The court has ruled on the issue of Intelligent Design in Pennsylvania, yet again proving there are people in this world with no perspective whatsoever. The judge ruled, according to the AP (you can read the article at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179256,00.html ):
“No serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of [ID], including defendants’ expert witnesses,” Jones wrote. He later noted, “Not one defense expert was able to explain how the supernatural action suggested by ID could be anything other than an inherently religious proposition.”
I can’t help but point out that this misses the whole point about whether or not Intelligent Design is true. That is, the court basically ruled that the truth of the theory doesn’t matter. If an Intelligent Designer must be supernatural (although by definition, anything that exists would have to be natural–but why let philosophical terms be defined when we can ignore them for political purposes?) then the theory cannot be taught, even if it is true. Thus, the standard for determing what is taught to our children isn’t truth, but is instead non-religion. Only that which is non-religous can be taught, and there is to be no inquiry into whether or not the non-religious is actually true.
I, for one, would like the judge to explain how it is possible for the law to determine what acts are “supernatural” and what acts are “natural” or how the law can determine what the standards of scientific inquiry are or how the law can determine what constitutes religious or irreligious belief! Until someone can show me where in the world the legal system got the right to determine what is or is not science, religion, philosophy, truth, or reason then this court’s ruling really has no jurisdiction in the first place.
But of course those who argue for the separation of the church and state never bother to consider the separation of the court and science. Science must now bend to the whim of a legal interpretation, and therefore science is no longer science but is instead jurisprudence. I would like all my Objectivist atheist friends to go ahead and explain this double-standard to me. In the meantime, let’s all kow-tow to the gods in the black robes and sacrifice free inquiry on the altar of irreligious tolerance without any bearing on truth. Truth is unimportant, and the court has just proved it.
