The ID Judge

If you didn't hear, things didn't go well for the Intelligent Design folks in the Pennsylvania case. Judge John Jones (a Bush appointee) wrote a scathing opinion. Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post:

When the trial ended in early November, Jones faced two choices. He could have construed the case narrowly and ruled on whether the school board had a religious motive. That, in Jones's view, was an easy call. He found that school board members had committed "outright lies under oath" and displayed a "striking ignorance" of intelligent design.

But Jones went further. "Intelligent Design is not science," he wrote. "Proponents . . . occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist [but] no serious alternative to God as designer has been proposed."

Intelligent design scientists are adept at finding holes in the science of evolutionary theory. Some notable mainstream scientists acknowledge these gaps. But Jones concluded this effort does not amount to a new theory of life's origins and development.

He found that the Discovery Institute had a wedge strategy, to use doubts about evolution to replace modern science with "theistic and Christian science."

The sheer breadth of Jones's decision set the legal barriers much higher for intelligent design. But even those who applauded the court's ruling doubted he had closed the door. Most polls show that 40 to 55 percent of Americans favor a strict biblical creationist view of evolution.

"We thought we had put a stake through the heart of creation science 25 years ago and it evolved and here we are again," said Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University who frequently debates intelligent design advocates. "Jones saw it for the shoddy theory it is, but its advocates are intelligent and savvy men and women and they'll be back."

I haven't followed the situation carefully, but I must ask: Why did Judge Jones write a 139-page tome, when--by the gleeful WaPo's own admission--such an approach wasn't necessary? Maybe he was fired up. School board members apparently lied under oath and made a poor showing in general, which is highly believable, since the ACLU's mode of operation is generally to find the weakest link--the worst example, the worst personalities, the worst arguments--and attack it, in hopes of establishing precedent in other cases. I suspect they found a corroded link in Pennsylvania. (The ACLU also, incidentally, tries to combine such weak districts with sympathetic district judges.)

But a judge shouldn't write dictum from inflamed emotion, so maybe he didn't. Maybe he rendered an honest, wholly-objective, opinion, in which case, the question is: When did he become an evolutionary/ID expert? He knows everything because he presided over a six-week trial? Does he now know more than the many thoughtful scientists who have said ID has at least a measure of legitimacy and evolution isn't nearly the ironclad doctrine that public schools present?

I'm assuming he doesn't know that much about science, notwithstanding the hundreds of hours he spent on this case. Yet he had to give a decision, using the evidence and knowledge he has. Judges are limited beings. They can know only so much, and they have to make decisions with that limited knowledge. Hence I can respect his conclusions, but I can't respect his rantings and his far-flung and all-encompassing conclusions on science and religion in general. In that, he showed a remarkable degree of hubris, ignorance that he is a limited being that needs to limit his holdings to the bases necessary to render an opinion.

Side note: I haven't read the 139-page opinion. It wouldn't surprise me if the judge's decision isn't as one-sided as the MSM says. Then again, if the decision isn't that bad, the MSM is pretty much lying or is remarkably negligent in its reporting, since its reporters are not equivocating on their story. They say the judge slammed ID upside the head, period.