Lawrence Selden:
Nuclear physicist David Heddle says:Are you kidding me? You cannot treat macroevolutionary theory as a theory because that is consistent with what religious people think?
This is really scary stuff.
I am actually glad to see what a wacky, extremist opinion it is. It cannot be taken very seriously. It is curious to see how frequently he cites to the Selman district court opinion, even though that judge seems to be on the verge of being overturned by the appeals court, maybe by a 3-0 vote.
He also comments on "the old ID == creationism canard, which Jones bought hook, line and sinker":The problem is, today’s favorable (from whoever's perspective) judicial intrusion into an area where it doesn’t belong opens the door for tomorrow’s nightmarish decision.
John Mark Reynolds notes that:In fact, ID is creationism only if you define that anything consistent with theism is creationist. I was called a creationist on a physics website the other day, when asked for the definition, the physicist in question wrote†:
"A creationist is a person who believes that one of the most crucial insights about our existence and the existence of our Universe is that they have been *created* by a supreme being, and that this insight should have a significant impact on our lives including science."
By this definition, which I think is fair, I would venture to guess that many if not most IDers are indeed creationists. I would also think that this labels theistic evolutionists as creationists—and the anti-ID side would not want to admit to that.
In the present legal climate there is no shock that ID was ruled out of the science classroom. It is illegal in yet another district to argue that the facts of Biology point to intelligent design.The intellectual class in the US is overwhelmingly secular. This is not because secularism is "more intelligent" but due to the huge and increasingly secular government education system and a publically funded university structure that favors secularism as well. You get more of the ideas you fund....
Once again a court has decided that religious motivations of supporters are enough to ban an idea (that is not essentially religious) from tax payer funded schools.
Even worse is the notion that a religious idea is so dangerous to the health of sensitive secularists that it cannot even be discussed in a neutral manner in science class. Send your kids to private schools or home school them for now so that they can follow the argument wherever it leads.
Krauze writes:
Here at Telic Thoughts we’ve never been interested in getting a legal stamp of acceptance on intelligent design, and the ruling won’t have much of an effect on the daily going-ons.
Mike Gene argues that this was the best possible ruling for the future of intelligent design, and notes:
Standing on principle, we should not force ID into the public school science classrooms. That was yesterday. Today, standing on principle, we should not force ID out of the academic environment. That principle is called academic freedom and freedom of speech.And Scrappleface is, as usual, worth a laugh.
