What does mdpa cover

Although contrary to Fuller, defense experts Professors Behe and Minnich testified that ID is not creationism, their testimony was primarily by way of bare assertion and it failed to directly rebut the creationist history of Pandas or other evidence presented by Plaintiffs showing the commonality between creationism and ID.

P at 2; Forrest ; P at Having thus provided the social and historical context in which the ID Policy arose of which a reasonable observer, either adult or child would be aware, we will now focus on what the objective student alone would know.

We will accordingly determine whether an objective student would view the disclaimer read to the ninth grade biology class as an official endorsement of religion. The Supreme Court instructed in Edwards that it has been particularly "vigilant in monitoring compliance with the Establishment Clause in elementary and secondary schools. The Supreme Court went on to state that:. Families entrust public schools with the education of their children, but condition their trust on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family.

Students in such institutions are impressionable and their attendance is involuntary. Ball, U. In ascertaining whether an objective Dover High School ninth grade student would view the disclaimer as an official endorsement of religion, it is important to note that a reasonable, objective student is not a specific, actual student, or even an amalgam of actual students, but is instead a hypothetical student, one to whom the reviewing court imputes detailed historical and background knowledge, but also one who interprets the challenged conduct in light of that knowledge with the level of intellectual sophistication that a child of the relevant age would bring to bear.

Plaintiffs accurately submit that reviewing courts often make no distinction between an adult observer and a student observer when deciding whether a public school's conduct conveys an unconstitutional message of religious endorsement. However, when such a distinction is drawn, as is appropriate to do under the circumstances of this case, courts have recognized that because students are more impressionable than adults, they may be systematically less effective than adults at recognizing when religious conduct is unofficial and therefore permissible.

Accordingly, the objective student standard is a means to ensure that courts exercise the particular vigilance that the Supreme Court has mandated for protecting impressionable children from religious messages that appear to carry official imprimatur; it is not a tool for excluding or ignoring material evidence. After a careful review of the record and for the reasons that follow, we find that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion.

Application of the objective student standard pursuant to the endorsement test reveals that an objective Dover High School ninth grade student will unquestionably perceive the text of the disclaimer, "enlightened by its context and contemporary legislative history," as conferring a religious concept on "her school's seal of approval.

We arrive at this conclusion by initially considering the plain language of the disclaimer, paragraph by paragraph. The first paragraph reads as follows:. The evidence in this case reveals that Defendants do not mandate a similar pronouncement about any other aspect of the biology curriculum or the curriculum for any other course, despite the fact that state standards directly address numerous other topics covered in the biology curriculum and the students' other classes, and despite the fact that standardized tests cover such other topics as well.

Notably, the unrefuted testimony of Plaintiffs' science education expert Dr. Alters, the only such expert to testify in the case sub judice explains, and the testimony of Drs. Miller and Padian confirms, the message this paragraph communicates to ninth grade biology students is that:.

We'd rather not do it, but Pennsylvania academic standards Immediately after students are told that "Darwin's Theory" is a theory and that it continues to be tested, they are told that "gaps" exist within evolutionary theory without any indication that other scientific theories might suffer the same supposed weakness. As Dr. Alters explained this paragraph is both misleading and creates misconceptions in students about evolutionary theory by misrepresenting the scientific status of evolution and by telling students that they should regard it as singularly unreliable, or on shaky ground.

Additionally and as pointed out by Plaintiffs, it is indeed telling that even defense expert Professor Fuller agreed with this conclusion by stating that in his own expert opinion the disclaimer is misleading.

Padian bluntly and effectively stated that in confusing students about science generally and evolution in particular, the disclaimer makes students "stupid. In summary, the second paragraph of the disclaimer undermines students' education in evolutionary theory and sets the groundwork for presenting students with the District's favored religious alternative. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. Students are therefore provided information that contrasts ID with "Darwin's view " and are directed to consult Pandas as though it were a scientific text that provided a scientific account of, and empirical scientific evidence for, ID.

The theory or "view" of evolution, which has been discredited by the District in the student's eyes, is contrasted with an alternative "ex planation," as opposed to a "theory," that can be offered without qualification or cautionary note. The alternative "explanation" thus receives markedly different treatment from evolutionary "theory. As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Freiler, an educator's "reading of a disclaimer that not only disavows endorsement of educational materials but also juxtaposes that disavowal with an urging to contemplate alternative religious concepts implies School Board approval of religious principles.

The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. Plaintiffs accurately submit that the disclaimer mimics the one that the Fifth Circuit struck down as unconstitutional in Freiler in two key aspects.

First, while encouraging students to keep an open mind and explore alternatives to evolution, it offers no scientific alternative; instead, the only alternative offered is an inherently religious one, namely, ID.

Freiler, F. Whether a student accepts the Board's invitation to explore Pandas, and reads a creationist text, or follows the Board's other suggestion and discusses "Origins of Life" with family members, that objective student can reasonably infer that the District's favored view is a religious one, and that the District is accordingly sponsoring a form of religion.

Second, by directing students to their families to learn about the "Origins of Life," the paragraph performs the exact same function as did the Freiler disclaimer: It "reminds school children that they can rightly maintain beliefs taught by their parents on the subject of the origin of life," thereby stifling the critical thinking that the class's study of evolutionary theory might otherwise prompt, to protect a religious view from what the Board considers to be a threat.

A thorough review of the disclaimer's plain language therefore conveys a strong message of religious endorsement to an objective Dover ninth grade student. It is important to initially note that as a result of the teachers' refusal to read the disclaimer, school administrators were forced to make special appearances in the science classrooms to deliver it.

No evidence was presented by any witness that the Dover students are presented with a disclaimer of any type in any other topic in the curriculum. An objective student observer would accordingly be observant of the fact that the message contained in the disclaimer is special and carries special weight.

In addition, the objective student would understand that the administrators are reading the statement because the biology teachers refused to do so on the ground that they are legally and ethically barred from misrepresenting a religious belief as science, as will be discussed below.

This would provide the students with an additional reason to conclude that the District is advocating a religious view in biology class. Second, the administrators made the remarkable and awkward statement, as part of the disclaimer, that "there will be no other discussion of the issue and your teachers will not answer questions on the issue. Alters explained that a reasonable student observer would conclude that ID is a kind of "secret science that students apparently can't discuss with their science teacher" which he indicated is pedagogically "about as bad as I could possibly think of.

Unlike anything else in the curriculum, students are under the impression that the topic to which they are introduced in the disclaimer, ID, is so sensitive that the students and their teachers are completely barred from asking questions about it or discussing it. A third important issue concerning the classroom presentation of the disclaimer is the "opt out" feature.

Alters testified that the "opt out" feature adds "novelty," thereby enhancing the importance of the disclaimer in the students' eyes. Moreover, the stark choice that exists between submitting to state-sponsored religious instruction and leaving the public school classroom presents a clear message to students "who are nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.

Accordingly, we find that the classroom presentation of the disclaimer, including school administrators making a special appearance in the science classrooms to deliver the statement, the complete prohibition on discussion or questioning ID, and the "opt out" feature all convey a strong message of religious endorsement. An objective student is also presumed to know that the Dover School Board advocated for the curriculum change and disclaimer in expressly religious terms, that the proposed curriculum change prompted massive community debate over the Board's attempts to inject religious concepts into the science curriculum, and that the Board adopted the ID Policy in furtherance of an expressly religious agenda, as will be elaborated upon below.

Additionally, the objective student is presumed to have information concerning the history of religious opposition to evolution and would recognize that the Board's ID Policy is in keeping with that tradition. Consider, for example, that the Supreme Court in Santa Fe stated it presumed that "every Santa Fe High School student understands clearly" that the school district's policy "is about prayer," and not student free speech rights as the school board had alleged, and the Supreme Court premised that presumption on the principle that "the history and ubiquity" of the graduation prayer practice "provides part of the context in which a reasonable observer evaluates whether a challenged governmental practice conveys a message of endorsement of religion.

Importantly, the historical context that the objective student is presumed to know consists of a factor that weighed heavily in the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the balanced-treatment law in Edwards, specifically that "[o]ut of many possible science subjects taught in the public schools, the legislature chose to affect the teaching of the one scientific theory that historically has been opposed by certain religious sects.

Moreover, the objective student is presumed to know that encouraging the teaching of evolution as a theory rather than as a fact is one of the latest strategies to dilute evolution instruction employed by anti-evolutionists with religious motivations. Selman, F. Furthermore, as Drs. Alters and Miller testified, introducing ID necessarily invites religion into the science classroom as it sets up what will be perceived by students as a "God-friendly" science, the one that explicitly mentions an intelligent designer, and that the "other science," evolution, takes no position on religion.

Miller testified that a false duality is produced: It "tells students Introducing such a religious conflict into the classroom is "very dangerous" because it forces students to "choose between God and science," not a choice that schools should be forcing on them.

Our detailed chronology of what a reasonable, objective student is presumed to know has made abundantly clear to the Court that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion or a religious viewpoint. We now turn to whether an objective adult observer in the Dover community would perceive Defendants' conduct similarly. The Court must consider whether an objective adult observer in the Dover community would perceive the challenged ID Policy as an endorsement of religion because the unrefuted evidence offered at trial establishes that although the disclaimer is read to students in their ninth grade biology classes, the Board made and subsequently defended its decision to implement the curriculum change publicly, thus casting the entire community as the "listening audience" for its religious message.

We are in agreement with Plaintiffs that when a governmental practice bearing on religion occurs within view of the entire community, the reasonable observer is an objective, informed adult within the community at large, even if the specific practice is directed at only a subset of that community, as courts routinely look beyond the government's intended audience to the broader listening audience.

Otherwise, government would be free and able to sponsor religious messages simply by declaring that those who share in the beliefs that it is espousing are the message's only intended recipients.

See Allegheny, U. First, the Board brought the public into the debate over whether to include ID in the curriculum as it proposed, advocated, and ultimately approved the ID Policy in public school board meetings. These meetings were such that members of the public not only attended them, but also had the opportunity to offer public comment on the proposal.

In those Board meetings, open to the public at large, several Dover School Board members advocated for the ID Policy in expressly religious terms, with their comments reported extensively in the local newspapers, as will be discussed in detail below. Second, at least two Board members, William Buckingham and Heather Geesey, defended the proposed curriculum change in the media in expressly religious terms.

Moreover, it is notable that the Board sent a newsletter to every household in Dover in February "produced to help explain the changes in the biology curriculum" and prepared in conjunction with defense counsel, the Thomas More Law Center. Typically, the Board sent out a newsletter in the Dover area approximately four times a year and in February , the Board unanimously voted to mail a specialized newsletter to the community.

Sneath Test. Although formatted like a typical district newsletter, an objective adult member of the Dover community is presumed to understand this mailing as an aggressive advocacy piece denigrating the scientific theory of evolution while advocating ID.

Within this newsletter, the initial entry under the heading "Frequently Asked Questions" demeans Plaintiffs for protecting their Constitutional rights as it states, "A small minority of parents have objected to the recent curriculum change by arguing that the Board has acted to impose its own religious beliefs on students. Religion is again mentioned in the second "Frequently Asked Question" as it poses the question "Isn't ID simply religion in disguise?

The newsletter suggests that scientists engage in trickery and doublespeak about the theory of evolution by stating, "The word evolution has several meanings, and those supporting Darwin's theory of evolution use that confusion in definition to their advantage.

The newsletter additionally makes the claim that ID is a scientific theory on par with evolution and other scientific theories by explaining, "The theory of intelligent design ID is a scientific theory that differs from Darwin's view, and is endorsed by a growing number of credible scientists. Evolution is subsequently denigrated and claims that have not been advanced, must less proven in the scientific community, are elaborated upon in the newsletter.

In fact, since the s, advances in molecular biology and chemistry have shown us that living cells, the fundamental units of life processes, cannot be explained by chance. Biology took away our status as made in the image of God' Finally and notably, the newsletter all but admits that ID is religious by quoting Anthony Flew, described as a "world famous atheist who now believes in intelligent design," as follows: "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence where it leads.

The February newsletter was mailed to every household in Dover. Even those individuals who had no children, never attended a Dover Beard meeting, and never concerned themselves with learning about school policies, were directly confronted and made the "listening audience" for the District's announcement of its sponsorship of a religious viewpoint.

Thus, the February newsletter was an astonishing propaganda discourse which succeeded in advising the few individuals who were by that time not aware that a firestorm had erupted over ID in Dover. In addition to being aware of the public debate, over whether to include ID in the biology curriculum, the public board meetings where such proposed curriculum change was advanced in expressly religious terms, and receiving a newsletter providing detailed information about the ID Policy, the District assigned Dover parents a special role regarding the ID Policy.

Parents of ninth grade biology students who are subject to the ID Policy are sent a letter when their children are taking biology, "asking if anyone ha[s] a problem with the [disclaimer] statement," and calling on them to decide whether to allow their children to remain in the classroom and hear the religious message or instead to direct their children to leave the room.

When parents must give permission for their children to participate in an activity, the Supreme Court has held that the parents are the relevant audience for purposes of the endorsement. See Good News, U.

Crestview Local Sch. The converse must also be true, when parents must decide whether to withhold permission to participate in an activity or course of instruction, they remain the relevant audience for ascertaining whether government is communicating a message favoring religion.

An objective adult member of the Dover community would also be presumed to know that ID and teaching about supposed gaps and problems in evolutionary theory are creationist religious strategies that evolved from earlier forms of creationism, as we previously detailed.

The objective observer is therefore aware of the social context in which the ID Policy arose and considered in light of this history, the challenged ID Policy constitutes an endorsement of a religious view for the reasons that follow.

First, the disclaimer's declaration that evolution "is a theory A reasonable observer is presumed to know the social meaning of the theory-not-fact deliberate word choice and would "perceive the School Board to be aligning itself with proponents of religious theories of origin," thus "communicat[ing] to those who endorse evolution that they are political outsiders, while Second, the Dover School Board singles out the scientific theory of evolution, specifically and repeatedly targeting it as a "theory" with "[g]aps," "problems," and inadequate empirical support.

In singling out the one scientific theory that has historically been opposed by certain religious sects, the Board sent the message that it "believes there is some problem peculiar to evolution," and "[i]n light of the historical opposition to evolution by Christian fundamentalists and creationists[,] Third, it is readily apparent to the Court that the entire community became intertwined in the controversy over the ID Policy.

The Board's actions from June through October 18, , the date the Board approved the curriculum change, were consistently reported in news articles in the two local newspapers, the York Daily Record and the York Dispatch. Tammy Kitzmiller, Beth Eveland, Cindy Sneath, Steven Stough, and Joel Lieb all first learned of the Board's actions regarding the biology curriculum and textbook from the news articles. Sneath; Stough ; Trial Tr. The news reports in the York newspapers were followed by numerous letters to the editor and editorials published in the same papers.

P; P; P; P Although Defendants have strenuously objected to Plaintiffs' introduction of the letters to the editor and editorials from the York Daily Record and the York Dispatch addressing the curriculum controversy, we will admit such materials into evidence and consider them pursuant to the endorsement test and Lemon's effect prong. They reveal that the entire community has consistently and unwaveringly understood the controversy to concern whether a religious view should be taught as science in the Dover public school system.

Moreover, and as will be explained below, the letters to the editor and editorials are relevant and probative of the community's collective social judgment that the challenged conduct advances religion. Epperson, U. As previously noted, the Supreme Court held in Santa Fe that a public school district's conduct touching on religion should be evaluated under the endorsement test from the standpoint of how the "listening audience" would view it; and, if members of the listening audience would perceive the district's conduct as endorsing religion or a particular religious view, then the conduct violates the Establishment Clause.

Because the endorsement inquiry is not about the perceptions of particular individuals, Plaintiffs do not argue before the Court that any particular letter or editorial, or the views expressed therein, can or should supplant this Court's consideration of the curriculum change from the standpoint of a reasonable observer. See Pinette, U. Instead, the Court looks to the hypothetical reasonable observer as a "personification of a community ideal of reasonable behavior, determined by the [collective] social judgment.

The letters to the editor and sixty-two editorials that Plaintiffs have offered constitute what Plaintiffs' counsel believe to be the entire set of such materials published in the York newspapers serving the Dover community during the period from June 1, through September 1, , which includes the time period from the first Board meetings in which the proposal to change the biology curriculum was announced through the approximate starting date of the trial in this case. We have been presented with no reason to doubt this assertion.

The York Daily Record published letters to the editor regarding the Board's actions and eighty-six of those letters addressed the issues in religious terms. The York Daily Record published forty-three editorials regarding the Board's actions and twenty-eight of such editorials addressed the issues in religious terms. The York Dispatch published eighty-six letters to the editor regarding the Board's actions, sixty of which addressed the issue in religious terms.

The York Dispatch published nineteen editorials regarding the Board's actions, seventeen of which addressed the issues in religious terms.

The letters to the editor and sixty-two editorials from the York Daily Record and York Dispatch that Plaintiffs offered at trial and which we have admitted for consideration in our analysis of the endorsement test and Lemon's effect prong, show that hundreds of individuals in this small community felt it necessary to publish their views on the issues presented in this case for the community to see.

P, These exhibits are thus probative of the fact that members of the Dover community perceived the Board as having acted to promote religion, with many citizens lined up as either for the curriculum change, on religious grounds, or against the curriculum change, on the ground that religion should not play a role in public school science class.

Accordingly, the letters and editorials are relevant to, and provide evidence of, the Dover community's collective social judgment about the curriculum change because they demonstrate that "[r]egardless of the listener's support for, or objection to," the curriculum change, the community and hence the objective observer who personifies it, cannot help but see that the ID Policy implicates and thus endorses religion.

It is additionally important to note that our determination to consider the letters and editorials is in line with the Supreme Court's decision in Epperson. In Epperson, the Supreme Court pointed to letters to the editor in a local newspaper as support for its conclusion that "fundamentalist sectarian conviction was and is" the reason that Arkansas enacted its statutory prohibition against teaching evolution in public schools.

Accordingly, taken in the aggregate, the plethora of letters to the editor and editorials from the local York newspapers constitute substantial additional evidence that the entire community became intertwined in the controversy of the ID Policy at issue and that the community collectively perceives the ID Policy as favoring a particular religious view. As a result of the foregoing analysis, we conclude that an informed, objective adult member of the Dover community aware of the social context in which the ID Policy arose would view Defendants' conduct and the challenged Policy to be a strong endorsement of a religious view.

We have now found that both an objective student and an objective adult member of the Dover community would perceive Defendants' conduct to be a strong endorsement of religion pursuant to the endorsement test.

Having so concluded, we find it incumbent upon the Court to further address an additional issue raised by Plaintiffs, which is whether ID is science. While answering this question compels us to revisit evidence that is entirely complex, if not obtuse, after a six week trial that spanned twenty-one days and included countless hours of detailed expert witness presentations, the Court is confident that no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial area.

Finally, we will offer our conclusion on whether ID is science not just because it is essential to our holding that an Establishment Clause violation has occurred in this case, but also in the hope that it may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us.

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: 1 ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; 2 the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 's; and 3 ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

This revolution entailed the rejection of the appeal to authority, and by extension, revelation, in favor of empirical evidence. Since that time period, science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth. In deliberately omitting theological or "ultimate" explanations for the existence or characteristics of the natural world, science does not consider issues of "meaning" and "purpose" in the world.

While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as "methodological naturalism" and is sometimes known as the scientific method.

Methodological naturalism is a "ground rule" of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify. As the National Academy of Sciences hereinafter "NAS" was recognized by experts for both parties as the "most prestigious" scientific association in this country, we will accordingly cite to its opinion where appropriate. NAS is in agreement that science is limited to empirical, observable and ultimately testable data: "Science is a particular way of knowing about the world.

Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not part of science. This rigorous attachment to "natural" explanations is an essential attribute to science by definition and by convention.

We are in agreement with Plaintiffs' lead expert Dr. Miller, that from a practical perspective, attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a "science stopper. Miller explained, once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer.

ID is predicated on supernatural causation, as we previously explained and as various expert testimony revealed. ID takes a natural phenomenon and, instead of accepting or seeking a natural explanation, argues that the explanation is supernatural.

Further support for the conclusion that ID is predicated on supernatural causation is found in the ID reference book to which ninth grade biology students are directed, Pandas. Pandas states, in pertinent part, as follows:. Darwinists object to the view of intelligent design because it does not give a natural cause explanation of how the various forms of life started in the first place.

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly, through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc. Stated another way, ID posits that animals did not evolve naturally through evolutionary means but were created abruptly by a nonnatural, or supernatural, designer.

Defendants' own expert witnesses acknowledged this point. ID's rejection of naturalism and commitment to supernaturalism It is notable that defense experts' own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept.

First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to "change the ground rules" of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology. Moreover, defense expert Professor Minnich acknowledged that for ID to be considered science, the ground rules of science have to be broadened to allow consideration of supernatural forces.

Prominent IDM leaders are in agreement with the opinions expressed by defense expert witnesses that the ground rules of science must be changed for ID to take hold and prosper. The Discovery Institute, the think tank promoting ID whose CRSC developed the Wedge Document, acknowledges as "Governing Goals" to "defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

In addition, and as previously noted, the Wedge Document states in its "Five Year Strategic Plan Summary" that the IDM's goal is to replace science as currently practiced with "theistic and Christian science.

The IDM accordingly seeks nothing less than a complete scientific revolution in which ID will supplant evolutionary theory. Notably, every major scientific association that has taken a position on the issue of whether ID is science has concluded that ID is not, and cannot be considered as such.

Initially, we note that NAS, the "most prestigious" scientific association in this country, views ID as follows:. Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.

These claims subordinate observed data to statements based on authority, revelation, or religious belief. Documentation offered in support of these claims is typically limited to the special publications of their advocates. These publications do not offer hypotheses subject to change in light of new data, new interpretations, or demonstration of error.

This contrasts with science, where any hypothesis or theory always remains subject to the possibility of rejection or modification in the light of new knowledge. What is more, defense experts concede that ID is not a theory as that term is defined by the NAS and admit that ID is at best "fringe science" which has achieved no acceptance in the scientific community.

It is therefore readily apparent to the Court that ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations. Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community as an affirmative action program, as advocated by Professor Fuller, for a view that has been unable to gain a foothold within the scientific establishment.

Although ID's failure to meet the ground rules of science is sufficient for the Court to conclude that it is not science, out of an abundance of caution and in the exercise of completeness, we will analyze additional arguments advanced regarding the concepts of ID and science.

ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. This argument is not brought to this Court anew, and in fact, the same argument, termed "contrived dualism" in McLean, was employed by creationists in the 's to support "creation science.

We do not find this false dichotomy any more availing to justify ID today than it was to justify creation science two decades ago. ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments against evolution, as illustrated by Professor Behe's argument that "irreducibly complex" systems cannot be produced through Darwinian, or any natural, mechanisms. However, we believe that arguments against evolution are not arguments for design.

Expert testimony revealed that just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow. Padian aptly noted, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

To that end, expert testimony from Drs. Miller and Padian provided multiple examples where Pandas asserted that no natural explanations exist, and in some cases that none could exist, and yet natural explanations have been identified in the intervening years.

It also bears mentioning that as Dr. Miller stated, just because scientists cannot explain every evolutionary detail does not undermine its validity as a scientific theory as no theory in science is fully understood. As referenced, the concept of irreducible complexity is ID's alleged scientific centerpiece. Irreducible complexity is a negative argument against evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert Professor Minnich.

Irreducible complexity additionally fails to make a positive scientific case for ID, as will be elaborated upon below. By irreducibly complex I mean a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.

P at 39; P at Professor Behe admitted in "Reply to My Critics" that there was a defect in his view of irreducible complexity because, while it purports to be a challenge to natural selection, it does not actually address "the task facing natural selection.

Professor Behe specifically explained that "[t]he current definition puts the focus on removing a part from an already-functioning system," but "[t]he difficult task facing Darwinian evolution, however, would not be to remove parts from sophisticated preexisting systems; it would be to bring together components to make a new system in the first place.

In that article, Professor Behe wrote that he hoped to "repair this defect in future work;" however, he has failed to do so even four years after elucidating his defect. In addition to Professor Behe's admitted failure to properly address the very phenomenon that irreducible complexity purports to place at issue, natural selection, Drs. Miller and Padian testified that Professor Behe's concept of irreducible complexity depends on ignoring ways in which evolution is known to occur. Although Professor Behe is adamant in his definition of irreducible complexity when he says a precursor "missing a part is by definition nonfunctional," what he obviously means is that it will not function in the same way the system functions when all the parts are present.

For example in the case of the bacterial flagellum, removal of a part may prevent it from acting as a rotary motor. Discounted cash prices for Labs and Radiology tests.

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