Merry Kitschmas: Darwinists still crowing about Kitzmiller decision

Five years later, Darwinists are still crowing about their Pyrrhic victory in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. So far as I know, never before has so much weight been given to the opinion of a single judge. Furthermore, Judge Jones is a crackpot activist judge who 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 -- here is what he said:

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

There is no way that the above interpretation can be derived from the Establishment Clause, which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Ironically, when Judge Jones gave the commencement speech, he was standing behind the Dickinson College seal -- designed by USA Founders Benjamin Rush and John Dickinson -- containing a picture of an open bible and the Latin-language Dickinson College motto which translates, "Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty."

Unfortunately, the speech is no longer posted on the Dickinson College wesite.

In contrast to their harping on the Dover decision, the Darwinists have been mostly silent about the Comer decision. That is not too surprising -- in the Comer case, all four federal judges who heard the case -- the district court judge and the three appeals court judges -- ruled against Chris Comer. The Comer decisions showed that there is a limit to how far judges are willing to go in opposing criticism of evolution in public schools. Now we have the "Comer trap" in addition to the "Dover trap"! LOL

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Judge Jones is hypocritical about "judicial independence"

It may seem hard to believe, but five years after the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, Judge John E. "Adolf" Jones III is still on the lecture circuit. Here is a recent lecture by Jones hypocritically titled, "From Scopes to Kitzmiller and beyond: lessons in judicial independence." I know that this lecture is recent because Jones said that the Kitzmiller trial testimony had concluded five years previously (my, how time flies). I say that the lecture was hypocritical because his blatant chumminess with the Kitzmiller plaintiffs' representatives -- e.g., plaintiffs' expert witness Barbara Forrest and plaintiffs' attorney Richard Katzke -- is not consistent with the idea of "judicial independence."

Judge Jones has falsely characterized criticism of his decision as just an issue of "judicial independence" -- as I have previously pointed out, some of his biggest critics have been Darwinist, atheist, or neutral.

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Darwinists still missing the point regarding the "plagiarism" charges against Judge Jones

On Panda's Thumb, Timothy Sandefur writes,

Y’all remember how, years ago, Casey Luskin and the boys were calling Judge Jones a plagiarist because the final decision in Kitzmiller drew a lot of language from the briefs? I pointed out at the time that, well, that’s what briefs are for. Now here’s an article in Political Research Quarterly that uses software to find that even the U.S. Supreme Court draws a lot of language from the briefs filed by the parties in any particular case,

But the "plagiarism" charges against Judge Jones were not based on just the copying, but were based on the extreme one-sidedness of the copying. Larry Moran, a hardline Darwinist himself, summed it up nicely:

Any junior clerk could have copied the material in a single afternoon, making some minor changes of wording. This is not a case of picking and choosing from both sides and writing a summary that incorporates a few phrases here and there. It's wholesale copying, the order is the same and entire paragraphs are copied for 34 pages.

Ironically, Sandefur also says, "For most of us, it’s nice to know that court opinions show the judges actually read the briefs." On the contrary, the Kitzmiller opinion shows no evidence that Judge Jones actually read the ID-as-science sections of the defense briefs, because the opinion did not quote or cite those sections, directly or indirectly.

I think that a major reason for the one-sidedness in the Kitzmiller opinion was that Judge Jones felt fairly safe in ignoring the defense briefs' arguments because an appeal was not expected because of the changeover in the school board membership.

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What is so great about "separation of church and state"?

I was once a strong supporter of the so-called separation of church and state, as codified in the establishment clause of the Constitution. No more -- the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision has turned me against this clause. If it was just a matter of a single crackpot activist judge, I could overlook this decision, but I am disturbed by the widespread praise the decision and its author, Judge John E. Jones III, have received. Judge Jones has received all kinds of honors and awards (including honorary degrees), just as a result of this single decision.

In a Dickinson College commencement speech, Judge Jones said that his Kitzmiller decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions -- he said,
.

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

There is no way that the above statement can be derived from the establishment clause, which says simply, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

He also arbitrarily ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover, "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." This is like Adolf Hitler saying that people with Jewish ancestors cannot uncouple themselves from their Jewish ancestry. Judge Jones is the poster boy of crackpot activist judges.

I am also greatly disturbed by the widespread praise that his supporters -- e.g., Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education -- have received (Scott has already received eight honorary degrees).

The establishment clause is one of the main reasons why Darwinists -- even if they know better -- insist that all criticisms of evolution are based on religion.

If the price of the establishment clause is the suppression of scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticisms of evolution in the public schools, I feel that price is too high, regardless of what benefits the establishment clause might have, which are not many. And proponents of the clause often use biased, one-sided examples to illustrate the supposed benefits of the clause, e.g., they cite the Taliban and the religious police of Saudi Arabia, but ignore the fact that Great Britain, for example, has a state religion. Yet are the British less free than we are? Indeed, with respect to the freedom to criticize evolution in the public schools, they are more free than we are. The proponents of the clause must often go back to the Middle Ages to find examples -- e.g., the Crusades and the Inquisition -- of the disadvantages of the establishment of a state religion The atheists and agnostics have claimed Thomas Jefferson as one of their own, but the inscriptions of Jefferson quotes on the Jefferson Memorial are full of religious statements.

And the establishment clause does nothing to fight some of the greatest religious scourges of our time, Islamofascism, Islamoterrorism, and Zionist imperialism.

Of course, the chances of the establishment clause ever being repealed are virtually nil -- constitutional amendments, even trivial ones, are very rare, and the Bill of Rights, of which the establishment clause is a part, has never been amended. So, in the hope of helping to prevent future Dover decisions, the only thing I can do is to oppose all establishment clause lawsuits, regardless of their individual merits. So far as my support of the establishment clause is concerned, the supporters of the Dover deicision have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

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In public opinion polls, only 12-14% accepted unguided human evolution

In discussing a recent public opinion poll in Texas, the NCSE said,

Among the questions on the poll was the standard Gallup question — "Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?" — with the choices (1) "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the process"; (2) "Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and God had no part in the process"; and (3) "God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago."

In the Texas poll, 38% of respondents chose (1), 12% chose (2), 38% chose (3), and 12% chose a fourth option, "Don't know." Comparing the results with a national Gallup poll conducted in 2008, in which 36% of respondents chose (1), 14% chose (2), 44% chose (3), and 5% offered a different or no opinion, it might seem as though Texans are slightly less inclined to creationism than the nation at large — but the explicit presentation of a "Don't know" option in the Texas poll and not in the Gallup poll is probably responsible for the discrepancy. (Also, the Texas poll was only of registered voters.)

I think that the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision by a crackpot activist judge has gone to Darwinists' heads, giving them the impression that the fundies and other critics of evolution are pushovers. These opinion poll results certainly show that such an impression is utterly false -- the Darwinists are the ones who are behind the 8-ball.

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Favorite Kitzmiller-related quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes that are related to Kitzmiller v. Dover:

The court offers convincing evidence that some members of the Dover school board would have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom. These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law. . . . The court seems to declare, "Because we find that you would like something you can't have, we hold that you can't have anything."
-- Albert Alschuler

Although there was general jubilation at the ruling, I think the joy will be short-lived, for we have affirmed the principle that a federal judge, not scientists or teachers, can dictate what is and what is not science, and what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Forgive me if I do not feel more free.
-- J. Scott Turner

. . . 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…
-- Jay Wexler

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

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Kitzmiller decision violated Federal Rules of Evidence

Casey Luskin said,

During the Dover trial, plaintiffs’ expert witness, biologist Kenneth Miller, testified that he presented Judge John E. Jones with “more than three dozen scientific studies showing the origin of new genetic information by these evolutionary processes.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys, working with the NCSE, successfully convinced Judge Jones to parrot Miller by stating in the Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling that Miller had “pointed to more than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific publications showing the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes.”

Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 803(18) says,

Learned treatises: To the extent called to the attention of an expert witness upon cross-examination or relied upon by the expert witness in direct examination, statements contained in published treatises, periodicals, or pamphlets on a subject of history, medicine, or other science or art, established as a reliable authority by the testimony or admission of the witness or by other expert testimony or by judicial notice. If admitted, the statements may be read into evidence but may not be received as exhibits. (emphasis added)

The above publications presented by Ken Miller were apparently "received as exhibits" instead of being "read into evidence," in violation of the above FRE rule (what Miller did is sometimes called "bibiliography bluffing"). This rule was also violated when a stack of publications was dumped in front of defendants' expert witness Michael Behe.

The scientific questions in the case should have simply been declared to be "non-justiciable." A question is considered to be non-justiciable when there is a "lack of discoverable and manageable standards for resolving the question" (Vieth v. Jubelirer).

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Even atheists and Darwinists have attacked Dover decision

Judge "Jackass" Jones and his supporters want you to believe that all the critics of his Kitzmiller v. Dover decision are holy-rolling, bible-pounding fundy-type creationist crackpots. However, that decision has recently come under heavy criticism from two atheists, Thomas Nagel [link] {link] and Bradley Monton [link]. Previously, the Dover decision was criticized by three Darwinists: Jay Wexler and J. Scott Turner [link], because they felt that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the issue of ID-as-science, and Larry Moran [link], who agreed with the opinion's ID-as-science section but was disturbed that it was merely copied nearly verbatim from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief. I certainly don't agree with all the views of these atheists and Darwinists, but I am happy that their criticisms of the decision are a source of great embarrassment to Judge Jones and his supporters.

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Proposed principle of "judicial objectivism": Judges should try to avoid basing judicial opinions on personal opinions

JUDGE "JACKASS" JONES, POSTER CHILD OF JUDICIAL ACTIVISM

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My proposed principle of "judicial objectivism" is that judges should try to avoid basing decisions on their own biased personal opinions and should try to use reasoning that is so airtight that no reasonable person could find fault with it. I call it "judicial objectivism" to distinguish it from the general philosophy of "objectivism" and the "objectivism" of Ayn Rand in particular, though my "judicial objectivism" is related to those other philosophies' idea that there are truths or realities that are independent of individual perceptions. IMO the principle of "judicial independence" is actually harmful when it encourages -- as it did in the case of Judge "Jackass" Jones -- judges to base their decisions on their own biased personal opinions. Judges should have the humility to recognize that their personal opinions, even if valid, might be in disagreement with one or more other valid opinions. This proposed principle of "judicial objectivism" -- like my proposed principles of "non-justiciability" and the "compelling reason" test for non-literal interpretations of the Constitution -- is aimed at eliminating or reducing the courts' arbitrariness, capriciousness, "activism," and "legislating from the bench."
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"Opinion," like "theory," is a term that has a technical definition that differs from the everyday, colloquial definition. The technical definition of "opinion" in the law is, according to my Webster's New World Dictionary, Third Collegiate Edition, "the formal statement by a judge, court referee, etc. of the law bearing on a case." One of this dictionary's colloquial definitions is: "(1) a belief not based on absolute certainty or positive knowledge but on what seems true, valid, or probable to one's own mind, judgment." In comparing "opinion" to several synonyms, the dictionary also says, "opinion applies to a conclusion or judgment which, while it remains open to dispute, seems true or probable to one's own mind . . ." My "judicial objectivism" idea is aimed at eliminating or reducing the openness to dispute. As for "theory," maybe the Darwinists should hire process servers to serve process on governments in lawsuits charging that the government officially uses the term "evolution theory" even though the technical meaning of "theory" is different from the colloquial or everyday meaning.

The statement "ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," in the conclusion section of Judge Jones' Kitzmiller v. Dover opinion, is a good example of a statement that violates this principle of judicial objectivism, because reasonable people can easily find fault with that statement. For example, many reasonable people believe that ID "uncouples" itself from creationism by strictly using only scientific arguments and avoiding religious sources. For example, intelligent design can be defined as the scientific study of the extent to which some living things appear to be designed rather than appearing to be a product of unintelligent causes, or can be defined as a scientific determination of the probability that living things could have arisen solely from natural genetic variation and natural selection.

IMO a good example of a ruling that satisfies "judicial objectivism" is the ruling in Romer v. Evans that particular groups of people cannot be barred from seeking the aid of the government, which Colorado's Proposition 2 did in effect (Proposition 2 prohibited all laws and regulations aimed at protecting homosexuals from discrimination). The majority opinion said,

Central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own Constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance. . . . . . A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense.

There was a lot of moaning and groaning that the courts, by striking down a proposition approved by the voters, had overturned the "will of the people," but IMO there is no reasonable argument against the above reasoning. The only counterargument that dissenting justice Antonin Scalia could raise was the feeble argument that this reasoning appears (in his opinion) to be new:

The central thesis of the Court's reasoning is that any group is denied equal protection when, to obtain advantage (or, presumably, to avoid disadvantage), it must have recourse to a more general and hence more difficult level of political decisionmaking than others. The world has never heard of such a principle, which is why the Court's opinion is so long on emotive utterance and so short on relevant legal citation. It is ridiculous to consider this a denial of equal protection, which is why the Court's theory is unheard of.

Well, Antonin, there is a first time for everything, and the next time the principle is raised you certainly won't be able to argue that "[t]he world has never heard of such a principle."

I find other arguments of the majority to be unpersuasive -- for example, the majority said that Proposition 2 shows animus against homosexuals. But a lot of legitimate government laws and regulations arguably show animus -- for example, laws against gay marriage arguably show animus against homosexuals.
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Darwinists still celebrating Pyrrhic Dover victory

You won in Dover, Darwinists, but it was just a Pyrrhic victory, so it is high time that you got over it. It has been four years since the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision, and the plaintiffs' team is still holding an annual reunion [link] [link] [link]. They were even entertained by a Darwinian rap song. "Friend of Darwin" certificates were handed out at a previous reunion [link] [link]. This latest reunion was attended not just by local people -- some people traveled great distances to attend. The Kitzmiller decision is hardly worth celebrating. It is only a judicially unreviewed decision by a single judge and has almost no precedential value -- it is binding only on the Dover Area school district. Furthermore, the badly flawed opinion has been widely panned, even by critics who are pro-Darwinist and anti-ID, e.g., legal scholar Jay Wexler, who thinks that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the scientific merits of ID (for other experts' opinions, see articles in this blog's post-label group Expert opinions about Kitzmiller -- post labels are listed in the sidebar of the homepage). Judge "Jackass" Jones is the poster child of crackpot activist judges. He showed extreme prejudice against ID and the Dover defendants by saying that the decision was based on his cockamamie notion that the Founders based the Constitution's establishment clause upon a belief that organized religions are not "true" religions. He has whined that the critics of the decision have no respect for "judicial independence" and "the rule of law." I think that the decision actually backfired on the Darwinists by alarming and galvanizing people who now think that the courts have gone too far in the application of the establishment clause to the evolution controversy.

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