Praise be to Jeebus: Judge John E. Jones III has smacked around creationism, poked it in the eye with a stick, and then spat on it for good measure. In a 139-page ruling (312k PDF) ruled that the only purpose of teaching so-called “intelligent design” was to promote religion, it “misrepresent[s] well-established scientific propositions,” and concluded that creationist members of the Dover School Board (all of whom were tossed out of their seats in the November elections) were lying when they said that their goal of teaching intelligent design was not rooted in a desire to promote Christianity. 
He went on to write that the school board’s decision to require teaching creationism was “breathtaking inanity” and “utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
While he was at it, Judge Jones wrote that intelligent design is only not science at all — it’s antithetical to science in that it relies on the “and then a miracle occurs” step in causation — but that it doesn’t even make any sense.
No doubt Judge Jones will now be attacked by those who would have lauded him with praise had he ruled the other way. Activist school board members will call him an “activist judge,” he’ll be accusingly called an atheist and an enemy of Christianity, etc. I’ll just grin, knowing that Judge Jones is an appointee of President Bush.
Logic prevails, advocates of the supernatural lose, and the good guys win. It’s a rare tale these days, but a happy one.
Bravo for this judge, who is a Christian and a Bush appointee, for making the correct (and obvious) decision. Maybe there’s hope afterall that logic and reason will eventually prevail over superstition and fairy tales.
No doubt Judge Jones will now be attacked by those who would have lauded him with praise had he ruled the other way.
No doubt you would have villified him as a Christian kook who has no business commenting on science, had he written a decision that you disagreed with. ;-)
Probably not, provided it was a well-reasoned ruling. There are many, many SCOTUS rulings that have a conclusion with which I disagree, but I lack the intellect to refute many of the points made by the majority in the ruling, or the minority fails to persuade me, despite my fundamental agreement with them. I suspect that’s why I enjoyed my constitutional law so much when I took it a couple of years ago — there’s a certain perverse intellectual joy to be taken in simultaneously wholly agreeing and wholly disagreeing with somebody.
What a breath of fresh air. It makes me think there’s hope for us, after all.
ok, when does pat robertson release his opinion on judge jones? should be a great laugh