PBS NOVA's TV show "Judgment Day"

I have posted literally dozens of articles about the Kitzmiller case and Judge Jones (see the sidebar) and of course space does not permit me to review them all here. Nothing in the TV program affects any of my previous comments about Jones and the decision. However, I will make a few comments here about the program.

It was obvious that Darwinism was not going to be proven in a two-hour TV program. IMO the program should have concentrated on the legal issues rather than the scientific issues.

In some ways, the show was better balanced than I had hoped. I didn't see any quote mining and the program was candid in presenting the opposing views. The show of course did not go into a lot of criticisms of Judge Jones and the decision.

Actually, I think that the fundies came across quite well in the program. Here is this theory that is riddled with flaws and gaps and the judge said that the Dover teachers could not be required to criticize it at all for any reason, not even in a one-minute statement. The Kitzmiller opinion said,
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To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. (emphasis added)

However, the prohibition of "requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution" was not, for some unknown reason, included in the final order.

So here Judge Jones was also passing judgment on non-ID criticisms of evolution that he had not even reviewed.

Here are some specific comments about the program:

(1) My favorite part was where defendant Bill Buckingham called Judge Jones a "jackass."

(2) Of course, there was the "contrived dualism" where there is assumed to be only two possibilities, Darwinism and ID.

(3) Judge Jones broke his pledge to not publicly comment specifically about the case. I thought that his role in the program would be just to read excerpts from his written opinion.

(4) The TV show -- to its credit -- noted that the school board election was close, but did not note that the voter concern about the cost of the trial was considered to be a significant factor.

(5) It was not noted that the ruling on the scientific merits of ID was not necessary. Indeed, several articles in scholarly law journals criticized Jones for ruling on the scientific merits of ID.

(6) The show should not have criticized Michael Behe and others for declining to be interviewed. I would also criticize the movie "Expelled" for criticizing complaints from interviewees about not being informed about the purpose of the movie.

(7) The movie gave the Discovery Institute some free publicity, including publicity for the DI's book about the case, "Traipsing into Evolution"

(8) In the TV program, Judge Jones conceded that his Kitzmiller decision is not going to end the controversy. In his Kitzmiller opinion, he wrote, "Finally, we will offer our conclusion on whether ID is science not just because it is essential to our holding that an Establishment Clause violation has occurred in this case, but also in the hope that it may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us."

I originally thought that Judge Jones had no choice but to rule against the defendants but I now feel that a ruling in favor of the defendants could have been justified under the "endorsement test." Details are in this long comment on the Reasonable Kansans blog.
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Kitzmiller is most overrated decision in American history

Jay Benedict as
Judge John E. Jones III




I thought that the completely discredited Kitzmiller v. Dover decision would be just a footnote in history by now, but dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists are still kicking it around as though it means something. That decision was completely discredited when it was revealed that the opinion's ID-as-science section was ghostwritten by the ACLU. Even good unreviewed district court opinions have limited value as precedents, and this was not a good opinion.

The NOVA series on PBS TV will broadcast a reenactment of the Dover trial in November, and a book review by Kevin Padian about three books about the case was published in Nature magazine (subscription required or can be viewed at a subscribing library, or can be purchased as single article at exorbitant price of $30 for 2 pages). An NCSE article about the book review says,

Padian praises all three of the books as "entertaining and informative," giving the nod to Humes's Monkey Girl on account of its comprehensiveness; he also mentions a fourth book, by local reporter Laurie Lebo, to appear on the trial, which, he says, "promises even more lively details of this perfect storm of religious intolerance, First Amendment violation and the never-ending assault on American science education."

Wow -- a mere one-minute evolution-disclaimer statement was a "perfect storm of religious intolerance, First Amendment violation and the never-ending assault on American science education." I wonder what Padian would have said if those fundies on the Dover school board had decided to teach biblical creationism and only biblical creationism. LOL

An announcement of the NOVA program said,

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (w.t.)
November 13, 2007 at 8 pm ET check local listings

One of the latest battles in the war over evolution took place in a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania called Dover. In 2004, the local school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to their high school biology students. The statement suggested that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore had to have been designed by an intelligent agent. The science teachers refused to comply with the order, and alarmed parents filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the separation of church and state. Suddenly, the small town of Dover was torn apart by controversy, pitting neighbor against neighbor. NOVA captures the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al., which was closely watched by the world's media. With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as "What is evolution?" and "Does intelligent design qualify as science?" For years to come, the lessons from Dover will continue to have a profound impact on how science is viewed in our society and how to teach it the classroom.
Produced by NOVA WGBH Science Unit and Vulcan Productions, Inc. Additional production by The Big Table Film Company.

A website named TV Barn said of the NOVA program,

Meanwhile, another program that promises to make the fall interesting for PBS got its first preview. "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," an episode of "Nova" scheduled to air Nov. 13, will recreate the widely covered 2004 trial over a school-board policy in Dover, Pa., that would have required science teachers to give evolution and God-made-this theories equal time.

Since cameras weren't allowed in the courtroom, "Nova" hired actors to re-enact portions of the transcript. First the O.J. civil trial, then Michael Jackson, now public television.

Unlike Ken Burns, who waited for trouble to come his way, Paula Apsell, the executive producer of "Nova," and the makers of "Judgment Day" seem to have sensed from the get-go they would take a lot of abuse from the intelligent design proponents. The producers said they went to great pains to represent the anti-evolution point of view, even as the Seattle organization that leads those efforts stonewalled "Nova's" requests for interviews.

"If you believe that intelligent design got a fair shake in the trial, then you'll certainly believe that it gets a fair shake in this program because this is a program about the trial," said Apsell.

Judge John E. Jones III (shown here portrayed by Jay Benedict), who was appointed by President Bush, ruled for the teachers who refused to teach intelligent design, and the voters turned out the anti-evolutionists in the next school board election.

Jones, appearing in L.A. to help promote the two-hour program, said he didn't cut people off at the trial, and let everyone have their say. Jones quoted the journalist Margaret Talbot, who wrote after the trial in the New Yorker, "It was a science class that everybody wished they'd been able to take when they were in school."

Posted by Aaron Barnhart on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 09:48 AM in TV Barn (emphasis added)

As for the statement that the Discovery Institute "stonewalled" Nova's requests for interviews, that is the second time that they did that sort of thing -- Casey Luskin stonewalled Edward Humes' request for an interview for the book "Monkey Girl," which was about the Dover case. That is really stupid -- since these presentations of the case are going to be produced anyway, the DI might as well take advantage of the opportunity to present its views. I think they hate me at the Discovery Institute -- they have ignored my requests for help in my protest of Wikipedia's violation of its IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status by political campaigning. I think that the reasons why they hate me are that I am a holocaust revisionist and that I criticized Luskin for spurning Humes' request for an interview. I pointed out to the DI that they can protest Wikipedia's IRS violation without becoming associated with me.

There are misleading statements in the TV Barn article. Judge Jones did not "rule" for the teachers, because they were not plaintiffs. The teachers were not required to "teach" intelligent design but were only required to read aloud a one-minute statement that mentioned intelligent design. By refusing to read the statement, the teachers reneged on their agreement that the book "Of Pandas and People" could be used as a supplemental text. And the requirement that they read the statement was not unreasonable -- in Peloza v. Capistrano Board of Education, the 9th circuit federal court of appeals ruled that a teacher could be required to teach Darwinism even though it conflicted with his religious beliefs. However, I feel that the Dover teachers should have been given more say in the wording of the statement.

Also, the school board elections were close and voter concern about the cost of the lawsuit is believed to have been a major factor in the defeat of the incumbents.

Also, this is the first time I have seen Judge Jones -- who made last year's Time magazine list of the world's 100 most influential people -- in the news since November, even though I frequently Google him. Jones has become so obscure in just one year that he should be retroactively dumped from last year's Time list. Jones lied here when he said that he let everyone have their say. He denied the intervention petition of the publisher of the book "Of Pandas and People," then thoroughly trashed the book in the written opinion. The name of the book appears 75 times in the written opinion -- about half the appearances concern the book itself and about half concern the school board's decision to choose the book. And who cares if Jones was appointed by Dubya -- that is an irrelevant piece of trivia.

As for the statement "It was a science class that everybody wished they'd been able to take when they were in school," the irony of this statement is that this is the science class that people can't take in public schools because Kitzmiller and similar decisions have made criticisms of Darwinism generally taboo there.
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Twilight of the age of monkey trials

The legendary Scopes trial of 1925 started it all. Now it appears that the age of monkey trials is coming to an end. A Panda's Thumb article quoted the following from a World Magazine cover story article that discussed a new textbook titled "Explore Evolution" --
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COVER STORY ARTICLE | “When the base cracks” July 21, 2007

Teach the controversy

Two years after Intelligent Design advocates lost a key court battle, some biology classrooms and ID supporters are finding a balanced approach to evolution that—so far—is lawsuit-proof | Mark Bergin

[…]

Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism (Hill House Publishers, 2007) does not address alternative theories of origins but succinctly lays out the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the most critical elements of Darwinism.

Explore Evolution encapsulates a “teach the controversy” paradigm that the Discovery Institute has advocated for the better part of the past decade. Over that time, the institute has advised school boards against the inclusion of Intelligent Design in their science standards . . . .

. . . the Dover lawsuit also highlighted the effectiveness of the Discovery Institute’s approach. State school boards in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Minnesota along with local boards in Wisconsin and Louisiana have adopted science standards that encourage critical analysis of Darwinian Theory. To date, not a single lawsuit has challenged such standards.

“This is an approach that if I were a Darwinist I would be particularly frightened of,” said John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. “The policy that we’ve recommended turns out to be the precise common-ground approach we said it would be. It reduces the decibel level; you don’t get sued; you get good education; and the Darwinists don’t have a leg to stand on.” (emphasis added)

What would put a further damper on monkey trials would be the passage of Congressional bills to bar plaintiffs' attorney fee awards in establishment clause lawsuits (I would greatly prefer a law that would cap fee awards in both establishment clause and free exercise clause lawsuits). Such a bill passed the House by a large margin in the last Congress but the Senate companion bill was never voted on by the committee. The bills have been re-introduced this year; the Senate version, S 415, now has 18 sponsors plus one sponsor, and the House version, H.R. 725, has 59 co-sponsors plus one sponsor. Enactment of these bills into law would be the coup de grace to the "Dover trap".

Furthermore, the two big recent monkey trial decisions, Kitzmiller v. Dover and Selman v. Cobb County , turned out to be duds. The Dover decision is just a district court decision of a single judge and furthermore this decision was completely discredited by the revelation that the opinion's ID-as-science section was ghostwritten by the ACLU. The Cobb County decision was vacated and remanded by the appeals court because of missing evidence and was then settled out of court when the school board took a dive. Now there is just ACSI v. Stearns, which does not involve public K-12 schools -- it is a lawsuit by fundy schools against the University of California.
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Summary of my views on Kitzmiller v. Dover

Originally this post was part of the preceding post on the Montana Law Review articles but I then decided that the contents of this post should be in a separate post.
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(1) IMO all of these debates over the Kitzmiller decision are a tempest in a teapot because (1) the decision is not binding precedent outside of the Dover Area school district and (2) it is such a lousy decision that it is not likely to be taken seriously even as nonbinding precedent. Actually, sometimes this kind of precedent is not even called "precedent," but is just called res judicata and collateral estoppel instead. Public interest in the case has waned -- the touted book "Monkey Girl," which is mainly about the case, has drawn only 29 Amazon.com customer reviews in over four months (Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion" has around 800 Amazon.com customer reviews). Discussing or debating this decision makes me feel like I am kicking a dead horse.

(2) Judge Jones did not have to rule on the scientific merits of intelligent design and irreducible complexity, and judges should try to avoid ruling on scientific questions where possible. When Darwinist Jay Wexler says that Jones should not have ruled on the ID-as-science question, Fatheaded Ed Brayton calls it "reasonable criticism"; when critics of Darwinism say the same thing, Ed calls it "batshit wingnuttery."

(3) In contradiction of Edwards v. Aguillard, Jones held a "Monday morning" battle of expert witnesses who did not participate in the enactment of the ID policy and whose testimony therefore could not illuminate the motives of the school board members.

(4) What is often regarded as the centerpiece of the Kitzmiller opinion, the touted ID-as-science section, was virtually entirely ghostwritten by the ACLU. Jones virtually copied this entire section from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs. There is no evidence that Jones did any independent thinking here. There is no evidence that he even read any post-trial brief other than the one he copied from.

(5) The Kitzmiller opinion thoroughly trashed the book "Of Pandas and People" after Jones denied the book's publisher, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, an opportunity to defend the book as an intervenor in the case (Jones only permitted FTE to file an amicus brief). Allowing FTE to intervene would not have significantly lengthened the trial because (1) the book had already become central to the case and (2) FTE apparently did not want to bring in new expert witnesses.

(6) Presumptuously telling people what their religious beliefs are supposed to be, Judge Jones said in the Kitzmiller opinion,

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

(7) Abusing his position as a judge, Jones defamed the defendants by accusing them of "breathtaking inanity" and saying, "The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

(8) Protesting too much, he asserted in the opinion that he is not an "activist judge."

(9) In a commencement speech at Dickinson College, Jones said that organized religions are not "true" religions.

(10) Jones has tried to discredit legitimate criticism of the decision by accusing the critics of being opposed to judicial independence and "the rule of law."

These are just the worst things that Jones has done -- there are also a lot of smaller misdeeds that he has committed. Judge Jones has his own post labels listed in the sidebar of this blog.

The three big recent court cases concerning evolution education in the public schools -- Kitzmiller v. Dover, Selman v. Cobb County, and Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish -- all concerned evolution disclaimers, which are oral or written statements saying that Darwinism is questionable. After reading an untold number of opinions about evolution disclaimers, I have concluded that evolution disclaimers are constitutional unless they are extreme in attacking Darwinism. For one thing, evolution disclaimers don't actually teach criticisms of evolution. Also, evolution disclaimers reduce offense to those who for various reasons -- both religious and non-religious -- are opposed to the one-sided teaching of Darwinism. In the words of the "endorsement test," these evolution disclaimers help make these people feel less like "political outsiders." The endorsement test and its application to evolution disclaimers are discussed in this article in this blog. IMO the "Lemon test" should be ignored here (this test is often ignored).
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Anti-ID candidate outvoted by pro-ID candidate in Dover school board race!

Dover Area School Board incumbent Heather Geesey voted in favor of the ID policy that eventually cost the school district $1 million in an attorney fee award to the Kitzmiller v. Dover plaintiffs, and she was also the only member of the current board who voted in favor of appealing the decision. In contrast, Carol "Casey" Brown served more than 10 years on the board before resigning in protest in 2004 over the board's enactment of the ID policy. If the Kitzmiller case's cost to the school district were still an issue, it seems that Dover Area school district taxpayers would regard Brown as a hero and Geesey as a villain, but in a recent school board election, the votes were as follows:

Geesey -- 1162

Brown -- 934
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However, neither candidate got enough votes to qualify for the fall ballot.

Anyway, contrary to what Fatheaded Ed Brayton seems to believe, the election was apparently not a referendum on the ID policy. Otherwise, how does he explain why Geesey got more votes than Brown? Also, the board incumbents who lost the fall 2005 elections all lost by comparatively small margins.

Heather Geesey is the only member of the current board who was consistent from beginning to end -- she voted for the ID policy and she voted to appeal the Kitzmiller decision. On the other hand, the two-timing other current members of the board campaigned against the ID policy but refused to repeal it in early December when a repeal might have saved the school district a lot of money in attorney fees.
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Could Kitzmiller decision backfire on Darwinists?

I previously reported on this blog that legal scholar Jay Wexler, despite being anti-ID, held the position that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the scientific merits of ID. Casey Luskin now reports that the First Amendment Law Review published a paper by Wexler that supports that position. The paper, titled, "Kitzmiller and the 'is it science?' question," appeared in the Fall 2006 issue, which was dedicated to the subject "Religion in the Public Schools." Significantly, of the seven articles in this issue, the titles of three pertain directly to intelligent design and Kitzmiller (two of the other articles pertain to the Pledge of Allegiance, which as everyone knows contains the words "under god"). Casey also reported that another article in the same journal, written by Kitzmiller plaintiffs' attorney Richard B. Katskee and titled "Why it mattered to Dover that intelligent design isn't science," "attacked Wexler with harsh ridicule for critiquing Judge Jones." The issue is called a "symposium edition," so apparently there was some symposium on the subject. Casey's following first quote of Wexler's paper is virtually identical to an abstract for Wexler's lecture on the subject:

The opinion's main flaw lies in the conclusion with which most ID opponents were particularly pleased -- namely, the judge's finding that ID is not science. I take this position, I hasten to add, not because I necessarily think that ID is science. As someone who is neither a scientist nor a philosopher of science, I do not know if ID is science. But the important issue for evaluating the decision is not whether ID actually is science -- a question that sounds in philosophy of science -- but rather whether judges should be deciding in their written opinions that ID is or is not science as a matter of law. On this question, I think the answer is "no," particularly when the overall question posed to a court is whether teaching ID endorses religion, not whether ID is or is not science. The part of Kitzmiller that finds ID not to be science is unnecessary, unconvincing, not particularly suited to the judicial role, and even perhaps dangerous both to science and to freedom of religion.

It is odd that Wexler concedes that ID might be scientific while he holds that it is unconstitutional to require teaching or even just mentioning it in public-school science classes (that unconstitutionality was the holding of the Kitzmiller decision, which Wexler supports). If ID is or might be scientific, then teaching or mentioning it in public-school science classes would have a legitimate secular purpose, a condition for making an exception to the establishment clause.

Casey's second quote of Wexler's paper says,

. . . if one judge can practice philosophy of science, what is to stop others from doing the same? Perhaps the next judge to hear an ID case will decide that science simply means "the process of searching for the best logical explanations for observed data." In that case, schools might be allowed to teach … ID… Is this really a can of worms that ID opponents want to open?

In Wexler's above statement, he appears to be concerned only about judges hearing other ID cases. But what about judges hearing cases concerning non-ID criticisms of evolution, such as criticisms concerning co-evolution and the propagation of beneficial mutations in sexual reproduction -- or even the Second Law of Thermodynamics? After all, the SLOT is not a religious concept, and it is a law, not just a theory. Also, the now-defunct Ohio critical analysis of evolution lesson plan contained some very specific non-ID criticisms of evolution. IMO it is noteworthy that the Darwinists kept threatening to sue Ohio but never did. Anyway, without design, there is no designer. No designer, no god. No god, no religion. No religion, no establishment clause violation.

Wexler's and Katskee's obsession with ID suggests that they believe in the "contrived dualism" idea that there are only two possibilities, evolution theory and ID, and that if one is wrong then the other must be right. The Darwinists hypocritically assert that this "contrived dualism" is an anti-Darwinist idea, but IMO the Darwinists harp on this idea much more than the anti-Darwinists do. After the Kitzmiller decision trashed ID, the Darwinists have been trying to put the "ID" label on all criticisms of Darwinism. In contrast, the fundies don't mind acknowledging the existence of non-ID criticisms of Darwinism because the fundies don't care why Darwinism is wrong so long as it is wrong. Apparently the Darwinists' propaganda campaign has brainwashed a lot of people into believing that such a dualism is actually true. BTW, the term "contrived dualism" was apparently coined by the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education opinion to describe the false dichotomy between evolution theory and creationism.

Also, it is odd that Wexler suggested that ID could be one of the "best logical explanations for observed data." Darwinists in general have been arguing that ID is not logical at all.

Off-topic question: The Darwinists allege that Darwinism's advantage over ID is that Darwinism is scientific (testable, falsifiable, naturalistic, etc.) whereas ID is not. But what is the advantage of being scientific if Darwinism is wholly or partly wrong?

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More "Monkey Girl" business

My copy of the book "Monkey Girl", by Edward Humes, has arrived. Part of my review here will discuss the negative review in the Wall Street Journal.

There is no question that the book is rabidly pro-Darwinist. Instead of merely presenting the pro-and-con arguments and letting the readers decide for themselves, the book flatly states,

Jones concluded -- correctly -- that the evidence in favor of evolution is convincing and compelling, and that the counterarguments are far less so (page 340) . . . . . .
Arguably, evolution has been more rigorously tested, and enjoys more evidence in its support, than any other theory in the history of science. (page 346)

Expert critics of the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision are unfortunately underrepresented in the acknowledgments in the "Preface and Acknowledgments," but Humes is not entirely and maybe not even partly to blame for that -- as I have pointed out, Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin, one of the most prominent expert critics, inexcusably rejected Humes' request for a full interview, and I don't know if any other expert critics refused a full interview. The only expert critics I know in the list of interviewees are scientist Michael Behe, Kansas Board of Education member Steve Abrams (a veterinarian), Philip Johnson (one of the founders of the ID movement), and lead defense attorney Richard Thompson from the Thomas More Law Center (the TMLC website has not commented on the decision since the day after it was issued). In contrast, 9 expert supporters of the decision are listed. Several plaintiffs and defendants are listed, but I have seen no evidence that any of them are experts on the scientific and legal questions involved. A local news reporter is also listed. As mentioned before, Judge Jones was interviewed, and so he is listed. Because expert critics Casey Luskin, William Dembski, and John West are all not in the list of interviewees, the book is probably less balanced and less accurate than it otherwise might have been.

The last chapter and the epilogue, which discuss the aftermath of the decision, do not acknowledge that a lot of the criticism of the decision is legitimate and paint Judge Jones as a martyr who has been subjected to death threats and who is fighting for judicial independence. For example, Humes offers no answer to the following criticism of the decision:

"Judge Jones found that the Dover board violated the Establishment Clause because it acted from religious motives. That should have been the end of the case," said John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. "Instead, Judge Jones got on his soapbox to offer his own views of science, religion, and evolution. He makes it clear that he wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur."(page 336)

The mere fact that Judge Jones immodestly showed absolutely no reluctance to try to impose on the entire country -- and maybe the entire world -- his own dogmatic personal views about controversial and often unanswerable metaphysical questions strongly suggests that he was biased. There is other evidence that Jones was biased, e.g.: (1) his commencement speech at Dickinson College showed hostility towards organized religions by essentially saying that they are not "true" religions; and (2) the opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually entirely copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs.

Also, the book says of the Discovery Institute's book Traipsing into Evolution,

Jones is attacked for "conflating ID with fundamentalism," and after making this accusation, the book excoriates him by offering extensive information about how the intelligent design movement has nothing at all to do with Christian fundamentalism . . . the truth is that nowhere in Jones' opinion does he conflate intelligent design with fundamentalism. The Discovery Institute just made this up. (page 343)

For crying out loud*, one of the main purposes of the Kitzmiller opinion was to conflate intelligent design with fundamentalism.

The book review in the Wall Street Journal says, quoting the first page of the first chapter of the book (page 3),

Mr. Humes says that the Founding Fathers "adamantly fashioned a nation in which government and religion were never to interfere with each other" in part because of "learned deists" like "Jefferson and Franklin and Washington." As it happens, none of these men had a hand in writing the First Amendment, but even granting Mr. Humes's point about deist skepticism, the claim is overstated. The history of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause--along with its inconsistent interpretation by the Supreme Court--shows it to be far more complex than Mr. Humes allows.

So the Founders were not just "deists" but were "learned deists." For crying out loud*, I wonder where in hell some people got this cockamamie idea that the Founders were a bunch of full-time professional philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau. Wikipedia says of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention,

There were thirty-two lawyers, eleven merchants, four politicians, two military men, two doctors, two teacher/educators, one inventor, and one farmer. The Convention was mostly made up of Christian faiths including Congregationalist, Dutch Reformed, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, and Roman Catholic. Also a few Deists were in attendance.

Different "experts" have called the Founders nearly everything from a bunch of atheists to a bunch of bible-pounding fundies. Also, many people just plunge headfirst into debates about the religious beliefs of the Founders without ever questioning the dubious notion that those beliefs should govern our interpretations of the Constitution. As for deism, ironically one of the tenets of deism is the teleological argument of design!

The Wall Street Journal review also says,

Mr. Humes quotes a lot of people; at times, he even tells us what they were thinking. But these conversations and thoughts aren't footnoted, and there is no bibliography. We don't know whether he talked to the people he quotes or to people who talked to them, or drew from court records or newspaper accounts.

The end of the book does have 14 fine-print pages of notes about sources. Maybe better documentation would be called for in a scholarly book, but this book was intended for popular consumption.

Finally, this book appears to accept the "contrived dualism" of just two alternatives -- evolution theory and intelligent design. As I have pointed out many times, there are also non-ID criticisms of evolution, e.g., criticisms concerning co-evolution and the propagation of beneficial mutations in sexual reproduction. The Darwinists promote this "contrived dualism" idea more than the ID proponents do.

The controversy over the case may appear to be a tempest in a teapot. The Kitzmiller decision is, for crying out loud*, just an unappealed decision of a single federal district court judge. I am confident that I remember correctly that the 9th Circuit federal court of appeals once had a rule that no district court opinion could be cited in any court of the 9th Circuit, except of course in regard to res judicata or collateral estoppel involving the same parties and issues ( that is perfectly in character for the 9th Circuit -- the 9th Circuit was the leading opponent of the new federal court rule allowing citation of unpublished opinions ). Then I learned to my surprise that McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, which is also an unappealed district court decision concerning evolution education, is widely regarded as a landmark decision and has often been cited by the courts. McLean was cited in the Supreme Court case of Edwards v. Aguillard (footnote #10 of the opinion of the court) and the name of the case appears 28 (!) times in the Kitzmiller opinion. So I think that a big reason why the Kitzmiller decision has remained so controversial is that opponents of the decision are trying to discredit it (and appear to be succeeding, despite claims to the contrary) in the hope of discouraging other judges from citing it in other cases.

For more of my articles about "Monkey Girl," just click on the label. These labels are a great help -- they often save me the trouble of listing related articles and they even help me find articles.

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* I picked up the expression "for crying out loud" from "Fatheaded Ed" Brayton, the blogger on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. It's his trademark expression. I decided to look up its origin and I found that it is a "minced oath" that is a euphemism for "For Christ's sake." LOL In other words, it should be spelled, "For Chri-ing out loud." I'll be goldarned!

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More Amazon.com reviews of "Monkey Girl"

I previously reported on Amazon.com's first customer review of the book "Monkey Girl" -- now Amazon.com has three more customer reviews.

Reviewer Fm "FM" wrote,

He [author Edward Humes] chooses utterly clownish figures (not that I doubt such figures exist) as the headline representatives of those who question the current orthodoxy, and he brings up "enlightenment" stereotypes of threatening intimidation and oppression by ignorant religious kooks over sensible, rational, modern-type folk. Using reasonably engaging storytelling skills, he sets an underlying tone to these characters that is filled with tendentiousness through and through and blind faith in doctrinaire Darwinism.

Two stars for story telling. Zero for objectivity and factual content on any level.

Reviewer The Professor wrote,

This book purports to be an accurate, balanced account of the Dover trial but is closer to an Inherit the Wind type of mocking parody. It remind me of the early books I have read on the Scopes trial, such as Ray Ginger's Six Days or Forever. Fortunately, we now have the far more accurate and balanced book by Edward Larson titled Summer for the Gods (which was awarded numerous prizes) which cover the Scopes trial. Someone needs to do an accurate book on the Dover Trial as well because this book is irresponsible . . . .This book demonizes one side and will only add fuel to the war that Humes notes goes on without end. I could not see any evidence that any Darwin skeptics reviewed this book for accuracy. All of the book's endorsers are well-known atheists or secularists known for their opposition to those who question orthodox Darwinism.

Reviewer William C. Garthright wrote,

It appears that the "culture wars" are playing out even in these reviews, and it doesn't seem likely that we'll get any neutral observations. I wonder if people who gave it poor reviews even read it. To my mind, "Monkey Girl" is about as fair to both sides as you can get . . . . .

. . . More importantly, perhaps, the writing is superb. I have rarely read a non-fiction book that kept my attention as well as this one. Honestly, I could not put it down. It covers not just the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, but the situation leading up to the trial, including background on the entire evolution-creationism war. I learned a great deal from the book, while being even more greatly entertained by it.

I myself was amused by the buffoonery of some of the Dover school board members. For example, many months after these members voted to adopt the ID policy, they still could not give even the simplest definition of ID -- how was it possible that they were so poorly prepared for testifying at the trial? And I think that a response that former school board member William Buckingham gave to a lawyer's question is a classic -- "I don't know what you said you thought I knew" or something like that. To me that is even funnier than the title of humorist Art Buchwald's book "I think I don't remember," a spoof about shenanigans in government (but of course Buchwald presumably wanted to keep the title as short as possible while getting the point across). I joked that labeling Buckingham as a "hostile witness" implied that he testified while in a straitjacket or while wearing an electric stun belt. But there is a time for humor and a time to be serious, and I don't think that it is serious to stereotype ID supporters as being like these Dover school board members.

From what I have seen so far, I get the overall impression that "Monkey Girl" is well written, entertaining, and informative (within limits), but extremely biased and perhaps poorly documented. The book is obviously very popular and my biggest concern is that people may think that the book contains all that they need to know about the Dover case and I suspect that this is far from the truth. I am especially disturbed that someone who might have helped give more balance to the book, Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, declined to grant Humes a full interview. Also, I am wondering if other Discovery Institute people were interviewed for the book -- they have been the most active and prominent critics of the Dover decision.

I am afraid that this is one book that I will have to buy in order to properly review it (an added bonus if I buy the book from Amazon.com is that I will then become a customer and be able to state my opinions there).

I have switched to the new blogger.com setup and now have a new feature called "labels," which can be used to assign posts to different categories. I now have around 300 posts on this blog and it will take me a long time to label most of them. However, I have already labeled all of my posts about "Monkey Girl," so these can all be seen by clicking on the label below.

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Humes in huff over WSJ book review of "Monkey Girl"

Edward Humes, author of "Monkey Girl," in a complaint about a negative review of the book, said,

Shame on the Wall Street Journal for publishing a review of Monkey Girl this week without revealing that the reviewer is a partisan anti-evolutionist.

Well, Ed, the Los Angeles Times published your op-ed "Dumbing down evolution to kill it" without revealing that you are a partisan pro-evolutionist. You were identified only as an author whose most recent work is "Monkey Girl."

Most of Humes' complaints about the book review are ad hominem attacks against the author, Pamela Winnick. He specifically criticizes only one statement in the review:

As she has done in the past, Winnick mischaracterizes Charles Darwin's theory as "the godless and random forces of natural selection that render the human species a mere accident of nature."

Winnick did make an error here: the random forces are in mutations, not natural selection.

Despite Humes' unmitigated condemnation of the book review, the review is in places supportive of Humes' views. For example, the review says,

During the trial, the plaintiffs' lawyers -- supplied by a prestigious Philadelphia law firm and the ACLU -- made monkeys of the school board's witnesses. Even Michael Behe of Lehigh University, a professor of biochemistry and one of ID's leading advocates, came off badly. He handled himself well enough on direct examination but crumbled on cross when he finally admitted that his book "Darwin's Black Box"--in which he argued that cellular structures are irreducibly complex in ways that natural selection cannot explain--did not undergo peer review. Other ID luminaries, like William Dembski, refused to testify, feeling at odds with the school board's actions.

BTW, the official reason for the withdrawal of Dembski and two others as defense expert witnesses is that the Thomas More Law Center, the defense counsel, would not allow them to have their own attorneys present during depositions.

The review also says,

Judge Jones decided -- appropriately, in light of the facts -- that the school board's statement about what should be taught in biology classes was motivated by religion and did not belong in the public schools.

Even many critics of the Dover decision concede that under the infamous Lemon test, Jones was obligated to rule against the defendants because of the blatant religious motivations of some of the school board members.

While I am at it, I would like to make some more comments about th WSJ review. The review said,

Humes did score one big interview, with Judge Jones himself. The judge is thoughtful, but the interview is inappropriate. Most judges feel ethically compelled to refrain from public comment on cases that have come before them.

Well, Judge Jones did not feel thus "ethically compelled." Despite his false claim to the contrary, Jones has made a lot of direct public comments about the specifics of the Dover case. His radio interview of nearly an hour around March 22 contains many such comments. And his commencement speech at Dickinson College gave an interpretation of the establishment clause that showed great hostility towards organized religions by essentially saying that they are not "true" religions -- that this speech did not raise more eyebrows is astonishing.

BTW, I don't think that it is necessarily frowned upon for judges to make out-of-court public statements defending their decisions. Supreme Court Justice Stevens made some public comments in defense of his majority opinion in the unpopular Kelo v. New London eminent domain decision.

The review said,

Mr. Humes claims that the Vatican has unequivocally embraced Darwin.

Prominent Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the chief editor of the Catholic catechism, said in a recent speech that he wants to correct what he calls a widespread misconception that the Catholic Church has given a blanket endorsement to Darwin's theories.

As apparently only the second book that is primarily about the Dover case (the Discovery Institute's "Traipsing Into Evolution" was probably the first) and apparently the first such book of its type, "Monkey Girl" has attracted a lot of attention. As Humes notes on his blog, it was featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review. As just an unreviewed decision of a single judge, the Dover decision has arguably gotten more attention than it deserves.

To Humes' credit, his link list in the right-hand sidebar of his blog "Monkey Girl" includes a link to the Discovery Institute's Evolution News & Views, which has been very critical of him and the book. BTW, IMO the DI's Casey Luskin's refusal to grant a full interview to Humes was narrow-minded, irresponsible and unfair to Humes.

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Darwinists are the ones who dumb down evolution

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed titled "Dumbing down evolution to kill it," Edward Humes, author of "Monkey Girl," said,

There are really two theories of evolution. There is the genuine scientific theory, and there is the talk-radio pretend version, designed not to enlighten but to deceive and enrage. The talk-radio version had a packed town hall up in arms at the "Why Evolution Is Stupid" lecture. In this version of the theory, scientists supposedly believe that all life is accidental, a random crash of molecules that magically produced flowers, horses and humans — a scenario as unlikely as a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747. Humans come from monkeys in this theory, just popping into existence one day. The evidence against Darwin is overwhelming, the purveyors of talk-radio evolution rail, yet scientists embrace his ideas because they want to promote atheism . . . . .

.. . . . . But then there is the real theory of evolution, the one that was on display in that Harrisburg courtroom, for which there is overwhelming evidence in labs, fossils, computer simulations and DNA studies. Most Americans have not heard of it. Teachers give it short shrift in schools because the subject upsets too many parents who only know the talk-radio version. But real evolution isn't random; it doesn't say man came from monkeys. Those claims are made up by critics to get people riled up — paving the way for pleasing alternatives like intelligent design.

The ones who are "dumbing down" evolution are the anti-intellectual Darwinists who seek censorship of even the mere mention of rational -- as opposed to faith-based -- criticisms of evolution theory.

The Darwinists have "contrived dualisms" (also called "false dichotomies") of their own. Humes allows only two versions of evolution theory: the "genuine scientific theory" and "the talk-radio pretend version."

Humes ignores the tremendous amount of legitimate criticism of Judge Jones and presents him as just a martyr who "was rewarded for his sensible and well-documented ruling with death threats":

Judge John E. Jones III was rewarded for his sensible and well-documented ruling with death threats. Such is the power of talk-radio evolution.

FortheKids on Reasonable Kansans has a much longer discussion of this op-ed.

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DI's Casey Luskin still partly wrong about "Monkey Girl"

In another post about the book "Monkey Girl," which is principally about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute is still trying to defend his bad decision to refuse to grant a full interview to the book's author, Edward Humes. Though Discovery Institute was not a party or a legal representative in the case, DI nonetheless figured very prominently in the case: DI was consulted by the defendants and the defense counsel (DI's advice was not taken); at least four of the original 5-6 defense expert witnesses -- Michael Behe, William A. Dembski, Stephen C. Meyer, and John Angus Campbell -- were DI fellows (though the last three withdrew from the case); DI filed amicus briefs in the case; and DI has been by far the most prominent critic of the Dover decision, with DI's criticisms including a book about the decision, "Traipsing into Evolution" (in contrast, the website of the defense counsel, the Thomas More Law Center, has said nothing about the case since the day after the decision was released). I feel that Luskin was virtually obligated to grant a full interview to Humes and that his refusal to do so was unfair to Humes and greatly reduced Humes' ability to write a balanced book about the case had he been so inclined. Having refused to grant a full interview, Luskin is not in an especially good position to complain about the book lacking balance. I think that Luskin acted very irresponsibly here. As for Humes, I feel that he should not have tried to present himself as unbiased whether he was or not, because I think that a full interview should have been granted whether he was biased or not.

I am nonetheless grateful for DI's excellent criticisms of the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision and Judge Jones.

Also, I am wondering if Humes made attempts to interview any of the other DI staffers or fellows and what the results of those attempts were.

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First Amazon.com customer review of "Monkey Girl" is in

The first Amazon.com customer review of the book "Monkey Girl" has been posted by Peter Irons. He bragged or boasted that he read 6000(!) pages of documents in the Dover case:

As the author of a forthcoming book (Viking, May 17) on five recent legal cases that challenged religious symbols and practices in public parks, courthouses, and schools (God on Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields), I included a chapter on the Dover case, and read the entire 6,000 pages of testimony in that trial.

There are probably not 6000 pages of testimony in the trial, even if the expert witness reports are included -- the 6000 pages probably include all or most of the publicly available documents in the case. For one thing, after reading 6000 pages of material (even though a lot of it is in large print and/or double spaced), most of which is pretty dull reading, one could hardly see the forest for the trees. Also, a lot of very important things are not in the case documents -- e.g., Judge Jones' infamous "true religion" speech, in which he showed great hostility towards organized religions by essentially saying that they are not "true" religions. This hostility towards organized religions arguably biased him against the defendants and thus arguably disqualified him from hearing the case. Judge Jones would not have dared put that "true religion" remark in the Dover opinion. The expression of bias in his "true religion" speech is reflected in the appearance of bias in his rulings.

Ed Humes has made that trial come to life, with perceptive portraits of all the participants: plaintiffs, defendants, expert witnesses on both sides, and the federal judge, John E. Jones III, a Republican appointee of President Bush, who presided with amazing fairness and flashes of humor.

"Presided with amazing fairness"? heehee haha HAHAHAHAHA

And there we go with that "Republican appointee of President Bush" thing again. The Darwinists are making a much bigger thing about that after the decision than the fundies were making before the decision.

The opponents of evolution are well-funded and determined, but the Dover case inflicted a blow from which they might not recover.

The Dover decision is arguably the most overrated and overhyped single-judge decision in American history. The Dover decision had little enough value as precedent to begin with, and now it has even less value as precedent after the Discovery Institute revealed that the opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually entirely ghostwritten by the ACLU. And for the following reasons, I have concluded that Jones' decision is not binding precedent even in his own Middle District of Pennsylvania federal district court: (1) It makes no sense for an unappealed decision of a single judge to be binding precedent anywhere; (2) federal district courts, unlike federal appeals courts, do not have a procedure for eliminating really bad precedents -- the procedure used by federal appeals courts is the en banc (full court) rehearing; and (3) I am confident that I correctly remember that the 9th Circuit federal court of appeals once had a rule that no federal district court decision could be cited in any court of the 9th circuit (except in cases involving the same parties and the same issues), and that circuit rule could not have existed if there were any general rule that federal district court decisions were binding precedent in the same court.

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Casey Luskin's criticism of "Monkey Girl"

I feel that Casey Luskin's criticism of the book "Monkey Girl" and the book's author Edward Humes has both good and bad points. I am particularly disappointed by the bad points because I have generally found Luskin's writings to be astute, fair, and backed up by extensive research.

Casey wrote,

Last spring, I was contacted by Mr. Humes, who requested an interview for his book. He immediately tried to convince me he was fair and objective, which is usually a red flag that a reporter isn’t going to be fair or objective . . . . Due to my suspicions last year, I only granted Humes a short phone interview where we discussed the nature of intelligent design (ID).

IMO, an interview is an interview -- it doesn't matter whether the interviewer is biased or not. If Casey had agreed to a long interview and the book had then misrepresented or unjustifiably omitted his views, then he would at least have had good reason to complain. Casey should not have looked a gift horse in the mouth. Who knows, Casey might have muffed an opportunity to help make the book more balanced.

During our brief call last year, I got Humes to admit that he accepted evolution. That's not necessarily a big deal, but just how staunch is Humes’ support for evolution? Now we learn: Humes’ present FAQ states, “ There is more scientific evidence, laboratory testing and direct observation to support evolutionary theory than virtually any other scientific theory, including gravitational theory...” (emphasis added by Luskin)

I’ve never seen a single journalist who promised he was fair and non-partisan subsequently claim that evolution has more scientific support than gravity. In fact, I can't recall witnessing anyone anywhere ever claim that evolution has more scientific evidence than gravity.

I think that Luskin has a good point here.

BTW, Humes was not speaking of "gravity" as Luskin said but was speaking of "gravitational theory." There is a "law" of gravity -- Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation which says that gravitational force is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them -- and then there are "theories" of gravity (or gravitation) that seek to explain it. In Humes' FAQ, "gravitational theory" in the preceding quote has an asterisk to the following footnote (this footnote might have been added after Luskin criticized the above quote) --

*There is, of course, no doubt that gravity exists, but the understanding of how and why it effects space and time is surprisingly incomplete when it comes to laboratory evidence. For instance, the existence of gravitational waves is predicted by gravitational theory, but despite determined efforts by physicists for many years, such waves have never been directly detected. Evolution, on the other hand, has been observed directly in the laboratory and in nature innumerable times. (emphasis added)

The kind of evolution that Humes describes here consists only of microevolution and does not include macroevolution. No one disputes microevolution -- the big controversy is over macroevolution. Humes is either ignorant or dishonest here -- and I think the latter because I doubt that anyone could write such an extensive review of the Dover case without becoming aware of the difference between microevolution and macroevolution.

Luskin says,

Humes’ FAQ states: “Fact: Evolution is mindless, but never random.” (emphasis added by Luskin)

Sheeesh -- then why do they call it "random" mutation?

When Humes contacted me last year, I asked him if he would provide his book proposal because that would probably show if had an agenda. He declined, stating as his given reason that he didn’t want to risk anyone stealing his book idea. That sounded fair, so I dropped my request.

What was the big secret? Interviewing people connected to the Dover case and then writing a book based on the interviews hardly seems like a novel idea.

But now that his book is published, no one can steal his ideas, so I recently re-asked him to make his book proposal public so he can prove that he had no agenda when writing Monkey Girl. But Humes still refuses to make his book proposal public! (emphasis in original)

I think that Luskin is wrong for condemning Humes for refusing to make the book proposal public. IMO people should not be expected to disclose their private tentative ideas -- ideas that they never intended to make public and ideas that they may later scrap or modify. I also think it was wrong of the Dover plaintiffs to subpoena expert witness William Dembski's draft of the book "Design of Life" -- the subpoena was approved by Judge Jones with the provision that the contents of the draft not be publicly disclosed.

Also, unless Humes is an employee of the book's publisher, I am surprised that he submitted a book proposal to the publisher. I have never heard of a publishing company accepting a book from an independent writer solely on the basis of a book proposal -- I thought that publishing companies accepted such books only on the basis of complete manuscripts.

I previously discussed "Monkey Girl" in this post.

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The monkey business of "Monkey Girl"

"Monkey Girl" by Edward Humes, which had a release date of January 30, is one of the new books I mentioned in my post titled Books about Kitzmiller v. Dover case. The main homepage for Monkey Girl is here; another webpage of the same website has additional comments under the heading "Advance Praise for Monkey Girl." Though the homepage's synopsis and the early reviews of the book seem to present the book as objective and neutral, it appears that the book has a decided pro-Darwinist slant. It is noteworthy that the homepage's section titled "Reviews" has favorable comments from well-known Darwinists -- Judge John E. Jones III, Eugenie Scott, and Michael Shermer -- but no comments at all from well-known anti-Darwinists. The Monkey Girl FAQ says, for example,

Myth: the modern Intelligent Design movement was conceived by scientists to further human knowledge and understanding.

Fact: The modern Intelligent Design movement was conceived by a lawyer in order to overthrow evolutionary theory and bring God “back” to public school classrooms.

That is just a blatant smear of the intelligent design movement. Many prominent proponents of ID have been scientists and technologists with no religious ax to grind.

Another example from the Monkey Girl FAQ:

Myth: Evolutionary theory states that man evolved from monkeys.

Fact: Evolutionary theory states that man and monkeys share a common ancestor that was neither man nor monkey, but possessed qualities passed on to each.

Even humans are now considered to be apes. Some of the extinct alleged ancestors of humans are non-human apes. Wikipedia says of apes,

Until a handful of decades ago, humans were thought to be distinctly set apart from the other apes (even from the other great apes), so much so that many people still don't think of the term "apes" to include humans at all. However, it is not considered accurate by many biologists to think of apes in a biological sense without considering humans to be included. The terms "non-human apes" or "non-human great apes" is used with increasing frequency to show the relationship of humans to the other apes while yet talking only about the non-human species.

Also, the prologue of the book says about the Dover Area school board's ID policy,

As the board majority saw it, all this would do was improve science education in Dover -- an inclusion of new and exciting theories, a commitment to accuracy and fairness by referencing “both sides” of the evolution question, and a lesson in critical thought added to all that tired, materialistic Darwinian dogma. Who, the board majority maintained, could argue with that?

They might have had a point, too, but for two big problems: Their own in-house experts – the entire science faculty – informed them that Intelligent Design was hooey in their considered opinion, that it was creationism in all but name, and that they adamantly opposed its introduction into the curriculum. And then there were the official discussions leading up to the new policy that seemed to belie the board’s bland insistence that it had no religious agenda . . .

The fact that the teachers disapproved of the ID policy does not mean or imply that the policy was an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. Also, the religious motives of the some of the school board members arguably should not have been a factor in the Dover case but because of the infamous Lemon test unfortunately were.

Also, the prologue says of former school board member David Napierski,

Like other members of the school board, he says his support for “balance” is not based on any extensive knowledge of what Intelligent Design is all about, or evolution for that matter. Indeed, he clearly fails to grasp that evolutionary theory in no way claims that man descended from apes, but only that today’s men and today’s apes share a common ancestor in the distant, prehistoric past.

As noted above, the extinct alleged ancestors of humans are non-human apes.

The Monkey Girl homepage also lists the following unreliable sources of information:

Panda's Thumb (a group Darwinist blog)

Uncommon Descent (a group anti-Darwinist blog)

Pharyngula (personal blog of PZ Myers, who also blogs on Panda's Thumb)

The above blogs are unreliable because they arbitrarily censor comments and commenters, and as a result many of the discussion threads on these blogs are very one-sided. The same is true of the personal blogs of Panda's Thumb bloggers Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars) and Esley Welsberry (Austringer).

The Monkey Girl homepage also cites another unreliable source, the Fordham Foundation's report on state evolution education standards. The Fordham Foundation once threatened to drop Ohio's overall science education grade from a B to an F because of the state's former critical analysis lesson plan for evolution education (see letter posted on Jan. 21, 2006 on this webpage), even though evolution education is worth only 3 points out of a maximum possible score of 69 for overall state science education ratings in the Fordham Foundation's 2005 report on state science standards. Also, the Fordham Foundation's criteria for determining states' overall science education ratings -- e.g., "seriousness" and "quality" -- have been criticized as being arbitrary, vague, and subjective, and the ratings have been criticized as having no correlation with actual student performance (BTW, the Fordham Foundation has no connection with Fordham University).

An article in the York Dispatch, a local newspaper in Dover, says about the book,

"The central element is the (Dover) case, but it's placed in a larger context," Humes said earlier this month.

The book looks at similar controversies in Kansas and other states, as well as the history of evolution-versus-religion cases, such as the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee.

Though Dover's trial was billed as the "second coming" of the Scopes trial, Humes said the Dover case "went far beyond Scopes" because the scientific experts weren't allowed to testify in the Scopes case.

The Dover trial was considered to be "Scopes II" in terms of publicity and fame. However, so far as the content and nature of the Dover case are concerned, the true predecessors of the case are: (1) the relatively unknown McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (1982), where there was also a lot of expert scientific testimony; and (2) Selman v. Cobb County(2005-2006) and the almost unknown but nonetheless significant Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish(2000) cases, which like the Dover case were evolution disclaimer cases.

The York Dispatch article also says,

" . . . I think that is very common. ... People doubt or outright reject the theory of evolution but they don't even know what it is they've rejected," Humes said. "They just know they don't like it."

I don't think that is true. I think that people in general are not as ignorant about evolution as Humes wants to believe.

Ultimately, the fallout for such thinking could be a national crisis; fewer young Americans are getting science degrees, and that doesn't bode well for the United States' progress against foreign competitors, Humes said.

That's hogwash -- the public's beliefs about evolution have nothing to do with technological competitiveness. No commercial product is based on macroevolution theory, and scientists can use evolution theory (as they do in cladistic taxonomy) even while believing that only part of it or none of it is true. And there is a surplus -- not a shortage -- of Americans with advanced training in science and technology.

An article in the York Daily Record, another local newspaper in the Dover, says,

For "Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul," Humes interviewed several key players in the trial, such as Bill Buckingham, Judge John E. Jones III and Jeff and Casey Brown.

If Judge Jones' interview included direct comments about the case, then this is another example showing that Jones lied when he said -- through a spokesperson -- that he "has always avoided speaking about the case directly."

The York Daily Record article continues,

"When people talk about the theory of evolution, they really don't know what it is," he [Humes] said. "It's evident of how poor of a job are we doing educating kids in science."

Does the statement "[w]hen people talk about the theory of evolution, they really don't know what it is" apply to those who support evolution theory as well as those who do not? And evolution theory is only a small part of science, so how can this alleged ignorance of evolution theory be evidence that we are allegedly doing a poor job of educating kids in science? Also, as someone astutely pointed out, if there is anything wrong with American science education, then the Darwinists are to blame because they have had complete, absolute monopoly control of American science education for the last several decades.

Humes said he encourages the public to read his book with an open mind. He said he made his best effort to present all perspectives fairly.

I disagree. From what I have seen of Humes' writings about the case, he does not present all perspectives fairly.

"But it's pretty hard to find fault with the judge's findings," he said.

Ahem. Many people including myself have found plenty of fault with the judge's findings.

Also, the York Daily Record article included the following statement from Judge Jones, taken from the book's official website:

"Ed Humes' remarkable and balanced narrative has captured the essence of this complex and emotional dispute. When discussing the trial I have frequently found myself saying that to truly understand it, you had to be there. Humes' compelling book accomplishes just that, in that it explains this controversy to the reader in detail. In the face of the many inaccuracies and distortions promulgated by the punditry and others, we happily now have a definitive and thorough account of what really happened both before and during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial."

For starters, IMO Jones' commenting about a book about the trial is -- strictly speaking -- contrary to his statement that he has always avoided speaking about the case directly.

As for his statement, "When discussing the trial I have frequently found myself saying that to truly understand it, you had to be there," that's BS. I never came anywhere near Dover or the courtroom and I did not participate in the trial in any way, but I challenge anyone to read this blog's dozens of articles connected to the case and say that I don't truly understand it. And a lot of important things connected with the case -- such as Judge Jones' infamous "true religion" speech at Dickinson College -- were not even part of the trial. Practically all that I know about the case I learned through the Internet -- some people simply don't understand the great power of the Internet as a means of gathering information and ideas.

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The Discovery Institute's charge that the Dover opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually copied in its entirety from the plantiffs' opening post-trial brief probably came too late to be included in Monkey Girl. However, I feel that no book about the Dover case may be considered to be definitive without considering this charge.

I have often been criticized for posting reviews of books that I have not actually read in their entirety. However, though it has been often said that a book cannot be judged by its cover, I believe that it is possible to judge a book by means of such things as the book's introduction (or a "prologue" in the case of Monkey Girl), the book's website, and the comments of others.

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Books about Kitzmiller v. Dover case

The Kitzmiller v. Dover case has certainly become one of the most thoroughly dissected and analyzed court cases in American history, which is amazing considering that it is just an unappealed civil-case decision of a single judge. And as such a decision, IMO Kitzmiller has received far more attention than it really deserves -- almost all of the other famous civil cases that are known by name are US Supreme Court cases. And IMO the recent discovery that the Kitzmiller opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually copied in its entirety from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief greatly diminishes the value of the opinion. The megalomaniacal Judge Jones craved a prominent place in history and has achieved it, but I don't think that it is the kind of fame that he desired.

Dozens of books have been written about the evolution controversy in general, but now there are a several books that have been written or are being written specifically or primarily about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Probably the first book about Kitzmiller was Traipsing into Evolution, written by staffers of the Discovery Institute. Panda's Thumb has announced three new books about the case that have either been released or will be released soon: "Monkey Girl" by Edward Humes, with a release date of January 30; "40 Days and 40 Nights" by Matthew Chapman, scheduled to be released on April 10 (this is the publisher's release date -- the Panda's Thumb article says April 1); and "The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything" by Gordy Slack, scheduled to be released on May 18. Because these books are unreleased or only recently released, there is not much in the way of critical reviews of them.

Traipsing into Evolution's claim that Judge Jones ignored most of the defendants' arguments about the scientific merits of intelligent design has now been explained and corroborated by the Discovery Institute's recent discovery that the Kitzmiller opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually entirely copied from the proposed findings in the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs.

I intend to comment later about "Monkey Girl."

The Panda's Thumb article also notes that other books about the case are also in the works. In particular, the article noted, "Robert Pennock is working on something, as are Wes Elsberry and Ed Brayton." As for Wes "Dingleberry" Elsberry and "Fatheaded Ed" Brayton, I could not imagine anyone with lower intellectual qualifications outside of institutions for the care of the profoundly retarded. For example, in response to Casey Luskin's citations of higher-court disapproval -- in principle -- of Jones' wholesale one-sided copying of the ACLU brief, Elsberry argued that the citations do not apply because the cited cases involved the copying of a whole opinion rather than just a section of an opinion and Brayton argued that the citations do not apply because Jones copied only part of the corresponding section of the ACLU brief whereas the cited cases involved the adoption of an entire brief from one side. Sheeesh -- please give me a break.

I wonder how many times Fatheaded Ed's trademark expression "for crying out loud" is going to appear in his book.

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"Crazy Ed" Brayton again

I fully expected that Darwinist critics of the Discovery Institute report charging Judge Jones with parroting the ACLU were not going to respond to Casey Luskin's latest defense of the report because they don't have a leg to stand on, but I was wrong -- Ed Brayton has finally responded, and inevitably Ed's response is full of crap. In a post titled Luskin Flogs a Dead Horse, Crazy Ed says,

I questioned the validity of the analogs you claimed between the cases you cited and the Kitzmiller ruling. Every single case you cite involves judges accepting one side's proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law wholesale -- that is, they adopted them and merely signed their name to them.

Which is exactly what Jones did in Kitzmiller -- the ID-as-science section of his opinion adopted the plaintiffs' proposed findings wholesale and he merely signed his name to them. He changed the wording around a little but the ideas remained the same.

In one case that you cite, the judge did this without even considering arguments from the other side.

There is no evidence that Jones considered the defendants' arguments when he wrote the ID-as-science section of the Kitzmiller opinion.

What your "study" leaves out is that the judge did not accept nearly half of the proposed findings;

So maybe when Ed was in school, he copied a paper from a book and when he was caught he tried to defend himself by saying, "but I didn't copy the whole book."

. . . .that alone means he exercised independent judgment on the validity of each finding of fact distinct from the others and that alone distinguishes it from the cases you cite.

That he did not copy some of the plaintiffs' proposed findings is not evidence that he exercised independent judgment on the plaintiffs' proposed findings that he did copy. And whether or not he "exercised" independent judgment is irrelevant -- what matters is whether he expressed independent judgment.

Analogical reasoning is only valid if the two things being compared are similar; in this case they are not.

Ed, if you had a mind, you would be completely out of it here. In the sense here, "analogical" by definition refers to a comparison between things that are partly dissimilar. The applicable definitions of "analogy" in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary are as follows: 2 a : resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike . . . . b : comparison based on such resemblance." (emphasis added) Of course, it can sometimes be shown that one or more dissimilarities between two court cases make an analogy invalid, but you did not try to show that -- you only argued that an "analogy" between two court cases is automatically invalid if the cases are not virtually identical (it wouldn't even be an "analogy" if the two cases are virtually identical). Also, analogy is one of the foundations of the evolution theory that you love -- in evolution theory, analogy is called "homology."

They aren't even close.

They don't need to be close.

Ed tries to make his ideas look good by censoring comments and commenters that disagree with him. Some of the commenters on his blog are toadies who feel that they need to apologize for disagreeing with him -- for example, a comment on Ed's blog strokes his ego by saying,

Ed: I too have the highest respect for you, but I hope you will rethink some of what you have written.

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Casey Luskin rebuts critics of report charging that Judge Jones parroted ACLU

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute has written an article rebutting critics of a DI report that charged that the ID-as-science section of Judge Jones' Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion was virtually copied in its entirety from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief.

Here are some points I would like to make about Luskin's article:

(1) I think it needs to be emphasized that there were not just unanswered post-trial briefs in the Dover case -- the plaintiffs and the defendants filed both opening post-trial briefs and answering post-trial briefs that rebutted each other's opening post-trial briefs. Yet the ID-as-science section of the opinion was virtually copied from just the opening post-trial brief of the plaintiffs.

(2) IMO, Jones' extensive copying is somewhat excusable because (1) he is not a scientist and (2) the case was very big and complex, with hundreds of hours of testimony and thousands of pages of documents. However, the one-sidedness of the opinion -- with virtually all of the ID-as-science section copied from just the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief -- is not excusable.

(3) The argument that the defendants' arguments were too weak to justify an answer in the Dover opinion just does not hold water. If the defendants' arguments were weak, then Judge Jones had all the more reason to include them in the opinion in order to refute them.

(4) Casey Luskin wrongly stated, "Wesley Elsberry attacks me as if I implied the study applies to the entire Kitzmiller ruling (And Wesley asserts that only 38% of the whole ruling was taken from the plaintiffs' finding of fact)." As this comment shows, Elsberry did not say or imply that the DI study applies to the entire Kitzmiller ruling. Also, Elsberry gives wording-comparison figures of between 48% and 70% for the ID-as-science section of the Kitzmiller ruling.

(5) The DI report's wording-comparison figure of 90.9% is backed up by side-by-side comparisons of statements in the Dover opinion and the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief. Wording-comparison figures can be misleading because (1) different computer programs give different wording-comparison figures and (2) two statements may differ greatly in wording but have the same meaning. The arbitrariness of these wording-comparison programs is described as follows by Elsberry:

. . .the 70% figure is obtained when I use liberal criteria of runs of words 5 words long or longer, with up to 2 words skipped or inserted at a time. It is 66% when I use more conservative criteria of runs of words 10 words long or longer, with up to 4 words skipped or inserted at a time.

The above criteria may show that the ideas in two texts are similar but cannot show that the ideas in two texts are not similar, because -- as I said -- two statements may differ greatly in wording but have the same meaning. The only way to fully appreciate the striking similarity between the ACLU brief and the Dover opinion's ID-as-science section is to read the corresponding statements side-by-side as shown in the DI report.

Also, I am glad to see that Casey took Ed "for crying out loud" Brayton to task. I am really pissed off at that jerk Ed for arbitrarily kicking me off his blog. Casey wrote,

Response to Ed Brayton
Ed Brayton also wastes time distinguishing the facts of Kitzmiller from other cases, even though I'm simply using those cases to establish the policy that large-scale judicial copying is disapproved. Brayton seems to operate under the ludicrous assumption that two cases must be identical in order for the principles involved to apply. As already noted, no two cases have identical fact patterns, so trying to demand as such indicates ignorance of how the legal process works. Brayton apparently does not realize that one can look at cases with different fact patterns and principles which can be extended to apply to new, different fact patterns. This happens all the time in the law, and such legal reasoning is called reasoning by example, or reasoning by analogy, and it is often used to apply the underlying policies which guide courts in their rulemaking to new fact patterns. (emphasis in original)

Casey shows that Tim Sandefur also used the above fallacious reasoning of Ed Brayton. Casey said, ". . . it is pointless for Sandefur to imply that two cases must have identical facts for the policy reasoning in one case to bear upon another case."

Here are some examples of "Crazy Ed" Brayton's nitpicking and hairsplitting pettifoggery:

Even your "study" does not claim that Jones copied his opinion verbatim, only a portion of the findings of fact specifically, and the ruling you cite clearly and explicitly says that it was not talking about findings of fact. That is dishonest citation, Casey.

Findings of "fact"? Have you forgotten, Ed, that evolution is just a theory and not a "fact"?

Ed also claimed that the following cases are not comparable to Kitzmiller:

In one case, the judge announced that he would not write an opinion at all and simply adopted the entire proposed opinion from one side without even looking at the arguments from the other side. In another, the judge adopted the entire opinion without any comment at all.

What Jones did was much worse than what those other judges did -- the other judges at least made it clear that they were copying or uncritically adopting one side's views whereas Jones did not. It took nearly a year for the Discovery Institute to discover that the ID-as-science section of Jones' opinion was virtually copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief.

Ed continued,

Judge Jones did not do any of those things. He picked out those findings of fact that were supported best by the evidential record and incorporated them, either verbatim or rephrased, into his ruling. He left over half of the proposed findings alone and did not use them as the basis for his ruling; that alone tells you that he made an independent judgement about which proposed findings were accurate and which were not.

"Independent judgment"? The ID-as-science section of the Dover opinion shows no evidence that Jones even read any post-trial brief other than the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief.

BTW, in the following statement, Ed made the incredibly stupid argument that Judge Jones did not one-sidedly adopt the ACLU's proposed findings on the ID-as-science issue just because he adopted only some of the ACLU's proposed findings on that issue:

. . . there were numerous findings of fact in the plaintiffs' briefs that he did not accept and did not incorporate into the ruling, about 30% of the total findings of fact on that particular question. Clearly, then, Judge Jones did not merely "adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim."

In conclusion:
Casey Luskin and the original DI report were only arguing the following points: the kind of copying that Jones did is (1) frowned upon by the courts and (2) hurts the precedential value of the Dover opinion. Those points were not refuted by the critics.

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