A historic judicial ruling against intelligent design theory hailed as a "broad, stinging rebuke" and a "masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking" actually was "cut and pasted" from a brief by ACLU lawyers and includes many of their provable errors, contends the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.
One year ago, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' 139-page ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover declared unconstitutional a school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class in the Dover Area School District to hear a one-minute statement that said evolution is a theory and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."
University of Chicago geophysicist Raymond Pierrehumbert called Jones' ruling a "masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking" while lawyer Ed Darrell said the judge "wrote a masterful decision, a model for law students on how to decide a case based on the evidence presented." Time magazine said the ruling made Jones one of "the world's most influential people" in the category of "scientists and thinkers."
But an analysis by the Discovery Institute, the leading promoter of intelligent design, concludes about 90.9 percent – 5,458 words of his 6,004-word section on intelligent design as science – was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU's proposed "Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law" submitted to Jones nearly a month before his ruling.
"Judge Jones' decision wasn't a masterpiece of scholarship. It was a masterpiece of cut-and-paste," said the Discovery Institute's John West in a phone conference with reporters yesterday.
Read the rest of this report by Art Moore at WorldNetDaily
