Casey Luskin reviews "Monkey Girl"

Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute has just completed a long six-part negative review of "Monkey Girl" -- a book about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design case -- by Edward Humes.

I started to read "Monkey Girl" but stopped after reading about a third of it because the slow activity in the "customer reviews" section of Amazon.com showed that the book -- which was initially touted as the definitive book about the case -- was going to be a dud, comparatively speaking. I did post a partly negative customer review of the book on Amazon.com, and this blog has several articles about the book under the post label "Monkey Girl" in the sidebar of the home page.

Luskin declined an invitation to be interviewed for the book and so IMO he is not in a good position to condemn the book's one-sidedness.

So often I see the recommendation, "if you are going to read just one book about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, read this one," and that's just plain wrong. Reading nothing at all is better than just reading a single source. One should read a variety of sources to get a broad perspective.

READ MORE

Amazon.com readers misinterpret question, "Was this review helpful to you?"

I think that many readers of the Amazon.com customer reviews misinterpret the question "Was this review helpful to you?" as meaning "Do you agree with the personal opinion(s) in the review?" IMO if the review helps at all in informing one about the book itself, then one's answer to that question should be "yes," even if one disagrees with the review's opinion(s) (also, too many of the customer reviews don't actually review the book but just state the reviewers' personal opinions). I think that my customer review of "Monkey Girl" got a poor score -- only 4 "yes" votes out of 30 votes -- on that question (I consider a "good score" to consist of both a high number of votes and a high percentage of "yes" votes) because most readers disagreed with my opinions and not because I did not help inform them about the book. I correctly pointed out that the book made one-sided conclusions; that is a simple fact, regardless of how impartial or objective the author might have initially been. In Amazon.com's website on "Monkey Girl," the general pattern is that customer reviews that criticize the book have poor scores whereas customer reviews that praise the book have good scores. I think that the answers to this question "Was this review helpful to you?" are very important because I think that good scores on those answers are the basis for selecting the two "spotlight reviews" that are placed at the head of the list of customer reviews. Where there are hundreds or dozens of customer reviews, being chosen as one of only two spotlight reviews is obviously very important. The spotlight reviews may change occasionally. Ann Coulter's "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" now has 905 customer reviews and one of the spotlight reviews has a score of 2339 out of 3472 on the question -- probably a lot of those votes were picked up while the review was in the "spotlight reviews" section.

A reply to a customer review of "Monkey Girl" said,

When the review is about the book, it gets my "Yes", even if I disagree. When the review is about the reviewer's opinion of the subject matter, the reviewer's personal agenda, or -- especially as yours are -- unrelated opinions not remotely related to facts -- then it absolutely gets a "NO!"

READ MORE

Video of Humes' lecture at Univ. of Kansas

Click here, then click on the photo of the building. My thanks to FortheKids of the Reasonable Kansans blog, which has two major articles about the lecture: here and here. A radio interview of Humes is here. For more info about Humes and his book "Monkey Girl," click on the label below.
.

READ MORE

Radio interview of "Monkey Girl" author Edward Humes

.
CLICK HERE
.

READ MORE

"Monkey Girl" and Dover decision are duds

The book "Monkey Girl," a book mainly about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, is off to a very slow start on its Amazon.com website. Nearly two months after the book was released (release date was Jan 30), only 14 Amazon.com customer reviews have come in. That is not a very good start for what has been touted as a definitive book about the so-called "trial of the century." The book has received reviews in several prominent publications (the reviews were mostly favorable -- an exception was a review in the Wall Street Journal) and appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times' Sunday Book Review. It looks like Monkey Girl will never come anywhere near, say, the 897 Amazon.com customer reviews so far for Ann Coulter's Godless: the Church of Liberalism" (release date of June 6, 2006 and contains a large section about the evolution controversy), or the 666 Amazon.com customer reviews so far for Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (release date of Sept. 18, 2006). Also, the numbers of comments about the customer reviews and the numbers of responses to the question "Was this review helpful to you?" are comparatively low for Monkey Girl. BTW, what is probably the only other released book that deals specifically or mainly with the Dover case, the Discovery Institute's Traipsing into Evolution (release date of Mar. 10, 2006), now has only 25 Amazon.com customer reviews, but IMO this book was probably not mainly intended to be popular but was probably mainly intended to serve mainly as a scholarly rebuttal of the Dover decision.

The low interest in Amazon.com's Monkey Girl website probably reflects a probable loss of interest in the Dover case itself. The Darwinists continue to boast about their Dover "victory" and the "Dover trap", but the fact is that the Dover opinion is now not worth the paper that it is printed on. Even good unappealed federal district court decisions have limited precedential value, but the Dover decision is not a good one. The Dover decision has been completely discredited. Of the law journal articles and other expert legal opinions regarding the case that have come to my attention, most are critical of the Dover opinion, particularly regarding Judge Jones' decision to rule on the scientific merits of intelligent design. Judges' opinions cite a lot of law journal articles and judges are more likely to cite law journals than Darwinist blogs. Also, the Discovery Institute revealed that the Dover 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. And opponents of the decision have not yet fully exploited Jones' great faux pas in a Dickinson College commencement speech: his show of great hostility towards organized religions by saying that they are not "true" religions. I think that Judge Jones' fifteen minutes of fame are up -- he is still on the lecture circuit talking about "judicial independence" but I never see him in the news anymore. It now appears likely that a bill barring or capping attorney fee awards in establishment clause cases will soon be passed, and that would put an end to the "Dover trap." The "Scopes II" trial, like the original, is coming to be seen as nothing more than a media circus.
.

READ MORE

Reviews of reviews of "Monkey Girl"

The Amazon.com webpage on "Monkey Girl" has added some more reviews, including four more customer reviews (including one from me) and reviews from the Washington Post and "Booklist." Here I will review the Booklist review, the Washington Post review, and linked off-site reviews in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times:

BOOKLIST REVIEW (copyrighted by the American Library Association -- this review is right under the Washington Post review)

This review says,

Some see the 2005 case of Kitzmiller v.Dover, concerning a small-town school board's adding an "intelligent design" (i.e., anti-Darwinian) text to the ninth-grade science curriculum, as the second Scopes trial. But whereas evolution lost in 1925, it won in 2005.

Evolution didn't really "lose" in 1925. After the Scopes trial in Tennessee, only two other states, Arkansas and Mississippi, adopted "monkey laws," and the legislatures of two other states passed anti-evolution resolutions. Possibly the only other state that had a monkey law, Oklahoma, repealed it in 1926 (Wikipedia says that South Carolina and Kentucky also had monkey laws but I have been unable to confirm this). And evolution didn't really "win" in 2005, because the Kitzmiller decision was not appealed (and hence there is no higher-court decision) and because the controversy is now bigger than ever.

Hence, religion was central in the earlier, science in the later, trial.

Neither science nor religion was officially central to the Scopes trial. There was a little scientific testimony but the judge struck it from the official record, prosecutor William Jennings Bryan's religious testimony was also struck from the official record, and there was no judgment of the constitutionality of the "monkey" law. An account of the Scopes trial is here. Both science and religion were central to the Kitzmiller trial -- Judge Jones ruled that intelligent design is both religious and unscientific.

Humes' clear reportorial style and sympathy for all the principals in Kitzmiller (except, perhaps, for the school board's hired-gun lead attorney) ensure the high interest of both aspects of the book.

We should forget about this idea that Humes was sympathetic towards the pro-ID side.

BTW, as discussed here, here, here, and here, I had a run-in with those stubborn jackasses at the American Library Association -- the source of the Booklist review -- over their refusal to put Of Pandas and People on their list of banned books.

==============================

WASHINGTON POST REVIEW

This review says,

. . . .critics of ID argue that it is merely a more sophisticated way of promoting "creation science," which rejects evolutionary theory in favor of a literal reading of the book of Genesis and therefore promotes the teaching of religion in public schools.

"Creation science," previously called "scientific creationism," is not based on a literal reading of Genesis, but is based on scientific (or pseudoscientific, to some) observation and reasoning.

In 2004, when the Dover, Penn., school board voted to require biology classes to use a supplemental textbook that promoted the theory of intelligent design rather than evolution, the conflict that erupted was about far more than semantics.

Of Pandas and People was officially a reference textbook, not a supplemental textbook. It was not required reading.

They brought their case, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, with the aid of the ACLU, the National Center for Science Education and lawyers from the Philadelphia firm Pepper Hamilton.

There were also plaintiffs' attorneys of record from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The NCSE assisted the plaintiffs but had no attorneys of record in the case.

Defending the Dover school board was a Michigan-based public interest law firm, the Thomas More Law Center, and, initially, the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a nonprofit research institute that has tried to make ID a palatable alternative to evolutionary theory.

DI did not provide attorneys but provided expert witnesses for the defendants. Some of the DI's witnesses left as a result of a dispute with the TMLC and other DI witnesses stayed.

Although his own sympathies clearly are with the defenders of evolutionary theory, Humes makes a strenuous effort to be fair-minded.

I wouldn't call his effort "strenuous."

Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican, emerges as the hero in Humes's tale.

Judge Jones is actually a villain, not a hero. For example, several legal experts have criticized his decisions in the case, particularly his decision to rule on the scientific merits of intelligent design, and many of these critics apparently had no ax to grind -- in fact, one legal-expert critic, Jay Wexler, is openly anti-ID (several articles about legal experts' criticisms of the Kitzmiller decision are listed here). Jones did several bad or questionable things that are not mentioned in the book, e.g.: (1) in a commencement speech at Dickinson College, he showed great hostility towards organized religions by saying that they are not "true" religions; (2) he arbitrarily denied the intervention motion of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, the publisher of the book Of Pandas and People, and then after thus denying FTE a fair opportunity to defend the book, he thoroughly trashed the book in his written opinion; and (3) his opinion's ID-as-science section was virtually entirely copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief (the discovery of this copying probably came too late for consideration for inclusion in the book). There are numerous other criticisms of his rulings and other actions.

And there we go again with that trite "Republican churchgoing conservative Dubya-appointee" sort of stuff.

In his eloquent ruling for the plaintiffs, which should be read by every student of law, he noted, "This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy."

Large parts of his "eloquent ruling" were ghostwritten by the ACLU et al.. And Judge Jones was the activist, not the school board. Contrary to claims that the school board members "knew" that their ID policy would be struck down by the courts, the board had almost no court precedent to use for guidance regarding evolution-disclaimer statements in public-school science classes.

Even before Jones issued his ruling, the citizens of Dover reached their own verdict: In the next school board election, "every one of the eight incumbents who favored intelligent design was ousted," Humes writes.

The school board elections were close and the defeat of the incumbents was at least partly attributed to taxpayers' concern about the cost of the lawsuit.

His story would have benefited from a more nuanced examination of Christian fundamentalism (and the ways in which it differs from evangelical Protestantism).

Is there any clear distinction between "Christian fundamentalism" and "evangelical Protestantism"? Aren't the two terms nearly synonymous?

. . .as Humes himself notes, you need not be a fundamentalist to have sympathy for the scriptural story of creation.

The scriptural story of creation is not the only alternative to Darwinism.

Humes's book is a compelling account of that struggle, and likely not the last salvo in the battle between evolution and intelligent design.

There we go again with that "contrived dualism," where it is assumed that ID is the only alternative to evolution.

==============================

CHICAGO TRIBUNE REVIEW

This review says,

Citizens in more than two dozen states agitate to introduce the supernatural in public school science classes.

This is not just about the supernatural -- this is also about the weaknesses of Darwinism.

Why Americans continue to pit religion against science in a fruitless struggle most other developed nations abandoned long ago is the question at the heart of Edward Humes' compelling "Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul."

The evolution controversy is not just a pitting of religion against science. And an international opinion poll showed that there is widespread skepticism of Darwinism in many other developed nations. The list of this blog's articles about the evolution controversy abroad is here (i.e., the list of articles with the "evolution controversy abroad" label).

It was represented pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.; its Web site identified its mission as being "to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." It was, Humes notes, just one of the ironic elements in a frail defense case that had religious fingerprints all over it.

That is simply guilt by association. The plaintiffs' prosecution case had religious fingerprints all over it, too -- for example, Ken Miller, the lead plaintiff expert witness, was the author of "Finding Darwin's God -- A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution."

Alone among industrialized nations, America not only is steeped in religious faith but remains deeply suspicious of science. This is particularly true in the case of Darwin's nearly 150-year-old theory of evolution, which holds that all life on Earth shares common ancestors and developed through random mutation and natural selection over some 4 billion years.

As I said above, an international opinion poll showed widespread skepticism of Darwinism in many other developed nations.

Moreover, a majority of the public, including President Bush, says evolution and creationism (or intelligent design), should be taught in public-school science classes.

They do not necessarily want creationism or ID per se to be taught, but think that the weaknesses as well as the strengths of evolution should be taught.

This is the so-called balanced or equal-time approach to science that the U.S. Supreme Court most recently rejected in 1987.

In Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court rejected the equal-time approach but the SC has never ruled on evolution-disclaimer statements.

But opponents of evolution still try to employ it, partly because, in a nation with low scientific literacy, it appeals to Americans' sense of fair play and desire to hear both sides of a story.

What does a sense of fair play and desire to hear both sides of a story have to do with an alleged low scientific literacy? It seems that fair-minded people who are firmly convinced that Darwinism is correct would want others to hear both sides of the story in order to be able to decide for themselves.

For science educators, it is a battle for the minds of children who will have to compete in a world where a sound understanding of science will be the price of admission to a universe of new technologies.

The Darwinists have never adequately explained how there is a connection between international technological competitiveness and public knowledge and acceptance of Darwinism.

On Dec. 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III delivered a landmark verdict in the Kitzmiller case . . ."

"Landmark verdict"? I predict that the Kitzmiller decision will be just a footnote in history. As just an unappealed decision of a single judge, it would have little precedential value even if it were a good decision.

The ruling is binding only on the federal district that includes Dover, but it is seen as influential on school boards around the country.

I would bet my last dollar that the ruling is not binding precedent even in Jones' own Middle District of Pennsylvania federal court. The ruling is influential on school boards around the country mainly because of a fear of exorbitant awards of plaintiffs' attorney fees, but that fear is likely to end soon because there is a very good chance that Congress will soon ban or cap those fee awards in establishment clause cases (this blog's articles about those attorney fee awards are listed here).

A new term, emergence theory, has been bandied about as a possible successor to intelligent design.

I never liked that name "intelligent design" -- it has caused a lot of trouble because it implies the existence of a supernatural designer.

==============================

LOS ANGELES TIMES REVIEW

This is the most rabidly pro-Darwinist review of the bunch.

This review says,

The Dover case was more than simply a reflection of the poor state of the U.S. educational system or an illumination of how religion and science might collide in one small town. Instead, Humes explains, it was the latest salvo in a long-standing war on evolutionary thought that can be traced back to 1859 and Charles Darwin's seminal work on the subject, "The Origin of Species" — a book that, in the eyes of most believers, threatened to turn God's masterpiece into "nothing more than a happy accident … no better (or worse) than a marsupial or mollusk."

"Poor state of the US educational system"?

Certainly the science v. religion conflict has been a large part of the evolution controversy, but many of the critics of Darwinism -- including many scientific experts -- are not motivated by religion.

Humes points out that many faiths — Roman Catholicism, for example — have come to terms with evolution.

Prominent Roman Catholic cardinal Christoph Schoenborn has said that he wants to correct what he calls a widespread misconception that the Catholic Church has given a blanket endorsement to Darwin's theories.

Those who don't accept Darwin's premise often mischaracterize it; for instance, Darwin never said that human beings were descended from monkeys, despite this favored refrain of the creationists.

Darwin did say that human beings are descended from monkeys -- in fact, his "Origin of Species" was followed up by his "Descent of Man."

Humes also notes that those who embrace the Bible's account of human origins might find more contradictions or gaps there than they would like.

And those who embrace Darwinism might find more contradictions or gaps there than they would like.

Johnson exhibits little of the fire and brimstone of his creationist counterparts. But Humes demonstrates that beneath the gentle exterior lurks the mind of a trial lawyer, one bent on the destruction of evolutionary theory.

So criticisms of evolution may be dismissed as just one big conspiracy.

In Dover and elsewhere, the anti-evolution argument was carried forward by a bit of ingenious hocus-pocus called "intelligent design," a theory that is little more than creationism in new, more complicated clothing.

Intelligent design is radically different from biblical creationism -- irreducible complexity, DNA, bacterial flagella, etc. are mentioned nowhere in the bible.

The L.A. Times review of course also ignores the fact that there are non-ID criticisms of Darwinism.

In desperate efforts to counter criticisms of Darwinism, Darwinists often resort to misrepresentation, stereotyping, conspiracy theories, and charges of guilt by association.

READ MORE

My comment on Reasonable Kansans blog

I posted a long comment on the Reasonable Kansans blog and I think it is worth linking to here. The topics are the establishment clause, the Dover and Cobb County cases, and the "Monkey Girl" book.

READ MORE

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.

=============================================

* 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!

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE

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.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --

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.

READ MORE

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.

READ MORE