scientific community says it’s science. Until then it will be considered religion which cannot be taught in public schools.

Perhaps I can do an article in the future about the definition of science and experts.

Mrs. Kohls is well schooled in the standard arguments of creationists–oh, pardon me, I meant intelligent designers–and their standard misrepresentations, and don’t let her soft-soap rhetoric fool you, nor her disingenuous presentation of “evidence” and support. For instance, Karl Priest, the former teacher who Mrs. Kohls claims just “wrote to me last week” is a leading figure in the creationist movement, though perhaps not the most rational one. For some enlightening reading concerning Mr. Priest, check out this site: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/119-why-i-won-39-t-debate-creationists. It’s quite revealing.

I don’t really care to get much further into this latest tea-pot tempest; it’s just another distraction to keep people from paying attention to genuinely important issues. I encourage Mrs. Kohls to review the definition of theory as it applies to genuine science before she makes any more of a fool of herself in her vain attempts to inject religious doctrine into the public school system. Springboro, of all places, deserves better.

There is no doubt that we are a sectarian nation, and rightly so, granting us immunity from the throws of theocracy. How fortunate for us that this countries founders had such foresight!

But it raises a valid question. Does that insularity from theocracy protect us in other areas as well? The realm of science has no real boundaries, except transcending reality, perhaps. Who in Newton’s or Galileo’s day would have considered black holes, multiverses or quantum physics, where particles have demonstrated apparent conscious awareness as valid science? Or so it seems. The efficacy of these observations will stand or fall under the constraints of scrutiny, nothing more.

But now we are faced with a dilemma. We depend heavily upon Courts and the Judicial System to protect our rights as citizens, and rightly so. But this bulwark has in recent years been extended to now include science, and what is allowed within scientific scrutiny, a prime example being the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover case, where a disclaimer was to be read to biology students which questioned aspects of Darwin’s Theory. The Court subsequently disallowed the reading of that disclaimer. But it didn’t stop there.

Judge Jones went one step further, and decided, based of his brief introduction to evolutionary theory, that he was now qualified to adjudicate, and was justified in so doing, the efficacy and validity of the hypothesis of teleology within science. From his decision:

“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.”

Refutation of the above is quite simple. (1) Supernaturality, a nebulous term, was NOT defended by the defense, although one could easily attribute the Big Bang (a scientific theory) to that. (2) Irreducible complexity is a valid hypothesis to explain non-evolvability of certain biological features, and (3) questioning aspects of a scientific theory does NOT constitute “negative attacks”, nor have those aspects been “refuted by the scientific community”, which in this case would refer to book publish Kenneth Miller’s ‘just-so’ testimonial dictates.

Now let’s jump to the 2007 Atheist Alliance International Convention, where Eugenie Scott states at [4:10] “We won, and we really won big. We didn’t just win in the sense that intelligent design policy is religious and so you can’t teach it, we won because a judge decided that intelligent design was crappy science.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_48IvWR86BY

And by ‘we’ was Scott referring to the American people, or to the NCSE and ACLU, with their political agendas? Although technically effecting Dover County only, it [part two] has been highly influential in court decisions outside of that jurisdiction. Adjudicating science is not the way that science is done, and part two of the ruling plainly violates the ground rules of jurisprudence. If this ruling is allowed to stand, without reversal by a higher court, then not only science, but freedom of mind will be on the political chopping block in times to come.