Tammy Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (USDC, MD Pa. 2005), may very well sound the death knell of the still adolescent concept known as “intelligent design.†The federal court in Harrisburg issued Judge Jones’ 139 page opinion on December 20 and the opinion is available not only from the court’s website but all over the web. There are a number of typographical errors and there are a number of grammatical problems with the opinion, both of which indicate to me the work of an inexperienced judge, three years on the bench, and a similarly new court staff, rushing too quickly to get the opinion out the door, possibly before it leaked or their own work load caught up with them. They have an opportunity to clean it up for publication, in which they might indulge. Nevertheless, if the opinion is a correct summation of the six week trial record, the decision should not have been unexpected.
I am avoiding the temptation to post a summary of the decision. The troubling part of the decision for intelligent design advocates simply are the findings that there is no scientific basis for intelligent design as a theory of science, notwithstanding that it might have a theological basis. Indeed, the court went so far as to classify current intelligent design pronouncements as sham science promoted by religious activists. The court did this after an exhaustive inquiry during a six week trial on the merits, forever memorialized in 139 pages of reflective summation. The court seemed to do a workmanlike job describing the facts in the record, and if that is so, then intelligent design, as a concept is still adolescent, still dependent upon its intellectual parentage for nurture and survival, and unable to be self determining or of any value. It might be an interesting notion, it might even be true, but it is not a contender in the scientific world, so the court held, and the court is, unfortunately, right.
I respectfully submit that any review or comment about the court decision that is published or posted without a reading of the opinion will largely be uninformed. It took me an entire evening to read it, so I am certain just the time commitment will stop some from reading it, even if many are not stopped from commenting.
For me, the saddest part of the decision was not the lucid dismemberment of intelligent design and failure of intelligent design to survive judicial review even as a bone fide scientific concept, but the record of intemperate conduct by its advocates detailed in the decision. I have served as a school board member of a public school district, and I was embarrassed by the record left behind by school board members in this decision. I am not talking about the failed advocacy, but about the apparent immoral conduct that had to be the result of an “ends justifies the means†and scorched earth thinking. If the lawyers involved must share the blame for the appearance of untruthfulness to a federal court, then so be it.
Rod…I just happen to be revisiting this post today, and I feel compelled to add a thought to what you have written here.
I want to respond to your twice reference to “intelligent design” as an “adolescent concept,” as well as your description of intelligent design as “an interesting notion” that “might even be true.”
I understand where you are coming from by these references, and do not disagree with your meaning. But for the sake of our visitors, I want to clarify what you mean.
Intelligent design — as an idea, a concept, a belief — is hardly a new or adolescent notion. One might accurately say that intelligent design has been the human race’s default interpretation of the universe and our world since the beginning of time, and continues to be so even today, despite its detractors.
Plato called God the “Demiurge,” which means “Craftsman.” Centuries before him, David pondered the beauty and design of things and marveled, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained…” More recently, in the 1600s, Isaac Newton, whom many would regard as the greatest scientist of history, wrote, “When I look at the solar system, I see the earth, at the right distance from the sun, to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.†Most people of all times, and most people of the modern world, believe that this world is the obvious result of intelligent design.
However, you are right that the current “intelligent design” movement is still “adolescent.” It is an effort to teach creationism in the public schools, and arose after the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguilard that forbid it. The ID movement attempts to point out the design without making specific reference to the designer, to thus make such teaching constitutional.
Is it “an interesting notion” that “might even be true”? Although not in quotation marks, I believe those phrases are part of your summary of the court’s opinion in Kitzmiller v Dover Schools — and not your own opinion. Our readers should know that we have much more certainty about this than the court apparently does. So far as you and I are concerned, the existence of God, who created this world intelligently and with exquisite design, is not just a “notion” — but the foundational belief of our lives. And Joshua One exists to help anyone who wishes, to come to know and achieve a personal relationship with that amazing One who designed them.