Steve Harvey, Eric Rothschild and Richard Katskee, plaintiffs in the Dover Case made the following key points:
1. Intelligent design is just creationism repackaged They made this point by documenting the changes made to that creationist text, Of Panda's and People to hide the religious agenda of the ID movement. For instance changing a reference to an "intelligent creator" to the more neutral sounding "intelligent agent". Harvey's comment was that the ID proponents "Didn't even switch Horses, just changed the name of the horse." Indeed the lack of candor on the part of the ID proponents became a central theme in the hearings and in the judge's decision. (pdf).
It is worth quoting from Judge Jone's decision here:
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals,
who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would
time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID
Policy."
2 . Intelligent design is not science. Eric Rothschild showed how he was able to counter Michael Behe's arguments about irreducible complexity by documenting that the scientific literature abundantly contradicts Behe's claims. I wonder if Behe has learned to spell exaptation yet.
3. Judge Jones who rendered the decision against ID has been criticisms as being an activist judge who should not be able to rule on what constitutes science. Rothschild counters that judges rule on what is science all the time for instance in the case of expert witnesses.
Richard Katskee from Americans United for Separation of Church and State discussed what we can expect in the future from the creationists. He expects more Dover cases,attempts to use stickers to single out evolution as in Cobb County GA, and creationist teachers to attempt to sue school boards who forbid teaching of ID. Also expect more attempts to sneak ID into other classes.
Pedro Irigonegaray who ran the cross of the Board of Education's summer hearings on the teaching of evolution pleaded with the ID board not to force this issue into litigation. The other attorneys agreed and pointed out that litigation arises from a failure of the political process to work properly.Steve Case from the Center for Reasearch on Learning at the University of Kansas noted that education in Kansas is not broken but the politics in Kansas is.
Of course politics came up and one thing I asked Board of Education member Sue Gamble was what can be done about the new conservative Board commissioner, Bob Corkins. Are we stuck with him? According to her, he serves at the pleasure of the board. So it seems to me likely that Corkins will be an additional issue in the upcoming election as he has been widely criticisms as being unqualified for the job. Well you be the judge when a newly hired employee wants to hire a consultant to help him learn the job. Corkins is important because he appoints the representatives to the standards writing teams.
Red State Rabble (Pat Hayes) was also here and I am sure he will have plenty more to say about this meeting.
Chris Haufler has graciously given me permission to use his group photo from the meeting. He was sitting next to me with his super camera and I am sure he enjoyed watching me with my camera phone.
Update 1/31/06
I just got the names to associate with the people in the photo:
This is courtesy of Jack Krebs from KCFS. He should be in the picture as well for all he does!
Left to right, front front:
Richard Katskee, AU lawyer for the plaintiffs
Michael Manely, lawyer in the Selman trial in Cobb County
Pedro Irigonegaray, lawyer at the Kansas "Science Hearings"
Genie Scott, Execultive Directo of NCSE
Eric Rothschild, lawyer for the plaintiffs at Dover
Steve Harvey, lawyer for the plaintiffs at Dover
In the back
Michael McIlrath, lawyer with GE, stationed in Italy, NCSE Board
member also
Kevin Wolf, lawyer with firm in Washington, D.C.
2 comments:
"it seems that the age of reason is fasting waning in the wake of puritanical dogma"
But this is not an argument. All ted g. has stated is an opinion that is HIS dogma. Thus doing exactly what he complains they are doing. As a freethinking skeptic with xian family members whom I care about, I am dismayed by the amount of vitreol and bias that is thrown against them. The danger to us though is that some of them have solid arguments especially against things like Roe v. Wade and Stem Cell research that will come back and bite us unless we present a valid argument. In otherwords stop acting like the battle has already been one by making dismissive statements. For example www.neilmammen.com/Abortion_Response_Combined_Handout.pdf presents a formidable argument that I am currently battling. It's effectively leaving me with only one response: We should be able to kill whomever we want. Which is not a very palatable one to me.
It's far too easy to use ad hominems and insult people and use the populations' biases against them, but if we do not engage the arguments themselves we will lose this war over time. It's the ideas that have to win, not the people. To win we have to argue step by step and dismantle their arguments. Not make dismissive statements like the above.
And remember we all have family members whom we love who are on the otherside.
Fred,
You raise a good point, but Ted does not seem to be attacking people here but rather a certain inflexibility of thinking. I happen to be a Christian myself but I am also a person very much of the enlightenment so I sympathesize with your desire for rational discourse.
Dogma stops rational discourse and quite frankly leads to delusional thinking. That is exactly what has happened to some of the Kansas Board of Education and when I see delusional thinking I have no qualms about calling it as I see it.
But, yes attack the arguements and the thinking, not the person.
Paul
Post a Comment