Out of My Mind

Neither intelligent nor honest:

Investigate perjury in Dover ID case
Judge Jones issued a broad, sensible ruling - finding that some board members lied.
Daily Record/Sunday News

Dec 21, 2005 — They lied.

William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell wanted to bring God into high school biology class, and in the process, they lied.

They lied about their motives.

They lied about their actions.

They lied about what they did or didn't say at public meetings.

They even lied when they claimed newspaper reporters lied in stories about Dover school board meetings.

In his ruling on the Dover case, U.S. Judge John E. Jones III said it was "ironic" that individuals who "proudly touted their religious convictions in public" would "lie" under oath.

Yes, ironic - at the very least. But also sinful according to the 9th Commandment.

And perhaps also criminal. We can only hope that the appropriate authorities are investigating possible perjury charges in this case. There should be some consequences for what Mr. Bonsell and Mr. Buckingham have done in depositions and on the witness stand by otherwise misrepresenting the facts.

Not to mention what they've done to their community.

They've cost Dover its reputation. The district, even after sensibly voting out the entire school board, again has been made a national laughingstock - last week "The Daily Show" aired yet another embarrassing and insulting piece on Dover.

They have potentially cost Dover taxpayers perhaps a million or more in legal fees. The judge has indicated the plaintiffs are entitled to such fees.

The unintelligent designers of this fiasco should not walk away unscathed. They've damaged and divided this community, and there should be repercussions - a perjury investigation - beyond a lost election.

The ruling suggests board members who approved the ID policy were shockingly ill-informed and lackadaisical about what they were getting the district into. They allowed themselves, taxpayers and students to be made grunts on the front lines of the national culture wars without bothering to learn what they were fighting for.

Turns out it was a lie.

Intelligent design, as Judge Jones made abundantly clear in his 139-page ruling, is not science. ID has simply not earned a place in high school biology curricula as an either/or alternative to evolution.

The ruling reflects that evolution by natural selection is backed by mountains of evidence while ID has produced not one peer-reviewed paper.

That doesn't mean God doesn't exist.

It doesn't mean the world wasn't intelligently designed.

It just means that in science you can't invoke the supernatural when you don't fully understand a natural process.

Judge Jones is to be congratulated for ruling broadly on the matter rather than taking the easy way out with some cramped, nondecision decision.

Unfortunately, this ground-breaking ruling is unlikely to become the settled law of the land because the new board seems unlikely to appeal it to the Supreme Court. Not that we advocate an appeal. Even the judge laments that so much money and time has been wasted on this "legal maelstrom."

In short, Judge Jones got it exactly right, eviscerating the pathetic case put forth by the defense. The district's policy was religiously motivated and espoused religion, thus violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

No lie.

Of course, honesty is not one of those right wing values they promote.