If it is actually taught accurately, Intelligent Design actually supports Darwin. For instance, there has been no example of irreducible complexity ever found. Nor has any of the other tenets of ID ever been found in nature. If these things are found, Darwin is undermined, but they have NOT been found. By expanding this accurate summary, you reinforce evolution and undermine ID.

To truly teach it would take a much more sophisticated and mathematically complex lecture than the one sentence of ID. It would also demand that we teach American children science more competently than we do. THAT is the problem. AMerica sucks at teaching science, and we face a scientific brain drain. Instead of addressing that, we waste time on this junk.

I have been shocked at the number of truly scientificly illiterate people in the world, who equate these two ideas as equal. If they were literate, they would understand why ID fails the test of science (no supernatural explanations, for instance- science is based on facts and mechanistic explanations fo the universe.

What truly offends me is that ID proponents blaspheme God. If God wanted to use evolution to create the world, God can. It's called omnipotence. To claim that "it must be an intelligent designer and nor evolution" is to argue that God can't create evolution, and that God is a prankster, giving us fossil evidence and micro-evolutionary evidence to confuse us. The proponents of ID, like the attack on Happy Holiday crowd, ultimately make God small. My God is not a prankster, and I don't want him used to sell thongs to teenagers. I will fight ID, and say Happy Holidays, because both are a part of a small minded attack on American values and real Christian values.

It is extremely refreshing to have a victory, and in the form of such a devastating repudiation of ID. The judge nailed it, 110 percent. My fear is that many who should take this seriously will dismiss it as "liberal judicial activism." As the judge himself said, it's not. But unfortunately, many who should hear the message will be unwilling to receive it.

There's nothing unscientific about believing a higher power is responsible for evolution. It's a philosophical position, and it should be covered in science classes in about two sentences:

"Some people believe life was created by a higher power in six days, some people believe everything evolved randomly, and some people believe a higher power guided and planned the evolutionary process. We can't completely disprove or prove any of those, so we're going to focus on evolution because it relies on what can be measured and seen. Now, natural selection is defined as . . . "

for creationist nitwits IS that a debate goes on. This topic shows us how the discourse in this country- on sooo many issues- has been hijacked by a minority who realize they can play the press and get equal time to promote their agenda; thereby legitimatizing their neanderthal (LOL) viewpoints.

The defense in Dover(Harrisburg) DID NOT CARE if they lost. Losing let's you appeal to an ever higher court. You know; the one which is stacked with appointees???? (Yeah, THAT one).

I was struck tonight by the balance of play ABC tried to give the issue (I watch the networks for the comedy value). While mainly negative, the coverage ended with a scratching head coda of "hmmmm, maybe there is something to this movement". Wow.

How DOES a minority control the debate? Think about the Right's position on healthcare, social security, participation in global climate agreements, torture, spying on citizens. ALL losers for the court of public opinion; but boistered by fear of the "next threat comming in the form of a mushroom cloud".

LOL

From whom?

CR

Everything I have read lately about ID, including Gordy Slack's article today in Salon, contains serious distortions of the original ID concept. This is understandable, because the original concept has in fact been taken over by intellectually dishonest ideologues. The Dover school board members are perfect examples of this.

To be brief: my own introduction to ID came from reading Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box". Readers of Gordy Slack's article might be surprised to learn that Behe does not reject evolutionary theory, but rather believes (like nearly every scientist today) that it is a big part of the answer to nearly every question in biology. However, in his book, Behe gives examples of microbiological systems which display "irreducible complexity". Such systems cannot be produced by evolution, essentially because they have no viable precursors. Any small change to the system, such as all the small advantageous ones posited by evolutionary theory, will break the system (and therefore kill the organism, or more pointedly, prevent its reproduction).

The arguments presented by Behe are powerful and well constructed. In essence, they make explicit something that we all intuitively do already: distinguishing "natural" objects from those produced by an intelligent agent (usually us). If his arguments are ultimately found to be invalid, I believe that their flaw will turn out to have been the consideration of microbiological systems in isolation from each other. Others, Richard Dawkins among them, think that the answer is simply that even if the evolution of some microbiological systems is not currently understood in detail, that does not mean it will always be so.

In any case, I think it is a shame that the intellectually honest arguments of Michael Behe are now being widely portrayed as just more whacko creationism. Of course, this portrayal is accurate in the sense that whacko creationists are off and running with their own sad misinterpretations of ID. I hope that readers of Slack's article will also read Behe's book, and then make up their own minds on the matter.

There will be no appeal to the Jones ruling. The members of the Dover school board who were defendants in the Kitzmiller case were (virtually) all voted out of office by the wise citizens of Dover. The newly elected school board, who are anti-ID, have no intention of filing an appeal.