Editor’s Note: This piece originally occurred as a four part blog post on Evolutionnews.org on December 2005. Dover in Review, Part 1: Is Judge Jones an activist judge? Dover in Review, pt. 2: Did Judge Jones read the evidence submitted to him in the Dover trial? Dover in Review, pt. 3: Did Judge Jones accurately describe the content and early Read More ›
SEATTLE – “Ohio critics of intelligent design now want to dumb down the teaching of evolution by censoring out scientific evidence challenging Darwinism and that is bad for students and bad for science education,” said Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “A lot of evidence surrounding evolution isn’t typically Read More ›
Over the next week or so, I plan to file several posts analyzing issues relating to Judge Jones’ decision in the Dover case. I start today by revisiting the question of whether Judge Jones is an “activist” judge. Some Darwinists are livid that I’ve applied this label to the Judge. Although I’ve explained my reasons for regarding Jones as an Read More ›
The court and both parties in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District battled about whether intelligent design was science or religion. None of them showed any interest in the right answer — a little (or a lot) of both. The experts who testified in favor of ID insisted that, as far as their theory went, the intelligent designer might be …
Issuing theological statements isn’t normally thought of as the job of a federal judge. Yet, this week when U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III released the first federal ruling on intelligent design, there was at the core of his written decision an unambiguously theological ruling: that evolution as formulated by Charles Darwin presents no conflict with the God Read More ›
Several newspapers covering today’s Kitzmiller vs. Dover ruling against intelligent design are highlighting Judge John Jones’ spurious determination that intelligent design is creationism in disguise. They’re accurately reporting the judge’s opinion here, for his decision reads like a condensation of atheist-activist Barbara Forrest’s mythological history of intelligent design. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the judge decided that “‘Intelligent design’ is just Read More ›
SEATTLE — “The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won’t work,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading think tank Read More ›
In his decision in the Dover intelligent design case, Judge Jones places great weight on the early intelligent design textbook Of Pandas and People published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). According to Judge Jones, early drafts of this textbook supposedly show that intelligent design is merely repackaged creationism. However, Judge Jones seriously misrepresents the facts about Of Pandas and People, Read More ›
It’s becoming glaringly apparent that Judge Jones was incredibly sloppy with the purported findings of “facts” in his lengthy 139-page judicial opinion. Time and again, Judge Jones makes assertions in his opinion that are unambiguously factually wrong – even though the correct information was a part of the official record before him. It is beginning to look like he didn’t Read More ›
A legal battle is currently raging over whether it is constitutional to teach the theory of intelligent design (ID) in public school science classrooms. The controversy started when the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, required science teachers to read a 4-paragraph disclaimer that mentions intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory as an explanation for biological origins. Within Read More ›