Jay Wexler, professor of law at BU

Judging Intelligent Design

He was at the Boisi Center last Thursday to give a critique of part of the Dover decision by Judge Jones. Click on link to see abstract, which lays out his major thesis well. Apparently Professor Wexler got a B.A. in East Asian Studies at Harvard. Center for Science and Culture coverage.

1. He didn't address the question of whether the Constitution prevents states from establishing religion--perhaps he goes along with a more centralist interpretation of the Constitution. I suspect it would not have gotten anywhere...

Dalbert (1972?) -- establishes Federal rule of evidence--how is scientific evidence to be presented and weighed, etc.

2. Apparently the court must decide whether there is an agenda of promoting a religion--they need to look at various things and guess. Now, if Christians wanted to promote the teaching of philosophy and "philosophical" proofs for the existence of God (along with the counterproofs) in public schools, would the implementation of that program count as a "violation" of the First Amendment? And how does the court distinguish between religion and philosophical theism? Does an atheist have to be the one advocating such a program? So Christians would not be allowed to advocate the study of their intellectual patrimony in a public school? If this is the case, do we need any more evidence to show that the public schools are not only secular, but hostile to religion and to authentic Western culture, as those in control are being unreasonable?

Malcolm Pringle, who's doing research over at MIT and was present last week for Dr. Behe's talk was also at the lucheon colloquium. He argued that it's the job of science teachers to teach students how to think, not the conclusions.

Uhhuh, give them critical thinking skills. What teacher doesn't emphasize this, especially in a statement of teaching? And what teacher actually has taken a step back to examine whether they have these critical thinking skills, and if they are justified?

What else could critical thinking skills be but the art of logic? And both formal and material logic?
How many people are really qualified to teach logic, as opposed to their own system of drawing conclusions? Can they evaluate the certitude of propositions?

The hypothetical-deductive method surely requires a critical look, along with the principle of falsifiability. Should not one also discuss "scientific" positivism? (If one says this is proper to the philosophy of science and not science I ask then why one should accept the scientific method as it is, and see what sort of fallacious arguments are presented, including the old stand-by of pragmatic value.)

Can it be shown that something that is posited as a formal or efficient cause is insufficient for the task? And can it therefore be evidence that there must be something greater? (But would it be going to far to suggest that this something greater is God? Only if the thing requires something less?) How can one show that the explanation does not meet the principle of sufficient reason?

Principle of sufficient reason
"Principle that there must be a sufficient reason - causal or otherwise - for why whatever exists or occurs does so, and does so in the place, time and manner that it does."

Quentin Smith, A Defense of a Principle of Sufficient Reason

A Restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument
Alexander R. Pruss

Should secondary schools really be teaching science? And if it's only teaching the "method," and not the conclusions, how does one measure whether a school is doing an adequate job? Standardized tests don't judge critical thinking skills (unless it happens to be something like the logic section of the GRE, which was done away with).

Besides, what if some of the conclusions are actually wrong, though assumed to be true and unchangeable dogma? How does a teacher know if he is guiding a student to a true conclusion, as opposed to the conclusion that he endorses?

Personally I do think public schools should get out of teaching science--there aren't enough qualified individuals to staff all of the public high schools in the United States. (And it is the case that very few academic scientists or research scientists have looked at their method of reasoning critically. This might be left to the philosophers of sciences, but how many scientists pay attention to them?) Better to leave students in ignorance then to indoctrinate them with opinion that is not critically examined and to foster a sense of pride, when they actually don't know that they don't know. But this isn't going to happen, because too many people have a lot at stake.
If they should try to teach anything, it should be logic, but that would still be problematic, since modern logic is so dominant. (As it is, not many public secondary schools teach logic.)

Note: Eric Rothschild's arguments for the plaintiff are not to be found online, as far as I know. Dr. Behe claims that a comparison of those arguments with the decision written by Judge Jones will reveal a lot of "similarities."