Here Come More Editorials — Responses to the Pennsylvania Intelligent Design Decision

Earlier today, I posted selected portions of editorials form major newspapers celebrating the judge’s decision in the Pennsylvania Intelligent Design trial, along with brief rejoinders [see below]. Here are a few more, breaking later in the day:

From The Los Angeles Times: Science doesn’t deny or confirm the role of divine power in the natural world; it is simply uninterested in such questions. This is where the more lyrical, and equally fascinating, studies of philosophy and religion come in — and where intelligent design properly belongs.

This is just intellectual dishonesty or brash ignorance. When the dominant model of evolutionary theory taught in the schools insists that there is no design in the cosmos and that only natural and material factors played a role, one cannot honestly say that science “is simply uninterested in such questions.”

From the Houston Chronicle: The Dover case will not settle the philosophical argument, but it should stand as a landmark decision that, barring reversal of Supreme Court precedent, will make it difficult for intelligent design to be taught in public school science classes. There is a way that intelligent design might play a legally acceptable role in the science curriculum: as an example of how the scientific method can test a hypothesis and, finding it invalid, discard it.

Note the shift of wording here. Now, these editors suggest that the scientific method has beed employed to demonstrate that the theory of Inteligent Design is “invalid” and therefore should be discarded. That isn’t even what the scientific opponents of Intelligent Design have argued. Where has the theory been invalidated?

From The Seattle Times: During the course of a six-week trial, Jones said he heard testimony from scientific experts who said Darwin’s theory, “in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”

Really? What about all those leading evolutionary scientsts who argue otherwise, like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett? And is it the role of a federal judge to discern whether one can believe in evolution and a creator simultaneously?  Is Judge Jones to be accepted as an expert in science and theology as well as the law? Once again, the federal judiciary looms as the sanctuary of the savants.

Stay tuned.