I haven't posted on this subject because I was wading through the entire trial transcripts, including the bits in chambers. After that, I was left sitting in a state of utter shock! Jazzns, you're right, Bill Buckingham lied, and lied comprehensively over the funding for Pandas. I'm so shocked because he set himself up as a guy who's religion meant so much to him, yet he was prepared to lie
under oath when it suited him. As a Christian, I find that abhorrant. If I was a non-Christian, I would find it equally abhorrant. It's not just the lies that make me feel this way, it's the way that he thinks he is furthering the cause of God by doing this. What a hypocrite!! I know, I shouldn't judge, but as a scientist I can't help it when someone uses this sort of behaviour to attack your subject.
One thing I did notice in his testimony was his extreme reluctance to agree with anything put to him on cross. Heck, he wouldn't even agree that he said things in his deposition until the deposition was read out in court and even then, all he would say was words to the effect of "Well I must have if that's what it says". He just couldn't bring himself to say "Yeah, I said that". He came across as someone on a major damage limitation exercise, having realised what he had done. Problem was, he destroyed his own truthfulness and credibility in the process.
Another thing that bothered me about this case was the system in place for deciding curriculum and textbooks. The people making the decisions knew bugger all about the subjects that they were making decisions about. Buckingham seems hard-pressed to actually demonstrate an accurate knowledge of the theory he was rubbishing and he admitted that he had no idea if ID was good science, bad science or not science.
However, the highlight of the entire trial has to be when, explaining how he would redefine science, Behe used such a broad definition that he was forced to agree with the plaintiffs' councel that astrology would be included in his definition. Behe's credibility was comprehensively destroyed in my opinion, especially by the reams of material on the evolution of the immune system, which he claimed did not exist. Shame that it was produced in court lol. I'm a molecular biologist, I don't specialise in evolution, but even I could pick holes in his pronouncements.
One other gem was his claim that "evolutionists" could disprove his theory of irreducible complexity in a couple of years in the lab by rerunning the development of the bacterial flagellum. It took millions of years for the present bacterial flagellum to evolve - why does he think that a failure for it to develop in 2 years in a test tube would prove his IC theory? That seemed to be the sum total of his argument that ID is testable and if that's his idea of a test of his theory, he's fooling no-one but himself.
Over here in the UK, we don't have this problem. Evolution is accepted by the vast majority of the population, very few people deny it. There is no (clear and present) danger of attempts to introduce ID into schools here. If that time ever comes I will fight it tooth and nail. I've learned so much more about ID and it's proponents by reading the transcripts of this trial, much more than I've been able to glean from ID proponents on this board. Now I know why they are so unwilling to go into details to support their claims.
™ Version 4.2
