Thursday, July 28, 2005
Phillip Johnson on the Dover Case
From the East Bay Express, Justin Berton writes that "[w]hen fevered creationists gather outside a Dover, Pennsylvania, courtroom this fall, Berkeley's Phillip E. Johnson will probably shake his head in disapproval."
Red State Rabble has been noting for some time that the intelligent movement is being wrested from the hands of the ID general staff at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Now the founder of ID Philip Johnson is allowing himself to go on record in opposition to the the co-opting of intelligent design language by creationists on the Dover school board and at the Thomas More Law Center.
The very real problem for Johnson and Discovery is this: creationists don't know -- and don't really care -- who Johnson is. Creationists, who make up the overwhelming majority of antiscience activists, have no interest in playing the long game that Johnson and Discovery envision.
They've shouldered the ID general staff aside and there's nothing either Johnson or Discovery can do about it.
Also, see the Panda's Thumb for a ruling on the The Foundation for Thought and Ethics motion to intervene in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District. According to this report from PT, Judge John E. Jones has denied their motion to intervene. More bad news for Dembski et al.
... Johnson is not at all involved in the first big legal challenge to the doctrine he helped launch [Dover], despite his role as the movement's popularizer and his status as its eminent legal theorist. In fact, he looks down his well-read nose at the spectacle in Dover. He insists that he would rather see the intelligent-design debate remain purely academic. "All of these local controversies are opened up by local people pursuing their own agendas," he says. "They may have in their mind they are furthering the intelligent-design movement, but that isn't necessarily the case and it isn't at our urging that they're doing it."
Red State Rabble has been noting for some time that the intelligent movement is being wrested from the hands of the ID general staff at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Now the founder of ID Philip Johnson is allowing himself to go on record in opposition to the the co-opting of intelligent design language by creationists on the Dover school board and at the Thomas More Law Center.
The very real problem for Johnson and Discovery is this: creationists don't know -- and don't really care -- who Johnson is. Creationists, who make up the overwhelming majority of antiscience activists, have no interest in playing the long game that Johnson and Discovery envision.
They've shouldered the ID general staff aside and there's nothing either Johnson or Discovery can do about it.
Also, see the Panda's Thumb for a ruling on the The Foundation for Thought and Ethics motion to intervene in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District. According to this report from PT, Judge John E. Jones has denied their motion to intervene. More bad news for Dembski et al.
