Intelligent Design Deemed Dumb

Well, this is another fine mess.

ID critics castigate groups like the Discovery Institute for politicizing a scientific debate. They say that the proper forum for this dispute is in peer-reviewed academic journals. This makes perfect sense to me. ID advocates decry that they are being stonewalled -- that the journals refuse to publish their work. Catch-22.

Right or wrong, champions of ID got what they asked for, and more. They circumvented the academic channels and went straight to the courts, where a judge promptly told them to stuff it. Hmm. That didn't work out very well.

Now, here's my beef. Judge Jones is not qualified to decide questions about the nature of science. He is an expert in the law, not the philosophy of science. 80 years earlier in the Scopes trial, the court made this clear enough.

So am I upset with the judge? No. This case should never have crossed his desk.

Friends of ID -- let's get this issue out of the hands of politicians and lawyers and back into the hands of philosophers and scientists, where it belongs. Let's keep trying to publish in the journals. The renaissance in Christian philosophy that is currently taking place was accomplished in this way. Let's keep this an academic issue, not a political one.