This ruling is some fascinating reading. If you’ve read all the news reports, go read the actual ruling. The basic point at issue here is whether the Dover school board can require that a disclaimer be read to students when teaching evolution. The disclaimer was:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

The court found that basically singling out evolution as the one thing to disclaimer was effectively indicating that the students had to learn it for the state tests, but that the school board thought it was pretty much a bogus theory. The ruling essentially says that “Intelligent is not science, it is relgious creationism couched in scientific terms.”

An excerpt that summarizes the judge’s opinion:

Moreover, the objective student is presumed to know that encouraging the teaching of evolution as a theory rather than as a fact is one of the latest strategies to dilute evolution instruction employed by anti-evolutionists with religious motivations. Selman, 390 F. Supp. 2d at 1308. In summary, the disclaimer singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource, and instructs students to forego scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere. Furthermore, as Drs. Alters and Miller testified, introducing ID necessarily invites religion into the science classroom as it sets up what will be perceived by students as a “God-friendly” science, the one that explicitly mentions an intelligent designer, and that the “other science,” evolution, takes no position on religion. (14:144-45 (Alters)). Dr. Miller testified that a false duality is produced: It “tells students . . . quite explicitly, choose God on the side of intelligent design or choose atheism on the side of science.” (2:54-55 (Miller)). Introducing such a religious conflict into the classroom is “very dangerous” because it forces students to “choose between God and science,” not a choice that schools should be forcing on them. Id.

Starting at around p. 72, the judge takes to task the idea of irreducible complexity as a defense of ID, and excoriates the Pandas textbook for omitting the idea of exaptation, which some proponents of ID hold does not exist at all (thus, the omission is intentional and expected).

One question I have is whether or not the people defending ID in the Dover case really held a representative view of Intelligent Design. My understanding is that it is a theory that essentially holds that organisms are too complex to have a significant liklihood of having been able to occur by random chance in the amount of time since the Big Bang, and therefore it is at least plausible to consider the idea that there may be a force or designer with intelligence that is working outside of, in fact directing, the laws of the natural world that science can observe.

Even proponents of evolution and the Big Bang (whether IDers or not, because it is certain that the Big Bang is not a theory exclusively claimed by evolutionists, but also by many IDers) must admit that matter had to come from non-matter, unless one is a proponent of the indefensible oscillating universe theory. (Indefensible, in short, because the infinite cycles of oscillation would have raised the ratio of photons to nuclear particles to infinity, which is clearly not the case as the number of photons is finite and therefore an infinite ratio would require no particles). So evolutionary theorists require something at “the beginning” that acted beyond the realm of scientific observation or anything explainable by our current understanding of the laws of physics. The theories of the early universe that describe a condition where all matter is pressed into a space of zero size and infinite density require the introduction of “imaginary time” or a gravitational singularity, which would “fail to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations.”

Given the argument of Judge Jones below (from p. 71-72), it seems that teaching of the Big Bang itself, whether as a component of ID or a component of evolutionary theory, ought to be banned.

It is therefore readily apparent to the Court that ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations. (3:101-03 (Miller); 14:62 (Alters)). Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community as an affirmative action program, as advocated by Professor Fuller, for a view that has been unable to gain a foothold within the scientific establishment. Although ID’s failure to meet the ground rules of science is sufficient for the Court to conclude that it is not science, out of an abundance of caution and in the exercise of completeness, we will analyze additional arguments advanced regarding the concepts of ID and science. [Emphasis mine]

Right?

UPDATE: Joining OTB Jam.

I have to be missing something here. $16 million? With an M?

The Treasury Department says that cyber crime has now outgrown illegal drug sales in annual proceeds, netting an estimated $105 billion in 2004, the report said.

At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security’s 2005 research budget for cybersecurity programs was cut 7% to $16 million.

LaShawn Barber today points to the work by Carlotta Morrow about Kwanzaa and says everyone should read it.