Either the defense lawyers are really bad or the press coverage of this trial is one-sided. The prosecution made some really good points that received tons of press coverage. The same can not be said for the defense. The trial dominates the news this week so the following link will provide more information at least for this week.

recent news on intelligent design trial

The school board obviously supports intelligent design because they are creationists, but this is ok. Nobody is passionate about intelligent design because it is just a form of rational reasoning based on the observable axiom (see discussions below) . It is hard to get excited about logic. Throwing out a group’s views just because they happen to be Christians seems to me like discrimination. The prosecution’s argument seems to be that because the school board is comprised of creationists, the board must want creationism taught in school. While this may be what they really want, the board did not implement a system to teach creationism. Instead they opted for intelligent design, and intelligent design is not creationism. I wonder if the judge will see through this. The press coverage associated with this trial did not.

The most fundamental issues were not even brought up in this trial. Axioms were not even mentioned - at least not in the press coverage. This is unfortunate, because the whole issue of intelligent design vs evolution boils down to the basic assumptions that different people make (see discussions below). Intelligent design is not a thinly disguised form of creationism. But I do not think the trial was able to differentiate between the two, because the defense’s case did not focus on axioms. Instead it tried to show that intelligent design is the next major scientific revolution - a paradigm shift. This is unlikely, because I do not think science will ever reject the naturalistic axiom.