Supporters of Intelligent Design Respond
The Washington Post reports that "intelligent design" enthusiasts are responding with both disappointment and determination to the recent decision ruling ID unconstitutional in public school science curricula. It's hard to blame them for reacting with defiance. Judge Jones' sweeping rebuttal was a pretty broad smack in the face, seeming to find the effort little more than a shell game. (In fact, some are arguing for perjury charges to be brought against some of the pro-ID witnesses.)
But, rather than offering a spirited back-to-the-drawing-board defense of ID as a legitimate scientific answer to a legitimately scientific question, many supporters are hunkering down in a strategy of attacking--indeed, threatening--the finder of fact.
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Council gently pushes back (and with all the momentum of a successful Disney boycott at his back?) with this promise of retaliation toward Judge Jones, an appointee of George W. Bush (my emph.):
This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that's coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito... This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries -- if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.
It sounds to me like Land is trying to accomplish through political pressure what couldn't be done through legal and scientific argument. But these matters deserve to be aired in the scientific community first and foremost. I, for one, would like my science curriculum determined by scientists not the personal agenda of a local school board, and would prefer my court decisions to be based on sound legal reasoning about constitutional protections, not on the political pressure of interest groups.