The Dover Decision on Intelligent Design

Those of you who haven't read the Dover decision (.pdf) should do so. It is a landmark ruling. Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican and a Lutheran, thoroughly skewered the Dover school board for their unconstitutional actions.

Here is his conclusion:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon* tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. 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.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.

Rather, 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. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs' rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants' actions.

Defendants' actions in violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs' attorneys' services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs' constitutional rights.

* The purpose of the Lemon test is to determine when a law has the effect of establishing religion. The test has served as the foundation for many of the Court's post-1971 establishment clause rulings. As articulated by Chief Justice Burger, the test has three parts:

"First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." (source)

More Evidence for Evolution: Endogenous Retroviruses

Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent. Endogenous retroviruses are molecular remnants of a past parasitic viral infection. Occasionally, copies of a retrovirus genome are found in its host's genome, and these retroviral gene copies are called endogenous retroviral sequences. Retroviruses (like the AIDS virus or HTLV1, which causes a form of leukemia) make a DNA copy of their own viral genome and insert it into their host's genome. If this happens to a germ line cell (i.e. the sperm or egg cells) the retroviral DNA will be inherited by descendants of the host. Again, this process is rare and fairly random, so finding retrogenes in identical chromosomal positions of two different species indicates common ancestry.

Confirmation:

In humans, endogenous retroviruses occupy about 1% of the genome, in total constituting ~30,000 different retroviruses embedded in each person's genomic DNA (Sverdlov 2000). There are at least seven different known instances of common retrogene insertions between chimps and humans, and this number is sure to grow as both these organism's genomes are sequenced (Bonner et al. 1982; Dangel et al. 1995; Svensson et al. 1995; Kjellman et al. 1999; Lebedev et al. 2000; Sverdlov 2000). Figure 4.4.1 shows a phylogenetic tree of several primates, including humans, from a recent study which identified numerous shared endogenous retroviruses in the genomes of these primates (Lebedev et al. 2000). The arrows designate the relative insertion times of the viral DNA into the host genome. All branches after the insertion point (to the right) carry that retroviral DNA - a reflection of the fact that once a retrovirus has inserted into the germ-line DNA of a given organism, it will be inherited by all descendents of that organism.

The Felidae (i.e. cats) provide another example. The standard phylogenetic tree has small cats diverging later than large cats. The small cats (e.g. the jungle cat, European wildcat, African wildcat, blackfooted cat, and domestic cat) share a specific retroviral gene insertion. In contrast, all other carnivores which have been tested lack this retrogene (Futuyma 1998, pp. 293-294; Todaro et al. 1975).

Potential Falsification:

It would make no sense, macroevolutionarily, if certain other mammals (e.g. dogs, cows, platypi, etc.), had these same retrogenes in the exact same chromosomal locations. For instance, it would be incredibly unlikely for dogs to also carry the three HERV-K insertions that are unique to humans, as shown in the upper right of Figure 4.4.1, since none of the other primates have these retroviral sequences. -- 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 4

So there you have it. One more excellent source of evidence for evolution. Well, either that or an Intelligent Designer who's trying to trick us into believing in evolution.

Why "Intelligent Design" is Not Science

(An expansion of a comment I made on Cross-Currents, although I have no idea if they will publish it.)

Evolution is a scientific theory because it is falsifiable and makes meaningful predictions. ID is NOT a scientific theory because it meets neither of those requirements. ID consists entirely of criticizing evolution, as if disproving one makes the other true.

Imagine if I propose, as the Onion did, a theory of Intelligent Falling. I then go around criticizing the theory of gravity, saying for example that we don’t even know how gravity could work at a distance, that nobody has observed a so-called “graviton,” and that Einstein’s theory of gravitation doesn’t even mesh with quantum theory! (All of these criticisms are correct, as far as I know.)

Now I ask you, what are the odds that every thing on Earth just HAPPENS to be attracted to the center of the planet? Why that would be like throwing all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle at a table and having them miraculously form the completed puzzle! And what are the odds that gravity is just strong enough to hold the atmosphere but not so strong as to collapse the planet?! And what are the odds that it's exactly the right strength to let humans run and birds fly? I mean WHAT ARE THE ODDS?? Obviously, this can't just happen by chance! Therefore, I would conclude, there must be an intelligent being which makes objects be attracted to each other in just the right amounts. Hence, we should teach the theory of Intelligent Falling (IF) along with the theory of gravity.

I challenge you to demonstrate why we should teach ID but not IF.

Great Non-believers: Bill Gates

The richest man in the world has given "37% of his wealth--more than $28 billion--to charitable causes, largely via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation," says Forbes magazine. It's tempting to discount Gates' generosity on account of his wealth, but, as Forbes points out, if you "add up the donations made by billionaires Warren Buffett, Paul Allen, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer and you get about $2.55 billion--not even the equivalent of a decent tip on a $28-billion tab."

The Gates foundation spends the bulk of its money on global health, fighting AIDS and malaria, with education coming in second. (Obligatory shot at religion: None is wasted on building bigger churches, preachers' salaries, or proselytizing.)

Gates is an agnostic, although he seems to respect religious principles. In a PBS interview with David Frost, he said, "I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid." When a TIME reporter asked, "Isn't there something special, perhaps even divine, about the human soul?" he replied, "I don't have any evidence on that."

Despite my admiration for Gates's philanthropy, of course, I reserve the right to hate Microsoft. :-)

Are Scientists Stupid?

Wolfish Musings points out an excellent letter to the editor (scroll down to "Cheap Shots At Scientists Don't Change Truth.") I get so sick of religious people who understand less science than the average college bio major but are positive that they know the fatal flaw in the scientists' theories.

Virtually every point made by Rabbi Eidensohn in his letter of December 9 reflects significant misunderstandings about the science that he is attempting to criticize. However, it's not the errors in Rabbi Eidensohn's letter that I find most troubling. What disturbs me more is the smug belief, evidently shared by many in the yeshiva world [I would add "many in the ID/Creationist world," too --JA], that the working scientist is on average less intelligent than the typical potted plant.

How else can we explain the rabbi's readiness to believe that he has discovered fundamental problems in the theories of physics or biology that have escaped the notice of scientists who study these fields professionally? Such an attitude reflects either an unusual degree of hubris or a fundamental belief that scientists are all bumbling idiots. I suggest it's the latter.

For example, the rabbi triumphantly cites the second law of thermodynamics as evidence against the possibility of evolutionary processes. Does he think the scientists who study thermodynamics and biological processes have absent-mindedly overlooked this issue? Or that because of their unfortunate stupidity they just cannot quite grasp the basic principles of thermodynamics that the rabbi somehow innately comprehends?

Surely even the faintest degree of respect for scientists' intellectual capacities would have led the rabbi to inquire whether they had previously considered this issue. And they have. It's discussed in many popular science books and on about 300,000 websites, which I assume are not yet banned in Monsey.

(Incidentally, if the rabbi will re-read his own letter, he will find that his repeated use of the term "closed system" provides an important clue to understanding why evolutionary processes do not violate the second law.)

The yeshiva world has long found it convenient to ridicule science and scientists, and the rabbi's letter exposes a common conceit that a yiddishe kup and high school diploma provides better insight into the fundamental questions of science than does eight years of dedicated graduate study and a career of scientific experimentation. Well, let me break the bad news — a yiddishe kup and high school diploma [or reading a few creationist websites and books --JA] provide virtually no insight whatsoever into the fundamental questions of science, especially considering the cadaverous state of most yeshiva science curricula.

I don't mean to suggest that the layperson shouldn't exercise his or her full intellectual abilities in trying to critically assess and assimilate the latest scientific findings. One need not believe everything one is told, by scientists or by anyone else.

But the fact of the matter is that scientists are generally highly educated and intelligent people who have a substantial level of competence in their fields of study. Their methods of investigation and analysis have proved staggeringly effective over the past 300 years.

The image of the "idiot scientist" conjured up in Rabbi Eidensohn's letter may be comforting to some, but it's ultimately just crude escapism.

David Fass

Highland Park, NJ

(All emphasis added.)

The Wolf adds that perhaps people don't think scientists are stupid so much as that they are conspiring to hide the truth. As he points out, if you're going to believe that, you might as well believe that the moon landings were faked or that the government is hiding evidence of alien life at Area 51.