Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Setback for ID

The ID movement suffers a setback in Pennsylvania. The contentious issue had all the makings of the Scopes trial of 1925 but this time round, it's Intelligent Design challenging evolution as the creation metanarrative of our age.

Judge John E. Jones ruled that the Dover school board violated the U.S. Constitution when they ordered that biology classes include teaching the position that life may have been created by an unidentified intelligent cause.

"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect," wrote Jones.

"However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."
More...

Note the judges's ruling:
ID is a "pretext," "untestable," "grounded in religion," "misrepresent...scientific propositions."
Richard Lewontin's words come to mind, that materialism must remain absolute, "for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

2 comments:

Dave said...

Another raw display of judicial power by activist judges... sigh...

If the judge cared to read anything by Mike Behe or Dembski, he'd realise that ID hypothesis is testable and falsifiable, it's not grounded in any religion (the designer cud well be lil' green men from space as Nobel Laureate Francis Crick put it!) hehehe...

Naturalistic philosophy is the reigning creation story of our time

David BC Tan said...

Interestingly the Discovery Institute itself opposed the mandatory teaching of ID in schools - which is my position exactly. Link below:
www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&program=News&id=2688