Finally, some good news to report. The federal judge presiding over the intelligent-design court case, which Gordy Slack wrote about in our recent cover story on the issue (“The deity’s advocate,” Nov. 2), handed down a ruling last week that eviscerates the flimflammers on the religious right who claim that ID — which posits that life forms are so complex they must be the creation of some higher being — is science.
It’s an especially stinging defeat for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor. The center’s president and lead counsel, Richard Thompson, defended the Dover (Pa.) Board of Education’s decision to have high-school biology students read a statement critical of the evolution theory, and to suggest outside reading material that advocated ID.
In a carefully crafted 139-page ruling, Judge John Jones wrote: “To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”
The judge made another point that the heathens at News Hits think is well worth repeating. In addressing the actions of some of the ID proponents who took the witness stand, Jones wrote: “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie and cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy.”
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