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Judge copied ACLU in anti-design ruling
WorldNetDaily.com ^ | December 12, 2006 | Art Moore

Posted on 12/12/2006 8:52:13 AM PST by editor-surveyor

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A historic judicial ruling against intelligent design theory hailed as a "broad, stinging rebuke" and a "masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking" actually was "cut and pasted" from a brief by ACLU lawyers and includes many of their provable errors, contends the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.

One year ago, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' 139-page ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover declared unconstitutional a school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class in the Dover Area School District to hear a one-minute statement that said evolution is a theory and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

University of Chicago geophysicist Raymond Pierrehumbert called Jones' ruling a "masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking" while lawyer Ed Darrell said the judge "wrote a masterful decision, a model for law students on how to decide a case based on the evidence presented." Time magazine said the ruling made Jones one of "the world's most influential people" in the category of "scientists and thinkers."

But an analysis by the Discovery Institute, the leading promoter of intelligent design, concludes about 90.9 percent – 5,458 words of his 6,004-word section on intelligent design as science – was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU's proposed "Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law" submitted to Jones nearly a month before his ruling.

"Judge Jones's decision wasn't a masterpiece of scholarship. It was a masterpiece of cut-and-paste," said the Discovery Institute's John West in a phone conference with reporters yesterday.

West is vice president for public policy and legal affairs for the group's Center for Science and Culture, which issued a statement saying, "The finding that most of Judge Jones' analysis of intelligent design was apparently not the product of his own original deliberative activity seriously undercuts the credibility of Judge Jones' examination of the scientific validity of intelligent design."

(Excerpt)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creation; evolutionism; id; idiocy; idjunkscience; whereistheresearchdi; worldnutdaily
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To: Quark2005
"Ah, let's see - truth by the consensus of professionals in a relevant area of expertise actually trained to analyze, interpret and review data properly, or truth by consensus of Gourmet Dan and the Discovery Institute. Tough call..."

You mean 'the consensus of self-serving bureaucrats supported by public funds who have to kiss up to other self-serving bureaucrats to keep the money rolling in'. The true 'professionals' get kicked out if they depart from the party line.

But, you needed to support that 'truth by popular opinion' position somehow, now didn't you?

101 posted on 12/12/2006 2:40:10 PM PST by GourmetDan
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To: GourmetDan
You mean 'the consensus of self-serving bureaucrats supported by public funds who have to kiss up to other self-serving bureaucrats to keep the money rolling in'. The true 'professionals' get kicked out if they depart from the party line.

Ah, of course! The "my theory is being suppressed by 'mainstream science'" line, one of the classic hallmarks of cranks. No crackpot theory is complete without it!

(Of course, it never occurs to cranks that the reason for the 'suppression' is that their theory is actually wrong; in this case, way, way wrong.)

102 posted on 12/12/2006 3:27:24 PM PST by Quark2005 (Incredulity doesn't make facts go away.)
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To: editor-surveyor

read later


103 posted on 12/12/2006 3:31:58 PM PST by LiteKeeper (Beware the secularization of America; the Islamization of Eurabia)
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To: Quark2005; GourmetDan
Ah, of course! The "my theory is being suppressed by 'mainstream science'" line

Not 'mainstream science,' but humanist philosophy. You can't keep calling evolutionism science. It's at odds with the body of fact, and supported only by deeply held belief. This isn't some marxist university; it's an open forum of sensible people who have rejected this foolishness out of hand.

The only people who accept evolutionism are the people who accept money to prop up the charade. They loke to call themselves "evolutionary biologists," but that is really a contradiction in terms.

104 posted on 12/12/2006 3:51:35 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: editor-surveyor
Unintelligent design in findings of fact and conclusions of law.

Judge Jones is a tin-plated fraud.

105 posted on 12/12/2006 4:07:53 PM PST by JCEccles
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To: JCEccles

Reminds me of judge Greer


106 posted on 12/12/2006 4:12:36 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: editor-surveyor
Not 'mainstream science,' but humanist philosophy. You can't keep calling evolutionism science. It's at odds with the body of fact, and supported only by deeply held belief. This isn't some marxist university; it's an open forum of sensible people who have rejected this foolishness out of hand.

You wouldn't know science if it sat on your face. You don't even believe in surgery, for God's sake, or that the earth is over 5000 years old! You'd best leave science to the pros, because you've demonstrated over and over and over again here that you are a crank of the highest caliber. There may be an audience for that crap on FR, but in the real world of real research and real data, it doesn't hold water, and you and your ilk are just mad because you overestimate the veracity of your own ideas and get called on it constantly.

107 posted on 12/12/2006 4:17:27 PM PST by Quark2005 (Incredulity doesn't make facts go away.)
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To: editor-surveyor
So what do we have here?

A ruling that's 90.9% prior creation, and 9.1% evolution. Sounds realistic to me. In the ballpark.

108 posted on 12/12/2006 4:30:50 PM PST by bvw
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To: foghornleghorn
The point here is not that the judge took the winning lawyers' arguments. It is that he allowed himself to be praised for his great opinion, and took credit for its creation.

All hail the Wizard of the Court of OZ, the majestic all-wise powerful Judge Jones, the toast of many banquets and speeches througout he land of OZ.

Please stay way from that curtain ....

109 posted on 12/12/2006 4:35:08 PM PST by bvw
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To: Quark2005
Quark, You are the one that is loosing it.
110 posted on 12/12/2006 4:39:58 PM PST by RunningWolf (2-1 Cav 1975)
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To: editor-surveyor
editor-surveyor, I see that yet once again the evos go for the jugular, for it is a compulsion that draws them like the moth to the flame.

The seething rabid frothing hatred that lies behind their 'pure science facade' is brightly apparent to all but them.

'Ur messin wid dey religion man

don't do that /sarc>
111 posted on 12/12/2006 4:41:40 PM PST by RunningWolf (2-1 Cav 1975)
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To: Quark2005
The opinion of this Judge, which turns out to be an UCLU ‘cut and paste’, has been applauded by many freepers. Fine, but explain how the ACLU is not just a group of cranks.
112 posted on 12/12/2006 4:47:47 PM PST by Heartlander (My view from the cheap seats ;)
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To: Quark2005
"Ah, of course! The "my theory is being suppressed by 'mainstream science'" line, one of the classic hallmarks of cranks. No crackpot theory is complete without it!"

Is that like the 'science is limited to natural explanations only but we pretend it can answer the supernatural question' mainstream science?

113 posted on 12/12/2006 4:54:16 PM PST by GourmetDan
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To: editor-surveyor
I kid you not.
I've also been thinking about him during this thread.
114 posted on 12/12/2006 5:06:33 PM PST by labette (Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made ...)
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To: editor-surveyor
It's [ID] neither. - It's a postulate that is supported by the entirety of the statistical domain.

Because editor-surveyor says so, it is so proven. Actally ID is a philosophical concept bereft of any supporting observation an is untestable. And what is the statistical domain to which you refer? What you scraped from the bottom of the Disovery Institute's recycle bin?

116 posted on 12/12/2006 5:27:30 PM PST by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what an Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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To: editor-surveyor
Someone here has to be a sanitation worker to try to clean up the mess the creationists make of science. I should get paid overtime for this thread!

Creationists are to science what the koran is to the peace movement.

117 posted on 12/12/2006 5:33:52 PM PST by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what an Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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To: labette

Gosh, that's a sad thought. No comparison though. One is a murderer. The other just a puffery.


118 posted on 12/12/2006 5:47:52 PM PST by bvw
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To: doc30
"For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. From Plato to Aquinas to Newton, maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind, a Creator, served to guarantee humanity's own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from law to literary theory, from behavioral science to biology, a thoroughly materialistic understanding of humanity and its place in the universe has come to dominate. Free will, meaning, purpose, and God have become pejorative terms in the academy. Matter has subsumed mind; cosmos replaced Creator."
-Meyer
If ‘id’ is now anti-science, science ‘must’ now be; anti-design, anti-intelligence, and anti-god.

…Suppose I were a super-genius molecular biologist, and I invented some hitherto unknown molecular machine, far more complicated and marvelous than the bacterial flagellum. Suppose further I inserted this machine into a bacterium, set this genetically modified organism free, allowed it to reproduce in the wild, and destroyed all evidence of my having created the molecular machine. Suppose, for instance, the machine is a stinger that injects other bacteria and explodes them by rapidly pumping them up with some gas (I'm not familiar with any such molecular machine in the wild), thereby allowing the bacteria endowed with my invention to consume their unfortunate prey…

Now let's ask the question, If a Darwinist came upon this bacterium with the novel molecular machine in the wild, would that machine be attributed to design or to natural selection? When I presented this example to David Sloan Wilson at a conference at MIT two years ago, he shrugged it off and remarked that natural selection created us and so by extension also created my novel molecular machine. But of course this argument won't wash since the issue is whether natural selection could indeed create us. What's more, if Darwinists came upon my invention of a novel molecular machine inserted into a bacterium that allows it to feed on other bacteria, they wouldn't look to design but would reflexively turn to natural selection. But, if we go with the story, I designed the bacterial stinger and natural selection had nothing to do with it. Moreover, intelligent design would confirm the stinger's design whereas Darwinism never could. It follows that a design-theoretic framework could account for biological facts that would forever remain invisible within a Darwinian framework. It seems to me that this possibility constitutes a joint test of Darwinism and intelligent design that strongly supports intelligent design -- if not as the truth then certainly as a live possible theoretical option that must not be precluded for a priori philosophical reasons like naturalism…
-Dembski

Philosophy should not exist in the ‘current’ view of evolution? Hmmm… How do you separate Social-Darwinism from evolution and philosophy? Are leading critics of id such as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Pinker, Myers, et al. merely cranks that should be exposed?

119 posted on 12/12/2006 6:02:47 PM PST by Heartlander (My view from the cheap seats ;)
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To: Quark2005
"You wouldn't know science if it sat on your face"

The crap your kind want to call science is all over your face. I'll stick with the real kind that produces usable results.

{"You don't even believe in surgery, for God's sake"

You have demonstrated that you have no idea what I believe in. I have stated numerous times that trauma surgery is quite acceptable; it's the fraud called cancer surgery that has to be rejected, and surgery is never for God's sake.

"or that the earth is over 5000 years old"

You really do have limited intelligence, don't you!
All the non-circular data put the Earth at around 6000 years old.

We're all aware that anyone that doesn't fall for the fairy tales is a crank in your one page book. FR fits in quite well with the country as a whole. We reject the garbage that spews out of the foul mouths of of jerks like you at the same rate that the rest of the country does. PH's polls have proven that. I deal with real data every day, and that is what gives me a firm foundation from which to refute your flatulence.

120 posted on 12/12/2006 6:04:39 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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