Boilerplate Seeking Baptist

Having been at the federal courthouse for three days watching Kitzmiller vs. Dover unfold from the press side of the gallery, let me just say that this is so accurate it isn’t even funny. On the first day I spotted biologists Kenneth Miller and Michael Behe, expert witnesses for the two sides of the lawsuit; they were approached now and again by some member of the media. But who was this, during the break, mobbed by cameras and reporters outside the courthouse? Some Nobel Laureate called in to testify for the ACLU? Philosopher Antony Flew fetched over from England to testify for the defense? Who could this slight, intelligent-looking older man possibly be to generate such excitement? It turned out Read More ›

Eugenie Scott Makes False Claims About Peer-Reviewed Paper on MSNBC

Today CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer debated Dr. Eugenie Scott of the NCSE on MSNBC. Dr. Scott claimed that there have been no peer-reviewed science articles which support intelligent design. This claim has also been made by plaintiffs’ expert witnesses at the Dover trial. MSNBC host Dan Abrams had also been misled into believing this false claim. Meyer, who authored a peer-reviewed science article supporting intelligent design, made a clear rebuttal. Yet Scott persisted in saying that his article did not support intelligent design. Meyer should know — he wrote the article. Judge for yourself. Here is what Meyer’s article actually says: “An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or intelligent design as a Read More ›

Judge in Dover Case Skewers Barbara Forrest’s “Expert” Report; Says Much of It Looks Like “inadmissible hearsay,” and that “it read[s] like a magazine article,” Not Expert Testimony

UPDATED 9.29.05/5:38pm (by Rob Crowther): Interestingly, we recently stumbled across this surprisingly prescient interview with Dr. Forrest, and in light of her recent notoriety due to her “expert” testimony for the Dover trial we thought that readers would like to read the transcript. Two weeks before the Dover trial began, the Judge in the case skewered the “expert” witness report submitted to the Court by Louisiana professor Barbara Forrest, a long-time board member of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association. Forrest’s report is mostly a rehash of the innuendos and conspiracy-mongering found in her book with Paul Gross, “Creationism’s Trojan Horse.” While Forrest’s potpourri of smears and overheated rhetoric is typically accepted uncritically by reporters, Judge John Jones has put Read More ›

Robert Pennock Takes the Stand in Dover Trial

Methodological Materialism and What If The third morning of Kitzmiller vs. Dover found philosopher of science Robert Pennock testifying for the plaintiffs that science is a search for natural explanations of natural phenomena — a limitation known as methodological naturalism (or methodological materialism). Pennock presented this as the definition of science, and said proponents of intelligent design are “trying to overturn” it, but later he conceded that there was a controversy among philosophers of science concerning whether methodological naturalism was essential to the definition of science. Earlier in the trial, the ACLU led its first expert witness, biologist Kenneth Miller, through some counterfactual (or “what-if”) reasoning, an investigative tool often used by philosophers. I wish one of the attorneys had Read More ›

Transcript of Opening Arguments in Kitzmiller Case Posted

You can now read the transcript of the opening arguments in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case on Discovery Institute’s website here (the transcript is posted as an Adobe pdf document). The opening statements provide a good snapshot as to what each side is intending to show in the case. In its opening statement, the ACLU makes clear that it is essentially trying to prove two things: