I wasn’t going to say anything about the recent ID decision, but today I decided I should. Mainly I wanted to just say: read the decision by Judge Jones (available here). It is clear and concise, and in language laymen can understand. It restores my faith, or at least a portion of my faith, in the legal system. I’m very glad I took the time to read it–the actual text, that is, instead of commentary on the text.

For more fun, see a 10-point dissent of Judge Jones’s decision written by Casey Luskin of the IDEA (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) organization. It’s located here, and as you may have noticed, the file name of the entry is “Judge Jones Hopeless Monster.”

If you read those ten points, then please take the time to read the decision as well. The actual decision addresses each of them far better than anyone else can (but this guy makes a nice effort).

I think there is one thing that the Intelligent Design movement can give America: A wider-spread realization among all different groups in the population that labels are weapons, nothing more, and are not to be trusted.

Some people, on both sides of whatever small controversy there is here, are going to notice for the first time that the ID movement is not altering the essence of its argument, just the labels involved. And much like bacteria evolving to resist antibacterial drugs, overexposure to labels-as-population-control may work to increase the perceptive powers of society at large, as millions of people collectively take a step back and go, “Huh?”

Can you imagine the day when talking heads don’t decry a taboo as being PC, thus invoking their own meaningless taboo, but in fact look into the social and political ramifications of an act/censure of an act in a public forum? Can you imagine the day when legal decisions are analyzed in everyday humanspeak, instead of pointing to straw men such as obvious problems with the legal system, or calling a judge an “activist” judge? Can you understand what it would be like to have individuals from both parties campaign on actual, detailed platforms while having meaningful debates instead of calling each other “liberal” or “conservative” and that about being the end of it?

The facile way in which ID proponents have worked to remove God from the public face of their belief is endlessly fascinating to me. Hopefully it fascinates a few of them, as well.