Smackdown in evolution ruling

You should take a few minutes — well, an hour or so — to read federal Judge John E. Jones III’s ruling in the case of Kitzmiller vs. Dover.

If the election convinced Robertson that Dover will fall into the hands of Satan, he will most certainly interpret the judge’s ruling as a sign that Armageddon is truly upon us.

It was telling that, moments after Jones’ ruling landed, Dover was beset upon by a plague of locusts, poisonous toads rained from the sky and some obsequious jerk from Fox News arrived in town to interview residents about their role in the coming apocalypse.

OK, none of that happened, except for the Fox News thing.

Dover is once again driving the national SUV down the highway to hell by, as Robertson has famously said, turning its back on God. And now the judge is providing the map.

Yet, from reading Jones’ 139-page ruling, it’s pretty clear who’s paving the interstate to Hades.

Let’s start with the people pushing intelligent design creationism. They say it has nothing to do with religion. Citing ample evidence, Jones shoots that nonsense down, writing that it’s clearly a religious idea and describing it as “an interesting theological argument,� concluding “it is not science� and its primary objective is to promote religion.

The judge described voluminous evidence that proves that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism and that its proponents try to sell it as science to an unsuspecting public by misrepresentations, distortions, obfuscation and outright untruths.

In short, the judge says they lie.

The judge’s dissection of intelligent design and its proponents is bloodless and precise. Point by point, he takes the intelligent design argument and, employing unerring logic, beats it senseless.

It’s a smackdown.

This ruling should consign intelligent design to the scrapbin of bad ideas and finally permit the fanatics who push it — the disingenuous drones of the Discovery Institute — to fulfill their true destiny of trying to sell their ideas, along with flowers, at the airport with their fellow cultists, Scientologists and people who believe the CIA is trying to give us all brain cancer with satellites.

Speaking of smackdowns, let’s move on to what Jones writes about the now-former members of the Dover school board.

Looking at it in the best light, the former school board members are idiots.

In the worst, they’re liars.

In some cases, they’re both.

The judge expresses astonishment that the school board saw fit to force intelligent design into the curriculum without even knowing what it is, referring to the board’s “striking ignorance.�

Judge, tell us something we didn’t know.

Of former board member Jane Cleaver, the judge wrote, “Cleaver admittedly knew nothing about ID, including the words comprising the phrase, as she consistently referred to ID as ‘intelligence design’ throughout her testimony.�

The judge doesn’t even mention former board member Sheila Harkins’ testimony, maybe because, like the rest of us who witnessed it, he’s still trying to figure out what she was talking about.

Or maybe he was referring to Harkins when he wrote, “The breathtaking inanity of the board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.�

“Breathtaking inanity.�

Kind of sums it up.

As does the phrase, “repetitious, untruthful testimony.�

That was a reference to the defendants, the school board members.

He also summed up the defendants’ testimony with this phrase: “flagrant and insulting falsehoods.�

In other words, they lied under oath.

The judge comes right out and says it.

He wrote, “... the record reflects that these witnesses either testified inconsistently, or outright lied under oath on several occasions.� He singles out former board members Bill Buckingham and Alan Bonsell as being particularly untruthful.

“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks,� Jones wrote.

Lying for Jesus is apparently OK, if you’re a member of the Dover Area school board.

Finally, the judge puts blame for this entire fiasco where it deserves to be.

“This case,� the judge wrote, “came to us as a result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case for ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.�

Amen, judge. Amen.

Mike Argento can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.