Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

Today an ACLU attorney, T. Jeremy Gunn, authored an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled, “It’s a belief, and wrong for science courses,” which was placed side-by-side with an op-ed by Discovery Institute fellow David K. Dewolf and attorney Randall Wenger entitled “Anti-ID stance is good old intolerance again.” The arguments used by Mr. Gunn mimic those being made by the plaintiffs in the Dover trial, and are self-refuting and do not hold up to scrutiny. Firstly, Mr. Gun claims that: “ID is simply the latest incarnation of what first was promoted as ‘creationism.’” This is one of the oldest and most tiresome lines of criticism against intelligent design. It’s also one of the most simply factually incorrect criticisms of Read More ›

Coverage of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial has been about as could be expected, all over the board. There’s been good, bad, and downright ugly.

Here then is a snapshot of how reporters can shape the public’s perception in the way they report a single statement. This example comes from the coverage of Michael Behe’s testimony in the courtroom yesterday.

Today biochemist Michael Behe testified as an expert witness for the defendants in the current trial, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board. According to Discovery Institute’s Logan Gage, who observed all of Michael Behe’s testimony today at the Dover trial in Harrisburg, Pa, Behe covered a wide variety of topics. Below is an informal report on some topics covered by Behe’s testimony, based upon Mr. Gage’s report. Links are provided after some of the bullet points to articles where Dr. Behe has discussed these topics outside of today’s testimony. Points Behe made today during his testimony:

Today, Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading think tank researching intelligent design, filed an Amicus Curiae (i.e. “Friend of the Court”) brief in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case urging the judge to rule that it is not unconstitutional to teach about the scientific theory of intelligent design.

The filing of the brief coincides with the beginning of the defense offered by the Dover School Board, which has required students to be notified about the existence of the theory of intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian theory.

“The ACLU is claiming that no matter how carefully intelligent design is presented, and no matter what good educational reasons there might be for teaching it, doing so is just plain illegal and we think that’s nonsense,” said David DeWolf, a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and a law professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane.

The Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial has generated much talk on the internet about Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design, some of it trenchant, much of it stimulating. The American Scientific Affiliation is discussing it here.

One ASA member, Ted Davis, a friendly critic of intelligent design interested in more open debate on the question of origins, provides a favorable review of evolutionist Kenneth Miller’s expert testimony, describing it as “superb testimony … on all counts.” He also provides intriguing if less flattering analysis of Friday’s expert testimony here:

Design theorist William Dembski reports that “last spring The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) hired me as an expert witness in the Dover area school district case regarding ID (Kitzmiller v. Dover)” and that “because the focus of that case and trial is a book titled Of Pandas and People and because I am the academic editor for the publisher of that book (i.e., The Foundation for Thought and Ethics [FTE]), when FTE tried to intervene in the case, TMLC decided to drop me as an expert witness, citing a conflict of interest.” Before that occurred, however, Dembski prepared “an expert witness report as well as a rebuttal of the opposing expert witness reports.”

As I noted in a previous post, this week philosopher of science Dr. Robert Pennock testified at the Dover trial that scientists must assume that there are no influences other than those which exist in the material world then they practice science. Pennock called this methodological naturalism (MN), and emphatically told the Court that this is the way science has worked, does work, and ever will work, at least since we became enlightened during the enlightenment. The reality is that the consensus among philosophers of science is that there is no consensus among philosophers of science on the definition of science. The one exception seems to be Darwinist philosophers of science recommending MN as a definition for science when they Read More ›

Having been at the federal courthouse for three days watching Kitzmiller vs. Dover unfold from the press side of the gallery, let me just say that this is so accurate it isn’t even funny. On the first day I spotted biologists Kenneth Miller and Michael Behe, expert witnesses for the two sides of the lawsuit; they were approached now and again by some member of the media. But who was this, during the break, mobbed by cameras and reporters outside the courthouse? Some Nobel Laureate called in to testify for the ACLU? Philosopher Antony Flew fetched over from England to testify for the defense? Who could this slight, intelligent-looking older man possibly be to generate such excitement? It turned out Read More ›

Today at the Dover Trial, plaintiffs’ expert witness, philosopher of science Dr. Robert Pennock, focused on 4 topics: (1) methodological naturalism, (2) methodological naturalism, (3) his Avida paper, and (4) methodological naturalism. Additionally, he also talked about methodological naturalism and his Avida paper. Today I will address only two of these many topics: Dr. Pennock’s Avida paper and in another post, methodological naturalism (MN). First I will address the Avida Paper The “Avida paper” was published as “The Evolution of Biological Complexity,” in Nature, 423:139-144, by E. Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock, and Christoph Adami (May 8, 2003). Pennock and his other co-authors claim the paper “demonstrate[s] the validity of the hypothesis, first articulated by Darwin and supported today Read More ›