Executive Summary:
The United States population is a diverse community. We have economic, social, political, religious and ethnic differences, and our government has a duty to its people to homogenize the law we all live by, to encourage domestic tranquility. That tranquility is largely enforceable by ensuring that the behaviors we prescribe by law, don’t slight any individual right to free speech, assembly, or religion (not a complete list). It is not the government’s job to ensure that my opinion about stuff has any more weight than your opinion about stuff. When it comes to the topic of God, we must all confess that opinion (faith) is king.

The issue Kitzmiller brings to the table:

There are those of us in this society that believe we don’t have a place at the table, when it comes to teaching our children about the origins of man and the universe we live in. Our children are told they can’t bring their Bibles to school, they can’t talk about God in the class room, and that the world wasn’t created in six literal days by an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent God, but was actually formed by a super quantum singularity of infinite density over 10 million-trillion years ago. Some parents find the government’s support of this way of looking at things to be infringing on their constitutional right to freedom of religion. They say their children are being forced by the secularists in our schools to start life with the view that their parents are lying to them about God.

Dover, Pennsylvania - Tammy Kitzmiller, v. Dover Area School District

Let me first say that Wikipedia is all over this story. Well documented and well researched. The issues are there, plain and in the open. I am going to assume that you can use this resource to learn about what is the subject of this discussion, rather than cut and paste a whole bunch of text I didn’t write.

Numerous posts in this forum show that many of our members care deeply about the separation of church and state.

What I hope to accomplish here is to explore what Kitzmiller's weaknesses and strengths are in the minds of the American people. If you are an Intelligent Design advocate, why do you think that Kitzmiller failed you? If you are an evolutionists, why do you think Kitzmiller was significant in the evolution of our national school curriculum? The essence of this debate should focus on impact. Not on how clever you can quip the next guy or gal. My hope is to take this discussion up the evolutionary latter a few notches. (see my corresponding poll, when I publish it)

Let the Debate Begin

My opinion is that Kitzmiller did the ID community a great service, and that it was not a loss at all. I can’t begin to tell you how many Christians I meet who are afraid to stick their theological necks out and expose them to criticism. What Beul and Snokes, and the Board of Education in Dover did was they put their necks out on the line. (And paid nearly two million dollars for it.) Personally, if I could write them a check, I would have. It’s refreshing to see this discussion passionately being put there on the table. Just like the Scopes trial of many moons ago, I sincerely believe that Mr. Darrow has a Piltdown hoax in his closet.

But, the trial court wasn’t shown the jaw bone because the technology to expose the fraud wasn’t available.

The key to presenting Intelligent Design and why I think Kitzmiller went horribly wrong is because we didn’t give respect the opposition. We weren’t honest with ourselves. God’s holding us to a higher standard of honesty than this. Why would Christian’s waste their time attempting to force people to learn about intelligent design when they have no wish to do so? If the public schools are telling your kids that the Big Bang and Bonzo are your true ancestors, then vigorously challenge those ideas by being better, more reliable sources of information. Why force weak premises on people by the very means of suppression you accuse others of using?

Wanted: Molecular Biologist and Biological Anthropologist

Are you and I ever going to know enough to figure out why some scientists can claim that it would take only 20,000 years to evolve a flagellum? Nope. Am I going to prove that the Bible is true, beyond a reasonable doubt, to any one of you? Nope. What’s the greater issue here? The greater political issues, I believe are these, 1) Should Suzy be told by a science teacher that God doesn’t exist? 2) Should our secular boards of education insist that Tommy is told that God may or may not exist? 3) Should the education of our children rest more in the hands of their parents, than the government?

Key Understandings

At the foundation of these issues are the sum total of their parts.

Evolution: Do you believe that this is still a theory? Or is it fact? Why?
Irreducible Complexity: Do you believe this is a fact? Or is it pseudo science? Why?
Separation of Church and State: Do you believe that the separation of church and state is a mandate for secular humanism?
Intellectual Honesty: Were Buel and the Dover Board of Education informed of the Peer Review Standard? Should they have honestly told themselves: "IF we can't play by the rules, then we shouldn't come to the game?"

Did Dover have a right to force the schools in their district to teach the possibility that ID is a credible interpretation of the origin of the universe?

Finally, what would you have done differently, had you argued on the side of ID? (No matter how you personally feel on the subject.)

__________________
"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." March 4, 1869, Grant's First Inaugural Address