ID Experts Withdrawn from Dover Trial
Lauri Lebo writes:
The three experts — William Dembski, Stephen Meyer and John Campbell — were slated for testimony on the debate over intelligent design. ... Meyer is the director of Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, which funds research projects related to intelligent design. Dembski and Campbell are senior fellows there.
Even though Discovery is probably the country’s leading proponent of intelligent design, it opposes the Dover Area School Board’s decision to make the concept regarding life’s origins part of its science curriculum. [York Daily Record]
Ed Brayton explains what is really going on:
The [Discovery Institute] has been in a bind from the moment this case started. For the past few years, both sides in this dispute have been waiting for the case - the legal test case that would determine once and for all whether [Intelligent Design] can be taught in public school science classrooms or whether the previous precedents against teaching "creation science" will be applied to ID in a similar manner. That's what all of the activity in this area for the last decade has been building toward. Everything that ID advocates have done during that time has been designed (yes, intelligently) to put legal distance between ID and the type of creation science that was banned from public school science classrooms in the Edwards decision. It's not by accident that the Wedge strategy was worked out by an attorney, Phillip Johnson. Johnson knew that the courts would not allow an explicitly religious idea be taught in public schools, so it was necessary to distance ID as much as possible from religion and make it appear to be religion-neutral.
On the one hand, they want to defend ID in court as legitimate science. On the other hand, they know that if the school board loses this case - particularly if it gets appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and loses there - it's pretty much the end for ID in public schools. That would set a nationwide precedent that would ban ID from public school science classrooms. So they've had a delicate line to walk, wanting to distance themselves from the school board's policy while still defending ID as valid science and not inherently religious in nature. The [Thomas More Law Center], on the other hand, has been a bit of a bull in a china shop in this case, with their leader, Richard Thompson, issuing a series of vitriolic and bold public statements. So there has been a great deal of tension in this case, both at the core and in terms of tactics, between the DI and the TMLC. And the result now has been the loss of at least two of the top three experts on ID from the roster of witnesses for the defense. [Panda's Thumb]
So, the Thomas Moore Law Center is pursuing this like they would any legal case and as if this were the only legal case in the world. That's how a law firm would act. The Discovery Institute, however, is trying to think more strategically. They would rather lose this battle in order to help them win a more important battle somewhere down the line — even if they have to wait 5 or 10 years.
I think that Brayton's analysis is correct and this is just one more piece of evidence demonstrating that Intelligent Design is a political or theological program, not a scientific one. Intelligent Design is pursued just like other political agendas are pursued but not at all like scientific research programs are pursued.
As one of the comments to Brayton's above post states, the entire purpose of Intelligent Design is to sneak God into school through the back door by denying that anyone is "really" talking about God. Most believers, however, aren't interested in sneaking around — when they want to bring Intelligent Design to schools, they tend to be quite open about the fact that they are doing so for religious reasons.
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