On Kitzmiller
From Summa Bergania
by David Bergan — January 10, 2006
Judge Jones's decision can be found here.
I have to commend Judge Jones on writing a thorough and lucid document... I love clear-minded people. However, I disagree with the reasoning he used to make his ruling. Let's look at some of the details.
Contents |
False or True Dichotomy
ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. (pg. 71)
What comprises a true dichotomy? A true dichotomy is one where all the options are covered in two cases, like the situation "I must stay" or "I must not stay." There is no third option. Either you stay where you are or you go somewhere else. Another true dichotomy is the situation "This object had a designing influence" or "This object did not have a designing influence." What is the third way? If you look at ink on a paper and it is in the form of Latin characters spelling English words, you conclude that it was designed. If the ink appears in random blots near a tipped inkwell by an open window... you conclude that a gust of wind probably made the blots and not any kind of intelligence. Of course an intelligence could mimic nature and stage the inkwell scene to look like an accident. But it doesn't make the dichotomy any less strict to know that sometimes the influence of a designer may escape our detection. Similarly, every human death either is a murder or is not... just because some murders elude investigation and we wrongly classify them as natural deaths doesn't alter that fact.
Thus any object we behold either had a designing influence or it did not. Now the first bacterium is an object; the first flagellum is an object; and the first immune system is an object. Since these are all objects, they also must be subjected to the terms of our dichotomy. As such, whatever ground is gained by evidence supporting an object's design is lost ground to theories suggesting it wasn't designed. And vice versa... the two are inseparable in this manner.
Therefore:
- So long as "evolutionary theory" represents all naturalistic theories in opposition to detectable design (and as I understand, it does... rifts between punctuated equilibrium, neo-Darwinism, and other naturalistic theories still all consider them to be part of "evolutionary theory") and
- "Intelligent design" represents all theories that suggest any detectable designing influence by an intelligent being
- This is a true dichotomy.
Motive vs. Action
Defendants Presented No Convincing Evidence that They were Motived [sic] by Any Valid Secular Purpose (Section title, pg. 130)
Since the testimony showed that the Dover school board was religiously motivated, and aspired to go much further than the one-minute statement that was passed, the judge decided that the statement was therefore in violation of the establishment clause. Think about this carefully. What Judge Jones seems to have done was put the school board's motive on trial... not its actions.
Is this an appropriate legal ruling? Pretend it is my motive to drive to Minneapolis at the speed of light. Then, I hop in my car and cruise the highways at the maximum speed that the law allows. Have I committed a crime? My motive may have been illegal, but my action was not. Or else pretend that I hate my neighbor to the point that I want to kill him. But I don't kill him; instead I write and publish a stage play that sarcastically ridicules a person acting like him. Do I get arrested for murder?
So what makes it a crime for a group of officials who are worked up to a fever wanting to include religious instruction in their school system? Their actual action was to pass a short and benign statement that references an idea in the library called intelligent design. Not a single word refers to any particular religion, legend, myth, or folk hero. No student's grade was based on her attendance of any particular temple... nor even on whether or not they remembered how to get to the Panda infested library.
But Judge Jones interpreted this dull statement as establishing a state religion because certain members of the school board had it in their mind to go further than they did.
History vs. Present
The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. (pg. 31)
To judge ID by creationism is as fallacious as to judge iTunes by the original Napster. Just because a precursor violates a standard, that does not implicate every successor as guilty of the same violation. Especially when the successor seeks to remedy the violation. iTunes is legal because it took the concept of Napster, obtained legal copyright privileges, and pays musicians royalties for their songs. Intelligent design takes the empirical evidence from creationism and washes off everything that would constitute the establishment of religion.
This statement is nothing more than the genetic fallacy.
Peer review/NAS status
As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. (pg. 64)
This is a peculiar, although true, statement. Some design theorists insist that there are 1 or 2, or even as many as 5 peer-reviewed publications to their name. Even if they're right, such minor successes don't really mean anything to me.
What makes this statement peculiar as a part of the justification is the vulnerability to which it exposes the decision. The reasoning seems to suggest that if at some point ID obtained 50 or 100 peer review publications (or a lukewarm endorsement from the National Academy of Science), then it automatically deserves inclusion in the textbooks. Thus we can infer that there is nothing unconstitutional about ID as a concept. It is merely the fact that it doesn't have significant peer-review status that makes it unconstitutional. And that could change.
Or, as a skeptic would interpret, with this statement Judge Jones is granting the NAS (and the publishers of science journals) the power to determine what is and is not constitutional... a power that is supposed to be with the courts and would be overturned by future laws, appeals, or decisions. Not something that is overturned by a third-party entity.
What if gravity was all of a sudden declared pseudoscience by the NAS? Does it then violate the establishment clause of the 1st amendment?
ID is negative
ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments against evolution, as illustrated by Professor Behe’s argument that "irreducibly complex" systems cannot be produced through Darwinian, or any natural, mechanisms. (pg. 71)
Irreducible complexity is a negative argument against evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert Professor Minnich. (pg. 72)
Irreducible complexity is quite plainly a positive argument for design. The argument flows as such:
- Leaving organic things aside, everything we observe to be irreducibly complex, had a designer.
- Object X is irreducibly complex.
- Therefore object X was designed.
The argument is entirely empirical and can be established without any reference to evolution. It stands on its own and that makes it positive rather than negative.
Once we delve into the organic realm, things get a bit messier. It's messier because no one has observed eyeballs, flagella, and immune systems being designed. So we cannot accurately say that we have empirical evidence establishing a link between a designer and one of these systems. On the other side, we have no empirical evidence establishing a link between a purely natural mechanism and one of these systems. Neither position has experimental data backing it up at this point. All we can observe is that these things exist and they existed before humans were around to see their formation.
But design theorists think they have an edge. Since certain organic material shares a common feature with a bona fide inorganic sign of intelligence (irreducible complexity) it seems reasonable that intelligence would be required to explain the same features in the organic realm.
Judge Jones's perspective that ID is negative only has validity because of the true dichotomy mentioned above. Evidence in favor of design necessarily takes ground away from the theory that there was no design, and vice versa. Evolution could just as easily be considered negative in that every advance it gains comes at ID's expense. Disproving design proves it happened with no design. Disproving evolution proves there had to be a designer. This is the inescapable fact of the dichotomy.
Methodological Naturalism
Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify. (pg. 65)
I'm not sure why science should restrain itself to only naturalistic explanations. Contrary to what some of the plaintiff's experts suggest, the ground rule of science seems clearly to be empiricism. Science isn't separated from non-science based on which is more naturalistic... but on what is more empirical. The more repeatable, observable experiments you have in your camp, the more substantial your theory.
If one were to empirically verify the existence of ghosts, I don't see how any honest scientist could just throw the lab reports out on principle. For certain, the vast majority of empirical studies are based on naturalistic things... the temperature at which water boils, what happens when you drop sodium in water, etc. But a study based on observations of something that violates naturalistic laws would be empirical, too. Since intelligence at the core seems to be supernatural, at some level studying its observational effects on nature necessitates looking past the veil of naturalism.
What harm is done to science by empirical studies that are not naturalistic? I don't see any harm at all, which makes me think that insistence on methodological naturalism is merely arbitrary dogma.
