http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001715.html
The opinion written by Judge John E. Jones III in the Dover evolution trial is a two-in-one document that offers both philosophical and practical arguments against "intelligent design" likely to be useful to far more than a school board in a small Pennsylvania town.
When evolution's defenders find themselves tongue-tied and seemingly bested by neo-creationists -- when they believe they have the facts on their side but do not know where to find them -- this 139-page document may be the thing they turn to.
"While answering this . . . compels us to revisit evidence that is entirely complex, if not obtuse," he writes, "after a six-week trial that spanned 21 days . . . no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial area." He makes plain his hope that
many months of intellectual heavy lifting "may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us."
First, Jones writes, people would be well advised to remember that
an argument against one thing cannot necessarily be interpreted as an argument for something else. For example, the fact that the fossil record is incomplete is not evidence that human beings must have been created in their current form.
The world, in other words, is not a zero-sum, dichotomous one in which a vote against one candidate equals a vote for another.
"Just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow," the judge says.
Another logical failing cited by the court concerns one of intelligent design's central arguments: "irreducible complexity."
That argument states that some biological systems -- such as the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike appendage that offers some microbes a means of propelling themselves -- are made of components that, individually, do not have any purpose. Because there would be no evolutionary advantage for those individual parts, they must have arisen all at once -- and expressly for the purpose of serving in that complex organ.
But Jones notes that just because a complex organ cannot work today with one component removed, that does not mean the component did not evolve independently to serve a different purpose and later took on a new role when combined with other parts. The judge notes multiple examples involving the immune system, the blood clotting system, and even the bacterial flagellum itself, in which this appears to have been the case.
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I think Judge John Jones (good Lord what a generic-sounding name) is being a bit optimistic in hoping that future attempts of religious groups to commandeer scientific/rational credibility for use in tending the flocks of the faithful might somehow be diverted from the nation's courtrooms...but I do feel that he is careful & precise in the wording of his ruling.
I am glad that he focused on the error of adopting an "either/or" approach to the issue...which is not scientifically sound. If two competing theories exist to explain some phenomena, an argument casting doubt on one theory is NOT "proof" for the other. Both theories can easily be wrong. Intelligent Design proponents focus on questioning Evolutionary models, but when when it comes time to explain how their own theory works, it dissolves into a laughably inadequate assumption that if Evolutionary models can't explain everything, then why can't you accept that...you know...*nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*...SOMEthing or SOMEbody...is the answer?
ing embarassed to be an american in europe as opposed to outrageously hiding my face in 