Tuesday, December 12, 2006
The Judge Jones Decision
Nick Matzke was kind enough to send along a link to a radio talk show taped on December 22, 2005—just a few days after the Jones decision was handed down. Thanks Nick.
Casey Luskin, chief IDiot at the Discovery Institute was also on the show. Nick brags that Jones accepted almost every argument the good guys made. I don't actually hear him saying that Jones copied text directly from the ACLU Findings brief but perhaps I missed it. Nevertheless, the information was out there. Casey Luskin certainly knew of it a year ago.
I wish I'd known. It would have changed my opinion of Judge Jones. I now see him as a good judge but not necessarily an intellectual with an amazing ability to write about complex isues in science and philosophy.
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7 comments :
"Intelligent design" posits an Intelligent Designer. That's the "intelligent" part of the proposition. One can't get around that fact. Whether the Intelligent Designer is an intelligent agent, or an alien, or a god or a demon or the Flying Spaghetti Monster is irrelevant. "Intelligent design" requires a designer. Full Stop.
Evolution doesn't. Full Stop.
One doesn't need to understand "complex scientific" concepts or philosophy to figure this out.
Intelligent design is by its defined nature a religious proposition requiring mystical "intelligent designers" from wherever and as such cannot be taught as science in American public schools. Full Stop.
What is so difficult about understanding that?
Try and keep up, Bill, you're missing the point entirely. I can't tell whether it's deliberate but it sure as hell is annoying.
Any federal judge has the language skills to have flopped around the findings' verbiage - but as is, hewing to the plaintiffs', any court on appeal would fairly interpret it as even greater endorsement - and greater repudiation of the DI.
More importantly, since judges are prohibited from finding facts/making expert scientific interpretations that are not presented to them, they have to take great care that they don't interject their own (taking "improper judicial notice") but stick to only what is presented.
The slightest finding by the judge of facts/inferring science not presented in evidence would have deprived the ID crowd of Due Process, creating a appealable issue with certain reversal and remand.
Making Jones a very wise judge.
Speaking as a forensic sceintist who interacts cosntantly with the legal system, the importance of anonymous's point cannot be overemphasized. Which is why Casey Luskin is a lying sack and/or was asleep throughout law school (certainly not mutually ecslusive possibilities!) and the DI's com;laint about "cribbing" was beyond ridiculous even by their exalted standards.
Damn, hit publish instead of preview by mistake- now you know what my typing "skills" are like...
I'll just reiterate what Attorney from Tennessee noted on the thread below: to the extent you were confused about the manner in which the scientific facts in Judge Jones' opinion were articulated, it merely demonstrates your ignorance of our legal system and how it operates to produce the paperwork that we refer to as "precedent."
Judge Jones' job was to decide, based on the advice of the law clerks he hired to assist him, which "facts" to include in his opinion. He chose wisely. I am also confident that he read the opinion and had his clerks double-check parts of it for accuracy. That's also wise.
Judge Jones is a wise man and, like you, undoubtedly wiser now than he was before the Dover mess.
I'm not sure the same can be said of Casey Luskin. That freak get stupider every year. Must be all the praying.
"now even the arch-Darwinist biochemistry professor Larry Moran is" cited by the Center for Science and Culture
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