Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.
For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.
During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.
When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.
“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”
Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.
It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”
Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.
In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop, which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.
This is an incredibly moronic line of reasoning, even on its own "merits".
But it's especially vapid in light of the very obvious and basic concept that evolution itself instills within organisms the ability and motivation to find, recognize, and be drawn to mate with members of their own species, to the exclusion of others. Look up "Sexual selection" sometime and learn what high school biology students already know that you don't. Successful mating is an extremely fundamental part of survival, as much so as eating and avoiding being eaten, and natural selection *strongly* selects for the traits that make mating more successful, which includes being sexually attracted to healthy members of your own species, and *not* being sexually attracted towards members of other species (or inanimate objects).
Was this extremely elementary notion *really* impossible for you to grasp on your own?
How is it, if evolution is true, that man has a moral conscience and a sense of right and wrong? Where did that come from?
From evolution as well. Even the other apes have such instincts. It's all part of cooperative social behaviors, and survival modes, which again are strongly selected for via natural selection.
Jones goes overboard in presuming to "settle" the issue of Intelligent design. That is an umbrealla term that covers arange of opinion. He could ruled on the narrower issue of the wording of school board's policy. Instead, he had to prove himself among the "enlightened "
#####It is my personal opinion that it should have.#####
And you're a conservative?
Is there a minimum number of subjects requirement on FR now?
Oh dear. The Bible is just a book, written by man and interpreted by man; indeed, interpreted an almost interminable number of different ways. It is a collection of beliefs, oral history, and the moral guide of a long extinct culture. Even those that have 'evolved' from that ancient culture live different lives than their ancestors.
Apparently heavy doses of Thorzaine and a strait-jacket doesnt impair one's ability to post on the internet.
The "rights" the detractors of the 14th are interested in protecting are not rights, they're the will to violate the rights of others. Plessey vs Ferguson was a clear example of what "rights" were to be protected when the 14th is gutted. That includes the gutting by conservative detractors, because what 's at the heart of their motivations in the arguement is violating the rights inherent and explicitly acknowledged in the BORs!.
No! No! Don't feed the dinosaur to the human, it's needed on the ark!
Darwinism itself is a religion, if you'll pardon my saying so. The idea that some guy dead a hundred and fifty years ago has the last word on the nature of the universe is a curious belief.
I have looked at some of the more intelligent writings on ID theory, and it makes scientific sense. My problems with Darwinism are basically scientific, not religous. And I can't help observing that Darwinists want a monopoly, and refuse to listen to any contrary evidence. Evidence, not religious doctrine. They won't permit it.
No doubt some religious people and fruitcakes support ID theory for reasons other than scientific. So what? That doesn't invalidate the findings. There are plenty of fruitcakes on the Darwinist side, too, including the Social Darwinists, the Eugenists, and the Nazis. That in itself doesn't necessarily mean that Darwin was wrong. What makes him wrong is the extreme scientific improbability of his general theory.
####The article is ridiculous.####
No. It hits the nail on the head.
#####The words of the Amendment and the action taken by Congress under the Amendment(18 USC 24Xs) speak for themselves.#####
So when did Congress, exercising its authority to enforce the provisions of the 14th through appropriate legislation, ever hold it to enforce a rigid interpretation of the Establishment Clause against the states?
18 USC 24Xs aren't limited to race. They protect the rights of all citizens regardless. That's explicit in some of them. It seems you have a problem with the rights protected and acknowledged in the BoRs and a strong desire to violate them as was done when the 14th was violated in Plessey vs Furguson.
Then why did they write "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" instead of "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 1866 Civil Rights Act"? You are attempting at least as much activist interpretation as you are accusing others of doing.
Never in their wildest dreams did the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment think they were making the 1st Amendment applicable against the states.
That has already been shown to be incorrect.
ark-needed placemarker
And what drives natural selection?
You'd have to ask someone who has been around longer than I have.
If you're going to misrepresent the side of ID, then don't be disappointed when evolution is "misrepresented" as treating of abiogenesis (Post #189). Middle school and high school biology textbooks treat of both evolution and Miller-Urey. Evolution in the general sense means "a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form," so I hardly think abiogenesis would be considering as failing the definition of evolution.
As far as I know, one can scientifically treat of the presence of organized matter that behaves according to laws without invoking matters of "creation," i.e. the origin of matter, so it is not proper to tag the idea of ID and creationism as being co extant. I'm sure it is also unfair to tag all proponents of ToE as invoking abiogenesis, though their tendency to present the history of biology as one depicting an amoeba to man scenario begs the question.
Yes.
Aside from the needles insertion of a reference to evolution, I agree completely.
Assuming your comment is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, please answer the following:
What is the likelihood that a male and female of some 'new' species would be born at approximately the same time, in the same general location and with the exact same mutation; survive to adulthood; find each other; successfully breed and raise young to adulthood?
An argument that they could have come from the same mother and father is not reasonable since there would have to have been two separate sperm and eggs. The likelihood that both of those sperm and eggs would have identical genetic mutations is far too great to be imaginable.
Evolutionists are great at speaking in very broad terms about small changes over long periods of time, but when forced to look at what would be required at some particular point when a new species could appear, there is nothing but silence or unsupported claim that such a specific event is not required for evolution to be true.
Are you saying the Holy Bible is not the inspired word of God?
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