Three "Intelligent Design" experts were recently dismissed from the Dover, Pennsylvania, case in which an ID textbook was mandated to be used in a biology class, ostensibly because of a disagreement about "legal representation." It's more likely that the experts, representing the carefully laid out "non-theological" case for ID that has been taking shape in the last 10-15 years to make it more compatible to the Constitution, have had their case hostilely taken over by the overtly conservative-Christian Thomas More Law Center, thus imperiling the stealth strategy ID was specifically created for.
:popcorn:
Here's how Ed Bryant of PandasThumb.org sees it:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001160.html#c35754The DI <Discovery Institute> has been in a bind from the moment this case started. For the past few years, both sides in this dispute have been waiting for the case - the legal test case that would determine once and for all whether ID <intelligent design> can be taught in public school science classrooms or whether the previous precedents against teaching "creation science" will be applied to ID in a similar manner. That's what all of the activity in this area for the last decade has been building toward. Everything that ID advocates have done during that time has been designed (yes, intelligently) to put legal distance between ID and the type of creation science that was banned from public school science classrooms in the Edwards decision. It's not by accident that the Wedge strategy was worked out by an attorney, Phillip Johnson. Johnson knew that the courts would not allow an explicitly religious idea be taught in public schools, so it was necessary to distance ID as much as possible from religion and make it appear to be religion-neutral.
This is why you hear constantly from ID proponents that the designer is not necessarily God, it could also be, for instance, aliens (never mind that this is flatly contradicted by the fact that the DI's official definition of Intelligent Design includes the claim that "certain features of the universe" are "best explained by an intelligent cause" - the makeup of the universe itself is well outside the reach of "aliens", because aliens, like humans, are part of the universe itself. No, their definition requires that the designer be outside the universe itself and hence "supernatural" because their definition combines cosmological and biological design). This is also why the DI was so upset by the discovery and release of the Wedge Document, because that document makes explicit the fact that the entire ID movement and strategy was designed as part of a larger campaign of Christian cultural renewal (which is also why the DI changed the name of its ID component from the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture to merely the Center for Science and Culture). The DI is nothing if not politically savvy and they know that these little rhetorical details make a big difference. They also know that the success or failure of a court case to determine whether ID meets constitutional muster for public school science classrooms depends largely on how well they separate ID from religion.
At any rate, both sides have been on the lookout for that one case that could decide the legal question once and for all, and obviously both sides want the details of that case to be as beneficial to their side as possible. That involves many factors - the specific policy being defended, the entire body of statements made before, during and after the crafting of that policy, the makeup of the Federal court district in which the case would be filed, and so forth.
Fast forward to the Dover situation. The Dover school board adopts a policy to teach ID in science classrooms, but in doing so at least one member of the board makes it clear that this is being done for explicitly religious reasons. The DI immediately began to distance itself from the Dover policy largely for that reason, knowing that this isn't really the test case that they would want. They know that it's too soon to attempt to mandate the teaching of ID because, at this point, there really isn't any there there. As <William "Of Pandas and People"> Dembski notes in the article cited above, "there is still a long way at hammering out ID as a full-fledged research program." Many other ID advocates, like Paul Nelson and Bruce Gordon, have said similar things. But the ACLU files suit on behalf of parents in the district and the TMLC comes riding in to defend them, and now the DI is in a bit of a bind.
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