Blog from the Capital

The blogosphere responds to the decision ruling intelligent design's infusion into the science curriculum unconstitutional:

Religion Clause links to editorials across the country and reminds us why an appeal is unlikely in this case.

The Panda's Thumb offers commentary that concludes:

That ID proponents keep misrepresenting ID as having a scientific relevance is not only detrimental to science but also to religious faith as it gives the impression to school board members and others that ID presents a scientific theory when in fact it clearly does not. While many scientists and science publications have exposed this fact, now the judicial branch has helped bring home the message. ID failed as a science and thus failed in court.

TPMCafe's Todd Gitlin reminds us that there is still the heavy lifting left to be done...in the court of popular opinion (more on that later today), which still offers anti-evolutionists a strategy:

[T]he radical right position will be that, once again, a runaway judge has trashed the exalted principle of popular ignorance. There is no way to defend the judge's opinion other than to defend reason over popular sentiment. There is no way to attack it than to choose popular sentiment over reason.

In other words, the Enlightenment position is: Judicial activism in defense of reason is no vice.

As for my own thoughts, I was stunned at the scope of Judge Jones' criticism of the arguments and the efforts of the ID side; surprised, that is, until I read the decision. It makes clear that the deciding factor here was not bias, activism or, of course, anti-religion. This case was decided in the courtroom, where many days of evidence demonstrated clearly to this Judge the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing nature of the ID-ist's strategy and argument. Its experts' claims of a scientific and not a religious aim were shown to be spurious, leading him to take into account the entire history of creationists' efforts to claim the first chapters of Genesis as a legitimate text for public school science (rather than the other courses in which it would be appropriate). This Judge rightly placed this case firmly within that context, rather than the context of expanding scientific inquiry, where it obviously would not have belonged.

Let science be science.