Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

SODs?

MA-

SODs are Scientific (On Your Own)Design partisans.

It is a riposte to ID-iots.

To reach his decision, Jones likely will use the "Lemon test" from a 1971 case--Lemon vs. Kurtzman--to decide whether the school board had a proper secular purpose for its action, and perhaps whether the effect of the board's action was to promote or inhibit religion.
Jones, a former trial lawyer elevated to the bench by President Bush in 2002, has many options for his decision, but three stand out as most likely, according to legal observers.
First, he could rule broadly that ID is a religious belief, not a scientific theory. If so, the introduction of ID in a public school science class would be unconstitutional.
"And that, of course, is the option we are asking the court to take," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. The ACLU, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Philadelphia firm of Pepper Hamilton, represented the plaintiffs at no cost.
"Legally, the opinion is only binding on Dover. Practically, it's likely to have greater effect. For example, the seminal creation science case was McClean vs. Arkansas. That case never went beyond the district court and that decision was binding only on Arkansas . . . but it had tremendous effect all across the country," said Walczak.
He referred to a 1982 case in which a federal court ruled that an Arkansas statute requiring public schools to give "balanced treatment for creation-science and evolution science" violated the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. It found legislators lacked a secular purpose and passed a law advancing a religious belief.
Second and equally broad in scope, Jones could affirm the constitutionality of teaching ID by supporting its validity as scientific theory and rejecting the argument that it is a religious belief, a decision the ACLU probably would appeal.
"If that happens, we're going to have school boards across the country trying it [introducing ID] the next day," said Charles Haynes, senior scholar and director of education programs at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.
*****************************************************
....Jones could issue a narrow decision, limited to whether board members had a primarily religious, rather than secular, purpose in adopting the policy introducing ID.
"I don't think it's the test case most of us would have hoped for," said attorney Valerie Munson, head of the religion and law practice group at the Philadelphia firm of Eckert Seamans.
Usually, it is difficult to determine motivation or purpose, she and others noted. But in the Dover case, some members of the board made public statements about Jesus Christ and creationism, which indicated religion may have weighed more heavily in the adoption of the ID policy than their asserted purpose of encouraging critical thinking in students.
If Jones decides the case on motivation, the broader questions about ID would be left to other cases in other courts.

First, he could rule broadly that ID is a religious belief, not a scientific theory.

The ACLU, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Philadelphia firm of Pepper Hamilton, represented the plaintiffs at no cost.

That suggests that the plaintiffs wouldn't be in the case without these bodies paying.Were the plaintiffs on wages is the obvious question begged.Did they say what they were told to say is the next one.

That's early 60s.They had steam trains then and diptheria.And no traffic wardens.

I also admire Bob Dylan's poetry but I do not think he intended it to be a "panacea".

Simply can't fly - or even walk; it has evolved no wings to lift itself from the swamp of superstition, nor legs to support itself on a march to legitimacy.