Author: Jonathan Witt

I wonder if Krishtalka could at least take the time to show that intelligent design is a religion-based argument. Let’s set the bar really low for his opening statement. Find a passage anywhere in Dembski’s Cambridge University Press monograph, The Design Inference, or in his follow-up academic book on the subject, No Free Lunch , that bases one of its arguments on a religious premise, that is, appeals to religious authority.

Among the many, many errors in Judge John Jones’ Dover vs. Kitzmiller opinion is the charge that intelligent design (ID) makes no empirically testable claims (see pp. 66 ff.). Similarly, other ID critics assert that intelligent design makes no testable predictions.1 In fact, intelligent design fulfills both criteria since it makes numerous empirically testable predictions.

Michael Medved interviewed Stephen Meyer, program director for the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, for an hour on his national radio program recently…. Also, Granville Sewell, a mathematics professor at Texas A&M University, has a stimulating critique of Neo-Darwinism at The American Spectator.

For instance, the sidebar to Jill Lawrence’s “’ID’ ruling traces idea’s problems” stated, “Proponents of the idea usually say they don’t know who or what that intelligent designer might be.” Such a characterization makes design theorists appear disingenious, suggesting as it does that they are trying to hide their religious convictions. But we have been quite clear about who we think the designer is.

“These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law. Does that make any mention of intelligent design unconstitutional? It seems odd to characterize the desire to go as far as the law allows as an unlawful motive. People who try to stay within the law although they would prefer something else are good citizens.”

David Klinghoffer begins: “Tuesday’s ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania, disparaging intelligent design as a religion-based and therefore false science, raises an important question: If ID is bogus because many of its theorists have religious beliefs to which the controversial critique of Darwinism lends support, then what should we say about Darwinism itself? After all, many proponents of Darwinian evolution have philosophical beliefs to which Darwin lends support.”

Several newspapers covering today’s Kitzmiller vs. Dover ruling against intelligent design are highlighting Judge John Jones’ spurious determination that intelligent design is creationism in disguise. They’re accurately reporting the judge’s opinion here, for his decision reads like a condensation of atheist-activist Barbara Forrest’s mythological history of intelligent design.

Judge John E. Jones III ruled today in the Dover vs. Kitzmiller intelligent trial. Deciding to move beyond the narrow issue of whether the Dover school board had a legitimate secular purpose in briefly alerting students to the theory of intelligent design, the judge also took it upon himself to tell scientists, science educators, and philosophers of science what is and isn’t science and, specifically, why intelligent design, in his opinion, isn’t science.

Mike Gene has a noteworthy piece about the Mirecki scandal–and, in particular, about how various groups have reacted to it.