Sjoerdski

Pennsylvania judge rules against intelligent design...

Ok, it is a veeeeery long story about the trial as it commenced. The players, the arguments etc. etc. Interesting, particular the first half, but very long.

For a 'short' quote.... The last part is really really brilliant:

"For the vast majority of scientists, the argument against intelligent design starts with the notion that science is bound by methodological naturalism--it looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena, and has nothing to say about the supernatural. This was the foundation the plaintiffs' lawyers had to lay, and they had an ideal craftsman in Kenneth Miller, the Brown biology professor. Miller is the co-author of a best-selling series of high-school and college biology textbooks; students who lug the books around in their backpacks typically refer to them by their cover photographs--the 'dragonfly book,' the 'lion book,' and the 'elephant book.' He is also one of the few prominent scientists willing to debate creation scientists and intelligent-design advocates. (Many mainstream scientists don't want to be bothered to debate something they find as uncontroversial as the theory of evolution. Miller has been doing it for years, aided, perhaps, by his experience as an umpire for N.C.A.A. softball. In that capacity, a recent article on Miller reported, he has had 'every foul word in the book hurled at him, and some dirt, too.') He is also a practicing Catholic, and therefore embodies the notion that religion and science are, as Stephen Jay Gould once called them, 'non-overlapping magisteria.' Miller, who is slim and has a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, addressed counsel on both sides as 'sir,' made delicate scholarly jokes that weren't too geeky, and answered each question with undiminished energy, as though he'd heard it before, but not that day, so, really, it was as fresh and interesting as ever. He has a firm voice and a forthright way of putting things: after noting that 99.9 per cent of the organisms that have ever lived on earth are now extinct, for instance, he said that 'an intelligent designer who designed things, 99.9 per cent of which didn't last, certainly wouldn't be very intelligent.'

Under direct examination by Walczak, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Miller described the tenets of science: practitioners seek their explanations in what can be observed, tested, and replicated by others.

'These rules don't apply just in the United States?' Walczak asked.

'No, sir, they don't,' Miller said. 'I think science might be the closest thing we have on this planet to a universal culture.'

'Why are these rules important?' Walczak said.

'If you don't have these rules, you don't have science,' Miller explained. 'If you invoke a nonnatural cause--a spirit force or something like that--in your research and I decide to test it, I have no way to test it. I can't order it from a biological-supply house. I can't grow it in my laboratory.'

'So supernatural causation is not considered part of science?' Walczak asked.

'I hesitate to beg the patience of the court with this, but, being a Boston Red Sox fan, I can't resist,' Miller said. 'One might say, for example, the reason the Boston Red Sox were able to come back from three games down against the New York Yankees was because God was tired of George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win. In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It might be true. But it certainly is not science . . . and it's certainly not something we can test.' Judge Jones, who did not interrupt this exchange, appeared to be suppressing a smile."

posted by sjoerdski @ 8:32 PM