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Author Topic:   The Significance of the Dover Decision
Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


Message 76 of 150 (452172)
01-29-2008 4:27 PM
Reply to: Message 71 by randman
01-29-2008 4:10 PM


Re: the applicability of the law to science
randman writes:
But in terms of understanding ID or creationism or Darwinism? I'd think you must be smoking something if you think a court case is where one should learn about science.
I think what the others are saying is you could learn about the major flaws in IDist "science" by reading their testimony.
I have little doubt that the Dover trial will be used as precedent in similar cases in the future. Maybe if you studied it you would understand why. It was not about learning about science it was about why ID will never be science and should not be taught as if it is.

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
You can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

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PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 77 of 150 (452173)
01-29-2008 4:27 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by randman
01-29-2008 4:07 PM


Re: off-topic imo
No more off-topic than the post I replied to.
quote:
If you want to discuss whether and what IDers have published, why not propose a thread for doing so?
I don't want to discuss what IDers have published because that includes a good many irrelevant papers (Behe's published quite a lot of papers in his career - but very few of his papers are relevant to ID). Discussing what has been published about ID would be more to the point - but there really doesn't seem to be anything much to discuss. The facts are pretty well known.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 78 of 150 (452175)
01-29-2008 4:30 PM
Reply to: Message 77 by PaulK
01-29-2008 4:27 PM


Re: off-topic imo
You mean the fact that there are more ID papers about ID or related to ID themes seeking to establish basic tenets of ID than they are about evolution in terms of it's basic claims and assumptions.....because that's the fact.
In defense of evo's, part of that is evos largely accepted Darwinism prior to the current standards within the peer-review system.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 79 of 150 (452181)
01-29-2008 4:41 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by randman
01-29-2008 4:30 PM


Re: off-topic imo
quote:
You mean the fact that there are more ID papers about ID or related to ID themes seeking to establish basic tenets of ID than they are about evolution in terms of it's basic claims and assumptions.....because that's the fact.
In defense of evo's, part of that is evos largely accepted Darwinism prior to the current standards within the peer-review system.
I have seen no convincing case that it is a fact - or even that it is a true like-for-like comparison, or - given your caveat that it is significant even if it is true. If it's important to you - and it seems to be the way you keep bringing it up - you should start a thread.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 80 of 150 (452184)
01-29-2008 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by randman
01-29-2008 4:19 PM


Re: uh huh?
And my opinion is the exact opposite.
Then your opinion is demonstrably wrong.
Not only are the criticisms valid and not lying...
Er ... you can't deceive me by telling me that, I've seen the creationist criticisms.
... but evos present the theory of evolution in a highly deceptive manner.
I.e. they teach the actual theory of evolution, the one that appears in biology textbooks, rather then the mish-mash of stupid nonsense that creationists have made up and pretend is "the theory of evolution".
In Opposite World, I guess that is deceptive.
So let students hear the arguments and consider them for themselves, provided they can argue either way just as well.
Would you like to take another run at that sentence?

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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 81 of 150 (452190)
01-29-2008 5:11 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by randman
01-29-2008 4:06 PM


Re: breathe deeply girl and slow down
So discussing the particulars of law is on-topic in a science forum?
I don't know why Percy moved it here and I didn't really care. But the significance is relevant with respect to the lemon test because Dover provides precedent that ID policy can be applied to lemon.
Why does it seem that inconvenient issues for you cause you to hide behind false off-topic claims?

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 82 of 150 (452193)
01-29-2008 5:15 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by Jazzns
01-29-2008 5:11 PM


Re: breathe deeply girl and slow down
I am hiding? Who else posts more than me from the ID side?

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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 83 of 150 (452208)
01-29-2008 6:18 PM
Reply to: Message 82 by randman
01-29-2008 5:15 PM


Re: breathe deeply girl and slow down
Just because you post doesn't mean you say anything.

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

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Modulous
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Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 84 of 150 (452230)
01-29-2008 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by randman
01-29-2008 4:27 PM


The Significance of the Dover Decision
District courts, contrary to what you guys think, are not nearly as significant in terms of establishing case law as you believe. The Dover case doesn't mean all that much.
Ordinarily you are right. This was a straightforward case where eleven parents sued their school board for engaging in unconstitutional behaviour. However, the Dover case does mean something more. Ed Brayton does an excellent talk on the subject here (It starts of discussing the wedge document but about 4 minutes in the origins of the Dover case begins).
He talks about how certain ID activists were trying to find a school district that would take on Of Pandas and People as a science textbook. How the Thomas More Law centre offered to represent the school board for free should it get to court and Dover accepted this offer. This is the first point of interest, some IDers wanted to get a court case. Some evolutionists wanted a court case too - they wanted to bury this thing as soon as possible. Also of note is that the Dover board's attorney advised them against adopting the policy they adopted, and as a result they weren't covered under their liability insurance. All the legal costs for losing the case wouldn't be covered by the insurance.
So, this was significant in that it was to be the test case for ID. If ID won this case, we could expect them to start trying it at other school districts.
Brayton covers the documented lies made by the ID proponents in the case and continues that discussion throughout part 3.
Part 4 goes into detail about whose who in the trial, the expert witnesses, the lawyers the plaintiffs etc as well as those expert witnesses that backed out of it as well as the discovery period. Little about the significance in this part, but it does explain some of the reasons this is such a compelling and dramatic case and why people seriously considered making a movie about it.
Part 5 begins with the discussion of the earlier copies (pre and early 1987) of the ID textbook, of Pandas and People and a reference to the immortal cross examination of Behe. It's entertaining, and it shows the magnitude of the face loss that the ID movement was suffering...before the judgement had even begun! The end of five and the beginning of 6 describes the unusual defence witness, Steve Fuller. He argued, along similar lines that you have argued, that fringe ideas should be taught alongside established ideas. His reasons may be different than yours, but that idea was part of the trial, so you might want to check that out.
Part 6 of the talk also discusses the significance of the outcome in a little detail so might also be worth checking with regard to this thread. It even mentions the argument 'judges don't decide science' which has come up in this thread.
The central significance to all of this? ID suffered a major blow and lost a lot of face and clout. Nobody wanted to touch ID because they'd get sued, and a school board that ignores its legal council can render its liability insurance void. Legal council would be more likely now to reject any advances of ID and since people didn't want to lose money in the light of the loss of liability insurance ID's battleground for getting into the schools was stopped.
So ID had to change tactics. And this is what we see you arguing here and we are seeing it more frequently now. Teach the controversy. Don't teach ID, teach the problems with evolution. This has been in the background for a while, but now we are starting to see this concept bandied around school boards. The content is essentially the same as ID, the same arguments are made only this time they don't mention any designer at all now. They just say that irreducibly complex things can't evolve and things like this.
This is significant and we can trace these rumblings in Texas and Florida to the issues raised in the Dover case. You can't just read some highlights of the judgement and expect to see this significance. It was the test trial for ID and this made it significant as part of the political battle ID was waging. What happened in that case would influence the policy of school boards regarding anti-evolution rhetoric throughout the country. Nobody wants to get sued, after all.
It was insignificant from a science point of view - ID had already lost there so the court case didn't really significantly impact that argument. It was the political aims of the influential supporters of ID that were hampered by this decision, and that is a significant landmark in the 'culture wars' as Brayton likes to call it.

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AdminNosy
Administrator
Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 85 of 150 (452240)
01-29-2008 7:58 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by randman
01-29-2008 2:47 PM


Re: the applicability of the law to science
The questions about the Dover decision are, of course, all on topic here.
I think the significance can be extended to the correctness of the law involved.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 86 of 150 (452252)
01-29-2008 9:03 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by randman
01-29-2008 11:01 AM


Re: btw, anyone see a contradiction here
I see PaulK beat me to the punch, but I'll give my slant on your take on the significance of the Dover decision.
It was that nothing you said seemed supported by anything that happened at Dover that originally led me to conclude you were off-topic, but let's take a look.
randman writes:
IDers are publishing articles...
If by articles you mean technical articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, then this is an unusual conclusion to draw from the Dover decision. Lack of such activity was one reason why it was so easy for the judge to conclude that ID wasn't science.
The people trying to silence them are evolutionists.
If by "silence" you mean trying to prevent religious views from being taught in science classrooms, then you're correct. But if by "silence" you mean preventing IDists from performing research, or from publishing papers about their research, or from discussing ID, then you're mistaken. Nothing resembling actual scientific research has ever been produced by IDists, which explains the lack of technical papers. That IDists don't do scientific research was one of the facts the Dover trial was able to establish.
They have even resorted to using the courts to silence proponents of Intelligent Design, and yet there appears to be little self-awareness among evos of what they are trying to do.
The plaintiffs were just parents with children in the Dover school system who didn't want religion taught as science. The objections came from grassroots common folk and not from scientists. So when you go on to say:
Scientists who use courts to protect their theory are likely to find, in the long run, their theory cannot stand on it's own merits.
That is just an opinion that draws no support from anything that took place at the Dover trial.
Scientists who seek to silence other scientists with scorn, derision, persecution, etc,...
Once again, the Dover plaintiffs were common folk, not scientists.
,....probably don't have a very strong case to begin with, or else they would relish the publication and dissemination of their opponent's ideas provided their's could be presented along-side it or rebut it with later publications.
This is again just an opinion not supported by anything that happened at Dover.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 87 of 150 (452255)
01-29-2008 9:19 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by randman
01-29-2008 4:30 PM


Re: off-topic imo
randman writes:
You mean the fact that there are more ID papers about ID or related to ID themes seeking to establish basic tenets of ID than they are about evolution in terms of it's basic claims and assumptions.....because that's the fact.
Except that it's not a fact. IDists don't do research, and you can't write technical papers about research not performed. They write books like Behe's Darwin's Black Box and Dembski's Mere Creation, but they don't do research or write technical papers that any legitimate journal would recognize as science. Dover established the opposite of what you're claiming. Discovery Insitute dropped out on the eve of the trial saying the ID isn't ready to establish its bona fides in court.
The scientific objection to ID is that ID is not science, and this is what Dover clearly established.
For IDists, the true significance of the Dover decision is that if ID wants to be accepted as science then they have to start doing science. A few months after Dover, the Discovery Institute quietly started up a research group in downtown Seattle apart from their main offices whose goal was to begin producing the research results that ID has so far lacked. Reporters seeking stories at that time were told the group wasn't ready to make any public statements, and I haven't heard anything since, but at least DI apparently got the message.
--Percy

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 88 of 150 (452289)
01-29-2008 11:43 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by Percy
01-29-2008 9:19 PM


Re: off-topic imo
Percy, you are not keeping up as IDers are doing research and are publishing. Maybe when some of the current threads die down, we can discuss it on a new thread. I realize, like those that erroneously claimed all but 8 phyla evolved after 500 million years, that there is a predisposition among evos here just to take each other's word for it, but it's quite easy to cite a number of papers either about ID or favorable to ID in discussing topics related to ID.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 89 of 150 (452292)
01-29-2008 11:50 PM
Reply to: Message 85 by AdminNosy
01-29-2008 7:58 PM


Re: the applicability of the law to science
If Constitutional law is acceptable, I'll comment more on that.....but need to take a little more time earning a living than just posting. One thing I want to make sure I do is avoid over-posting in an addictive manner.
For those that want a preview, as I stated in the other thread, I do not believe an originalist interpretation of the 1st amendment bans a generic acknowledgement or even public worship of the Creator or God. Nor did George Washington evidently judging by his most famous inaugural address.
What I do think the 1st amendment bans is to try to limit such religious expression with the caveat that no one church can be favored. The way it is interpreted now is to enshrine secular ideology as the de facto national ideology and religion and so we are turning the intent of the 1st amendment on it's head. Religious expression and thought was suppossed to be protected, not hindered, by the 1st amendment. The interpretation in more modern times has been to gut the meaning of the first amendment as a means to restrict and attack religious expression in education and the public arena, and that's deeply, fundamentally anti-liberty and wrong.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 90 of 150 (452301)
01-30-2008 12:32 AM


a general reply
why I think ID will eventually be taught in schools and the law overturned...
1. Any scientific theory that must rely on the law to maintain it's dominance is on very weak ground. We saw that with the Scopes trial and creationism and now we are seeing it with evolutionism. The very fact evos used the law at Dover to seek to silence their critics is a death-knell in the long run, imo.
2. ID is a much broader concept than just biology. It's basically a reassertion of teleology into science. Secular scientists hate the concept but whether it's math or physics or biology, I think the idea is obtaining increasing merit as more facts are discovered and we move away from a strictly materialist understanding of the universe. In fact, if you believe God exists, then you probably believe in teleology because you believe the Creator purposed the universe into existence. It will become increasingly apparent there is a contradiction in maintaining there is no purpose to the universe and so cannot be considered as a valid scientific idea and belief God exists in any form at all, whether the Christian God, a New Age concept of God, or another religion, or Deism or whatever.
3. This brings me to another salient point, imo. We live in a republic which by definition contains a democratic element. It is highly unlikely that 48% or more of the population can doubt Darwinism and politicians and judges can get away with telling that portion of the public they don't have the right their children be taught a teleological and ID view of reality and the origin of life in public schools which they fund. After awhile, it will become increasingly untenable and appear unfair and discriminatory to deny and restrict ID on religious or rather anti-religious grounds claiming such ideas have no place in science.
4. Moreover, the fact something like 98% of the public believes in God, even the vast majority of those accepting Darwinism, will make it such that denying God's existence, as the evo view of science denying teleology and the idea God purposed man into existence, will eventually as the public is more aware of the debate make arguments that any idea of purpose and God within science as unacceptable an untenable idea, and over time, judges and politicians will realize they are denying the will of the people. In other words, even if evos maintain some victory in excluding ID from biology for awhile, they will not succeed in maintaining that victory in excluding the idea of God from science and eventually that will affect biology as well.
Edited by randman, : No reason given.

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