Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Creationism Rejected in Pennsylvania Case

Hurrah! A victory for rationalism and freedom of religion! A Pennsylvania federal judge ruled that mandating Intelligent Design be presented in high school biology classes is unconstitutional. More importantly, the judge saw through the mischaracterizations of science so often hawked by ID supporters and instead recognized that science is fundamentally a method of finding natural explanations to describe the world around us.

The New York Times article quotes the opinion:
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect," Judge Jones wrote. "However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."
While I'm sure most fundamentalists will conclude that this opinion is just another instance of their oppression, one ID supporter quoted in the article explained what they truly need to do if they want ID to gain more acceptance.
"I think the big lesson is, let's go to work and really develop this theory and not try to win this in the court of public opinion," Dr. Dembski said. "The burden is on us to produce."
Exactly. We should not go about banning research into creationism because it conflicts with current theory. The Church tried that a while back with Galileo. But if they want to move beyond the supernatural speculation that is currently ID, then they need to formulate some hypotheses and demonstrate them conclusively. Otherwise, ID will remain creationism pretending to be science and the debate will remain a frustratingly meaningless sideshow.

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