Those of you who know me know how furious I get when I encounter the ridiculous lies of creationists and proponents of "intelligent design." Well, evolution won a big battle this week - Judge Jones handed down a ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case. Some of you may not know about this case (or have only heard of it through The Daily Show's special series "Evolution Schmevolution"), but basically what happened is that in Dover, Pennsylvania, the school board tried to change biology standards to mandate a 50/50 split in time teaching both evolution and "intelligent design" in science classes. It was a pretty good sign when the entire school board was voted out during the November elections, but the fight was also taken to the courts, and the ruling plus opinion was just released yesterday.

Basically, Judge Jones saw through every false argument that creationists and IDers have ever proposed, and decided in favor of real science by completely crushing every argument that the IDers put forth in his 139 page ruling. I'm not going hash through everything here, because there are several good roundups all over the web already. But I will point you to my favorite post (by PZ Myers) that shows even how flimsy the argument by defense expert witness Dr. Michael Behe was, and that Judge Jones saw right through it.

This is a big win for science, and rational behaviour in general. While the decision isn't precedent-setting in other jurisdictions, it will certainly be referenced, and because the judge did such a thorough job in crushing ID arguments in his ruling, I think it unlikely that ID will ever win a court challenge unless there is a drastic sea change in culture (possible) and rational thought dies a complete, horrible death (unlikely - I hope).

I saw a quote the other day by a conservative Christian (sorry, I can't find it right now) who believes in evolution and was against creationism and ID. To paraphrase, it went something like this: "Faith is believing in something that can't be proven. To not believe in something that has been proven is just obstinate." And that about sums it up - you can't prove the existence of God, and unless you're a Biblical literalist, you can have faith and still believe evolution is correct.