Judge explains ‘intelligent design’ ruling

So, what do you guys think, is this a case of “shoot the messenger”

Uh, duh.

or is it something else?

Like? Of course, he’s not just a messenger, but as a church-going Republican whom they expected to rule in their favor, he’s a traitor to the fundie cause in their eyes.

As I said at my own blog, for Coulter to call anyone else a “hack” creates such massive irony that it threatens to collapse into a singularity that could suck the entire universe into a black hole of stupidity.

I hope that the next administration gives serious consideration to Judge Jones for elevation to Circuit Court, with an eye toward an eventual seat on the Supreme Court.

Our courts need clear-headed thinkers who put their legal duty above political (or other) ideology. Jones is one of them.

Someone should put up that UD quote about Jones being a good ole boy, Bush appointee, that was going to rule in their favor.

Your wish is my command, Ron. From the ever quotable DaveScot:

Judge John E. Jones on the other hand is a good old boy brought up through the conservative ranks … political buddy of Governor Tom Ridge (who in turn is deep in George W. Bush’s circle of power), and finally was appointed by GW hisself. Senator Rick Santorum is a Pennsylvanian in the same circles (author of the “Santorum Language” that encourages schools to teach the controversy) and last but far from least, George W. Bush hisself drove a stake in the ground saying teach the controversy. Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off at the knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his political allies. Of course the ACLU will appeal. This won’t be over until it gets to the Supreme Court. But now we own that too.

www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/life-after-dover/

I had never read the entire Scot comments, so I thank John Pierat for including the link. Here it is for anyone else who hasn’t read it in all its pristine glory:

Have more faith, Bill!

This is all about Judge Jones. If it were about the merits of the case we know we’d win. It’s about politics. Look at the Cobb county case. A sticker that did no more than mention a plain fact, that evolution is theory not a fact, was ruled a violation of the establishment clause. Incredible! A local school board saying evolution is a theory is, in some twisted logic that just makes me shudder, a law regarding an establishment of religion. Har har hardy har har. Right. In a pig’s ass (pardon my french). Clinton appointed Judge Clarence Cooper made a ridiculous ruling that was faithful to the left wing overlords that he serves.

Judge John E. Jones on the other hand is a good old boy brought up through the conservative ranks. He was state attorney for D.A.R.E, an Assistant Scout Master with extensively involved with local and national Boy Scouts of America, political buddy of Governor Tom Ridge (who in turn is deep in George W. Bush’s circle of power), and finally was appointed by GW hisself. Senator Rick Santorum is a Pennsylvanian in the same circles (author of the “Santorum Language” that encourages schools to teach the controversy) and last but far from least, George W. Bush hisself drove a stake in the ground saying teach the controversy. Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off at the knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his political allies. Of course the ACLU will appeal. This won’t be over until it gets to the Supreme Court. But now we own that too.

Politically biased decisions from ostensibly apolitical courts are a double edged sword that cuts both ways. The liberals had their turn at bat. This is our time now. We won back congress in 1996. We won back the White House in 2000. We won back the courts in 2005. Now we can start undoing all the damage that was done by the flower children. The courts have been the last bastion of liberal power for 5 years. It was just a matter of time. The adults are firmly back in charge. The few wilted flower children that refused to grow up will have to satisfy themselves by following the likes of Cindy Sheehan around ineffectually whining about this, that, and the other thing. They’ve been marginalized.

One hardly knows where to begin or end with a statement like that,except to say that this is the answer for anyone doubting that ID is a weapon in the waging of a “Culture War”

BTW, does anyone have the link to Jones’ remarks to which the IDiots keep referring that “prove” Jones is an ACLU puppet?

I like how the DI and other members of the tards of darkness like to claim Jones’ ruling is not relevant to the rest of the country. If they really believed that there would be more attempts to teach ID in the classroom.

Demski likes to portray his cowardice in being a no-show at Dover was a result of him knowing the case would lose. Funny thing is if IDC is science like he says it is he should have been able to easily prove that to the court. Whether IDC is science has no relationship to the Dover board’s actions so they could have lost the case but IDEC *could* have been proven to be science. Dembski the coward, what a puss.

Ah, but which of the mutually contradictory doctrines?

Probably doesn’t much matter. So long as (some, any) religious doctrine overrides responsibility, duty, and sanity, you have a good creationist.

Flint Wrote:

Probably doesn’t much matter.

Actually it’s the only thing that matters if they have any pretense that their ideas are scientific. But as I keep saying, leading anti-evolution activists have known for at least 20 years that creationism collapsed into a mess of dismal failures and hopeless contradictions. But as long as the rank and file hates big numbers (without dollar signs at least) and doesn’t know evolution from common descent from natural selection from abiogenesis, scam artists will have an audience.

DaveScot may have made a mistake in his calculus. Business Republicans have no use for intentional ignorance, beyond some basics about economics. They need some educated folks to help keep the economy going. The real problem is that the religious Republicans believe their own propaganda and are shocked when the business Republicans let them hang themselves out to dry when they do stupid, unconstitutional things like try to sell ID as science.

ABC sock puppetry Wrote:

It is very doubtful that Jones will ever be nominated for a seat on a higher court. If he is nominated, his misdeeds will come under much greater scrutiny than they have been so far. Consider the following examples of his misdeeds:

(1) The ID-as-science section of the Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion was virtually entirely ghostwritten by the ACLU.

Well, and since the truth of the matter is clearly and concisely expressed in documents that had been submitted prior to the actual trial, why shouldn’t Judge Jones use extant text?

(2) He said in a Dickinson College commencement speech that his Dover decision was based on his notion that the Founders based the establishment clause on a belief that organized religions are not “true” religions.

In what way is this any kind of “misdeed”?

Has he broken any laws? Has he contravened established protocol?

.… Business Republicans know – or should know – that they need fundy-type Republicans to win elections.

This is the harsh reality of bipartisan politics. Once the creo candidates have been sufficiently ridiculed, however, they will shy away from the overtly “ignorance good, science bad” platform. Well, a guy can dream, hey?

ABC Wrote:

(1) The ID-as-science section of the Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion was virtually entirely ghostwritten by the ACLU.

(2) He said in a Dickinson College commencement speech that his Dover decision was based on his notion that the Founders based the establishment clause on a belief that organized religions are not “true” religions.

Number 1 is irrelevant as the judge, as is typical, had invited both sides to present their arguments to be used in the final ruling. The ACLU just happened to have the better arguments. Number 2 misrepresents what Judge Jones really said.

Larry has been informed of this a few times before and in typical ID fashion, he refuses to learn from his mistakes

Judge Jones Wrote:

The Founders believed that “true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry.”* At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things,” to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.”*

*Quotations from The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America by Frank Lambert (Princeton University Press, 2003).

I thank Larry for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight.

Btw, is Larry not banned for his inappropriate behaviors? I will be watching his contributions carefully

I’d be curious to see how the DI would spin the occasion of a judge extensively quoting their material, but not curious enough to want the DI to actually win a case so I could find out. I’m willing to bet the spin would be no less dishonest than the usual DI standard of outstanding absense of integrity.

Flint:

I’d be curious to see how the DI would spin the occasion of a judge extensively quoting their material, but not curious enough to want the DI to actually win a case so I could find out. I’m willing to bet the spin would be no less dishonest than the usual DI standard of outstanding absense of integrity.

Didn’t they accuse Judge Jones of plagiarism, in fact?

By using the term “ghostwritten”, aren’t they lying?

A judge can (and should) quote extensively from submitted material. But the actual composition was his, correct? If so, ‘ghostwritten’ is just another creationist lie, right?

PvM said,

Number 1 is irrelevant as the judge, as is typical, had invited both sides to present their arguments to be used in the final ruling. The ACLU just happened to have the better arguments.

The Dover opinion’s ID-as-science section shows no evidence that Jones even read any post-trial brief other than the one that he copied from. Considering the extreme prejudice that he showed in his Dickinson College commencement speech, it is especially doubtful that he bothered to read the other briefs. However, considering the great complexity of the ID-as-science issue, I do not fault him for not showing any independent thinking on that issue. I do fault him, however, for ruling on the ID-as-science question. There are a number of ways he could have dodged the question, e.g., by ruling that (1) It is non-justiciable; (2) it was moot because the school board members were a bunch of fundies; and (3) under the “political insider/outsider” principle of the endorsement test, an evolution disclaimer statement serves the purpose of reducing Darwinism’s offense to the fundies.

Judge Jones Wrote: The Founders believed that “true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry.”* At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things,” to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.”*

*Quotations from The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America by Frank Lambert (Princeton University Press, 2003).

Actually, it was “Judge Jones said or spoke” (orally), not “Judge Jones wrote.”

The fact that his statements were apparently quoted does not change the fact that they showed extreme prejudice against the defendants.

Anyway, if you Darwinists think that Judge Jones is a shoo-in for a seat on a higher court, you’ve got another thing coming.

Also, I do not know how you want me to respond or expect me to respond to this “Larry” stuff. Do you want me or expect me to affirm that I am Larry, deny that I am Larry, neither affirm nor deny that I am Larry, or just stay silent (that option is no longer open)? Which is it?

Rule 6 = No posting under multiple id’s.

I can’t find any link to the board rules on the new format. Are they still available?

Heh. The rules weren’t under the About tab when I checked this morning. My garbled post contained a link to the original post detailing the comment policy. I think I forget to remove a closing tag.

Here is what I find:

Panda’s Thumb Comment Integrity Policy

As a place to meet and share opinions, the Panda’s Thumb encourages a wide range of comments. In order to be clear about what patrons may expect concerning comment text they leave here, we state the following policies: As far as possible, the integrity of comments will be respected, with the following exceptions.

1. Illegal, offensive, and spam comments may be removed in their entirety. The management has the sole privilege of determining whether a comment requires removal and whether a repeat offender should be banned.

2. Superfluous comments may be removed without notice, as in talk between contributors concerning board layout, duplicate comments, or other meta-site issues.

3. Broken links or other formating problems may be revised by the management to improve the utility of a comment, at the management’s sole discretion.

4. Entry post authors and the management may move comments that are deemed inappropriate to the topic of the entry post, excessively inflammatory, or otherwise disruptive of substantive commentary to the Bathroom Wall. Repeat offenders may have their comments restricted to the Bathroom Wall or disemvoweled.

5. The management is not responsible for factors beyond their control that may interfere with comment integrity, such as software glitches, hardware failure, and problems with Internet connectivity.

6. Posting under multiple identities or falsely posting as someone else may lead to removal of affected comments and blocking of the IP address from which those comments were posted, at the discretion of the management.

Simply put, don’t make a jerk out of yourself. This policy may be revised as future conditions warrant.

What would be the reason for banning me? I don’t see a rule against pointing out your deceptive actions. As usual your argument lacks substance, other than your own desire for it to be true.

How’s the quest for the real explanation behind meteor showers going, Larry?

Flint, Stacy, thanks. Now I see the rules too.

I didn’t think to check for a saved version of the side as I have a fresh laptop, but perhaps that was the problem on the server side.

ABC/Larry:

Torbjörn Larsson, OM said,

Provide evidence that evolutionary biology is taught as dogmatics.

Please stop bullshitting me.

— SNIP —>8

IDC OTOH has a long history (over 20 years) of reusing the same old dogmatic negative arguments against verified science, where for example Dembski’s and Behe’s new books are simple rehashes of their old.

Wrong – they are always introducing new ideas, new arguments. Also, ID is not the only scientific (or pseudoscientific, if you prefer) criticism of Darwinism.

True. We have, to name but one, also CFSM. A deadly competitor, what with the pirates and all, eh.

Excuse me, I’m kind of new here to this discussion, but already it seems to me that the ideas, arguments ID selects for introduction are mostly old, tired and recycled. And I have not seen one single piece of actual evidence to support them. Have you? After all, you seem to have hung around a lot, under various plumes de guerre.

If anything, it is strikingly obvious how wary the apologists of ID appear to be to answer the two pretty simple test questions about common ancestry and the approximate total age of life which have been consistently put to them. Not to mention how you yourself serenely dodge the quoted, relevant, question above with a no more than a deft profanity.

Oh. Please explain why anyone must take any notice what so ever of the rantings of someone who is, by their own admission, in violation of the “house rules” of this discussion forum, specifically by posting under false and multiple “id”s and having been banned for it, as I understand. Why believe the proven liar?

Oh again. Sorry. I take that last paragraph back, delete and repent. It risks sending the whole thread into a paradox; that must surely never happen.