Testimony in the Pennsylvania ID case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District has concluded and the attorneys have made their closing arguments. The attorneys will brief the case in the next month or so and the judge has indicated he will try to issue a ruling by the end of the year. Science will prevail.
In reviewing the transcripts and trial summaries provided by the
ACLU, there is no question in my mind but that the school board and ID proponents have lost. There was pervasive evidence that the school board's motive was religious, and as has been noted in at least one other diaries (but I can't find a link to that Kos author, sorry). In many instances board members simply lied about it (
from NYT):
In his blunt closing argument, the plaintiffs' lawyer, Eric Rothschild, accused the intelligent design movement of lying, just as he said the school board members had lied when they testified that their purpose for changing the science curriculum had nothing to do with religion. They lied, he said, when they testified that they did not make or hear religious declarations at board meetings, and when they claimed they did not know that 50 copies of an intelligent design textbook were bought for the school with money collected at a church and funneled through the father of a school board member, Alan Bonsell. This week, the judge himself grew agitated as he questioned Mr. Bonsell about whether he had lied about the books. Mr. Rothschild reminded the judge of that interchange and said that the board's dishonesty "mimics" the intelligent design movement.
and having been caught lying they simply have no secular purpose argument at all. Unfortunately, winning on the religious purpose issue will be somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory: the Discovery Institute and the Thomas More Center will simply look for a school board without religious purpose baggage, and intelligently design their case from the ground up (see this NY Times article about their hunt for ID October). This evidence makes it pretty easy for the court to find there was no secular purpose in this case under the first prong of the Lemon test (discussed here). I would greatly prefer that we win with a finding under the second prong of Lemon that ID is simply not science. That would help to end the issue and make it more difficult for other school boards to teach it, issue stickers, etc. And on that point the ACLU did well and marshaled all of the arguments and evidence against ID as science (to the point where some just insinuated to be on ID's side had to defend themselves and their school). I just don't know whether the judge will simply rule there was a religious purpose and decide he doesn't need to address the is-it-science question, which might embolden ID-people to look for a better board and a re-trial. While I tend to think the loser does better in re-trials because they get to figure out what they did wrong, ID will have a hard time getting better: Behe and his ilk are on the record and can't change testimony, it isn't as if they are suddenly going to find the ID guy (gal?), and there still won't be any peer reviewed articles or support. On the other hand, our side can always find better and different experts if need be, and science (against ID) will march on and flourish. Doesn't help them that a recent Vatican statement is being interpreted as being anti-ID.
So, science will win. But look for one other very important thing in the decision: whether the school board is ordered to pay the ACLU's attorney's fees, estimated at a million dollars. That is a lot of money to a local school board and will help prevent others from (un)intelligently designing a new science curriculum.