Judge "Jackass" Jones should be disqualified

Judge John E. "Jackass" Jones III should be retroactively disqualified from deciding the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. The Kitzmiller decision has little precedential value to begin with, but the whole decision should just be declared to be null and void. It was bad enough when Judge Jones said in a Dickinson College commencement speech that the decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions. But now Judge Jones is scheduled to participate in a five-person panel discussion titled, "Overcoming Resistance to the Reality of Evolutionary Change in Nature." What is worse, Jones is scheduled to receive the 2009 President's Medal from one of the two sponsors of the panel discussion, the Geological Society of America (the other sponsor is the Paleontological Society). What stronger indications of bias are possible? Also, Judge Jones has many times broken his pledge to not speak about the Kitzmiller case directly.

The title of the panel discussion, "Overcoming Resistance to the Reality of Evolutionary Change in Nature," is of course very condescending. And the announcement for the discussion again shows that the Darwinists overestimate the importance of religion and underestimate the importance of the scientific evidence as factors that cause many people to question evolution theory:
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. . . . less than 40% of Americans are convinced of the reality of biological evolution. In one study, 31% of respondents said that humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

These studies show that a majority of Americans accept or deny evidence of evolution, geologic processes and the age of the Earth to the extent that they can be reconciled with their religious or other core beliefs. All too often many people, including scientists, accept what they want to believe about the world.

Jerry Coyne is right -- in twenty-five years, the Darwinist cafeteria Christians and their accommodationists have not made a dent in the size of the Darwin-doubting percentage of the public.

A few definitions:

Darwinist Cafeteria Christians: These Darwinists believe that evolution and religion are compatible. These Darwinists take the gospel literally but expressly reject the bible's more credible creation story (the creation story is fairly straightforward whereas the gospel is full of illogic, inconsistencies, ambiguities, and unintelligibility). Examples are Ken Miller and Francis Collins.

accommodationists: Darwinists who are not Cafeteria Christians but who have a policy of coddling them. Examples are the National Center for Science Education, NCSE director Eugenie Scott, and Chris Mooney.

new atheists: These atheists refuse to accommodate Darwinist Cafeteria Christians. Examples are PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins

Thoughts for the day:

If those who teach Darwinism and evolution, as applied to man, insist that they are neither agnostics nor atheists, but are merely interpreting the Bible differently from orthodox Christians, what right have they to ask that their interpretation be taught at public expense?

-- William Jennings Bryan link

Unfortunately, some theologians with a deistic bent seem to think that they speak for all the faithful. . . . . The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.

-- Jerry Coyne in the New Republic magazine link
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