Molt Be Blog

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Hooooooray! "Intelligent" Design SHOT DOWN

Articles are all over the place and I only just saw the news today... so ashamed of myself.
Articles
Wikipedia has a good summary of the whole bidness and if you've got insomnia, it links out to the entire 139 page ruling

"Breathtaking inanity" is how U.S. District Judge John Jones characterized the Dover, PA school board's attempt to cast doubt on the theory of evolution—but in fairness, the recently ousted members of that board were relative unsophisticates, snookered by the intellectual scam that calls itself "intelligent design," or ID.
From TIME
From quotes I've seen so far, sounds like the Judge saw through the veil put up by the Discovery Institute that ID is just short for Creationism.
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID Policy," the judge wrote in a 139-page opinion, following a six-week trial. "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."
In his ruling the judge indicated that he too was aware of what lay behind the move to teach ID. "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 said.
From The Independent
Anticipating that his decision would come under attack from the religious right, the judge, who was appointed by President George Bush, was careful to state that he was not an activist judge, but dealing with proceedings provoked by the actions of the school district. The judge wrote that "intelligent design" was a religious notion that advances Christianity, and so was in violation of constitutional provisions against the establishment of religion.
"The evidence at trial demonstrates that 'intelligent design' is nothing less than the progeny of creationism," Judge Jones wrote.
From The Guardian
Discvory institute fools fight back with brilliant statements like:
"Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion and evolution," John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said in a news release. "He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur.

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