Sunday, May 9, 2010

William Dembski on Judge Jones

In a discussion on another debate forum, I came across another example of hypocrisy by Intelligent Design advocates.

Judge John E. Jones III made the decision in the Dover, PA, court case. That decision went against the Intelligent Design advocates.

The Discovery Institute, the primary Intelligent Design spokesgroup, issued this statement about the decision:

"'The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work, said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation's leading think tank researching the scientific theory known as intelligent design."

Activist federal judge?

Hmm...

BEFORE the Dover, PA, trial here's how William Dembski viewed Judge Jones on his blog:

"Judge John E. Jones on the other hand is a good old boy brought up through the conservative ranks. He was state attorney for D.A.R.E, an Assistant Scout Master with extensively involved with local and national Boy Scouts of America, political buddy of Governor Tom Ridge (who in turn is deep in George W. Bush’s circle of power), and finally was appointed by GW hisself. Senator Rick Santorum is a Pennsylvanian in the same circles (author of the 'Santorum Language' that encourages schools to teach the controversy) and last but far from least, George W. Bush hisself drove a stake in the ground saying teach the controversy. Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off at the knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his political allies. Of course the ACLU will appeal. This won’t be over until it gets to the Supreme Court. But now we own that too.

"Politically biased decisions from ostensibly apolitical courts are a double edged sword that cuts both ways. The liberals had their turn at bat. This is our time now. We won back congress in 1996. We won back the White House in 2000. We won back the courts in 2005. Now we can start undoing all the damage that was done by the flower children. The courts have been the last bastion of liberal power for 5 years. It was just a matter of time. The adults are firmly back in charge. The few wilted flower children that refused to grow up will have to satisfy themselves by following the likes of Cindy Sheehan around ineffectually whining about this, that, and the other thing. They’ve been marginalized."

Dembski is clearly encourging Judge Jones to be "activist", but to do so in the direction of HIS side of the debate.

Mysteriously, this blog entry vanished after the Judge'sdecision. Fortunately before it was removed a number of people copy-and-pasted it into other web pages that still exist. A Google search found more than 60 examples.

For example it can be found at:

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/unconstitutional_to_teach_id/P25/


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