Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument is fatally flawed. Ichneumon's post 35.
Inferior Design. Revealing info on ID and the Discovery Institute.
Neither intelligent nor designed. No evidence of wise, omniscient design.
Irreducible Complexity Demystified. Major debunking of ID.
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity," Kenneth R. Miller. Critique of Behe.
AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. ID isn't science.
And for the litigation now going on, here'is a link to the offical website of the court where Kitzmiller, et al v. Dover School District, et al. is being tried. If you click on Docket, you get a list of all significant pleadings filed in the case -- the complaint, the answer, etc. They're PDF files, but almost everyone has the Adobe reader. So you can check that website and be fully up to date on what's going on in that litigation.
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Thanks again for your efforts on this subject.
if there is intellegent design, why is there so little evidence of intellegence in the PA school board????
Your links do nothing to show that ID is scientifically incorrect.
Teachers should be force to read the following disclaimer everytime the pledge is recited:
"The God this nation is under probably does not exist."
Schools should also be forced to put up a sign on cash registers in the cafeterias and school stores to warn our confusable young ones "The God this nation claims to trust probably does not exist."
We certainly would not want these impressionable children to be misguided into a religion that claims the existance of a God.
Any questions regarding the signage or disclaimers could then be referred to the science department as they obviously have the facts to prove that God does not exist.
2005-09-28 Ex-Teacher Testifies in Evolution Case [Day 3 of trial in Dover, PA]
2005-09-28 Intelligent design on trial
2005-09-27 Biology expert testifies. Professor: Intelligent design is creationism.
2005-09-27 Defending “design” in Dover, Pennsylvania (A creationist perspective - for a change)
2005-09-27 On second day, evolution trial [Dover, PA] delves into topic of faith
2005-09-27 Science and politics: a dangerous mix
2005-09-27 Trial Over 'Intelligent Design' Resumes
2005-09-26 Creationism, Christianity, and Common Sense
2005-09-26 Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution
2005-09-26 Dispute over evolution goes on trial in U.S. court
2005-09-26 Does Genesis hold up under critic’s scrutiny? (Creation/Evolution)
2005-09-26 New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
2005-09-26 The Problem With Evolution
2005-09-26 With world watching, trial starts
2005-09-25 In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New Ground
2005-09-24 The trouble with Darwin (Bush's I.D. comments changed Australia's Educational Landscape)
2005-09-23 Ultimate thread on Dover, Pennsylvania's Evolution v. Intelligent Design trial
2005-09-22 Court Case Threatens to 'Drag Science into the Supernatural'
2005-09-22 Evan Jamieson, hydrometallurgy (Creation/Evolution)
2005-09-22 Insight into our sight: A new view on the evolution of the eye lens (Desperate conjuncture)
2005-09-22 Intelligent Design: An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution
2005-09-22 Intelligent designers down on Dover
2005-09-22 Intelligible Design
Crevo Warrior Freepdays for the month of September:
1998-09-11 Agamemnon
2005-09-17 Arnhart
2001-09-06 atlaw
2004-09-22 coffee260
2004-09-15 Diana in Wisconsin
2001-09-17 Dimensio
1998-09-29 dirtboy
2003-09-25 gobucks
2001-09-14 Heartlander
2004-09-12 HighlyOpinionated
2004-09-21 JamesP81
2004-09-13 johnnyb_61820
2003-09-30 Kleon
2002-09-08 Logic wings
2004-09-09 LouAvul
2004-09-10 ManyWritersOneAuthor
2002-09-26 MineralMan
2004-09-16 ml1954
2003-09-14 neverdem
2004-09-09 NonLinear
2004-09-28 NVD
2004-09-18 Right in Wisconsin
2003-09-09 RightWingAtheist
1998-09-17 tallhappy
2003-09-25 truthfinder9
1999-09-23 Tumbleweed_Connection
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In Memoriam. Fallen Crevo Warriors: ALS |
Bring back SeaLion and Mondernman!
While I often detest their politics, nobody should kid themselves the ACLU don't have a great bunch of lawyers.
Evolution is a "theory" about how species evolve. But Evolution also does occur, and thus it is a "fact" as well.
Like gravity, which is a scientific "theory", but things do indeed fall when we drop them, making gravity a "fact".
Nuclear "theory" can also be observed when fission reactors operate, making it a "fact".
Music "theory" taught in most colleges can be observed as a "fact" by turning on the radio.
Discussing Dover's past
Witnesses testified that board members had a history of talking about creationism.
By LAURI LEBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
HARRISBURG — The Dover Area School Board first discussed creationism publicly in June 2004. But board members had raised the issue privately long before, according to testimony in Harrisburg federal court Tuesday in the battle over intelligent design. And while Bill Buckingham might have been the board member best known for his public remarks on evolution, behind the scenes, the chief architect of the biology curriculum revision appears to have been Alan Bonsell.
At a school board retreat in March 2003, Bonsell told fellow board members that he thought if evolution was taught in science class, it should be balanced "fifty-fifty" with creationism, one former board member testified.
Barrie Callahan, a board member at the time, told the court she was at the retreat, and Bonsell's remarks spurred her to go to the high school principal.
"I was expressing my amazement that someone would want creationism in a science curriculum," she said.
Callahan recently found her notes from the meeting in a pile of old school board documents in her home. She left the school board in November 2003. Callahan also found in the stack of material a report from an earlier retreat in January 2002. Prepared by Supt. Richard Nilsen, the report, which was shown to the court, listed board members' primary issues.
Next to Bonsell's name was the word "creationism," followed by "prayer."
Dover attorney Patrick Gillen, during cross-examination, asked Callahan if the retreat's purpose was to vote on or deliberate district policy. Callahan said it was not.
Callahan is one of 11 parents suing the district over the board's decision to include intelligent design — the idea that life is too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must have been created by an intelligent designer — in its ninth-grade biology class.
'Concern with monkeys to man'
One of the lawsuit's other plaintiffs, Bryan Rehm, also testified Tuesday in U.S. Middle District Court that he had heard Bonsell talk about creationism before June 2004.
A former physics teacher at Dover high school, Rehm often ate lunch with other teachers in the classroom of Bertha Spahr, head of Dover's science department. At times, Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa would join them to discuss concerns Bonsell had with the biology curriculum. Rehm also testified Bonsell wanted to see discussions of evolution balanced "fifty-fifty" with creationism.
In a meeting with the teachers, Bonsell, then-chairman of the board's curriculum committee, told the teachers he didn't believe in evolution — the cornerstone of modern biology. Rather, Rehm said, Bonsell expressed belief in fundamentals of young-earth creationism, such as the idea that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old.
"He expressed concern with monkeys to man," Rehm said.
Rehm said teachers tried to educate Bonsell on evolution. Bonsell responded by asking them to watch "Icons of Evolution," a video by the Seattle-based pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute that is critical of evolutionary theory.
Rehm, who worked as a science teacher in the district for two years, said he left the district amid pressure to teach what he viewed as religion.
Creationism as balance?
Both Callahan and Rehm said they attended school board meetings in June 2004 and remember board members talking about searching for a biology textbook that balances evolution with "creationism."
At one meeting, Buckingham said, "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"
Rehm, looking at a newspaper article in which the statement was recounted to jog his memory, said he remembered Buckingham making the remark.
Board members, in January court depositions, have denied making such remarks or said they don't remember making them.
Spahr, reached Tuesday night, would not comment on Rehm's testimony. But in a deposition this spring, she said that, when she requested a new biology textbook, she was told a board member wanted half the evolution unit devoted to "creationism."
Bonsell said Tuesday there is no link between remarks he made previously about creationism and the mention of intelligent design that the board ultimately approved, a fact, he said, that will become apparent once Dover's lawyers begin to make their case.
Board President Sheila Harkins also disagreed with the parents' testimony. "A lot of that did not happen," she said. "I'm not saying they lied. Their perception is different."
As for discussions of creationism at retreats, Harkins said, "It didn't happen in a school board meeting. I'm not saying it didn't happen outside."
Between June 2004 and the Oct. 18 meeting in which board members voted 6-3 to change the biology curriculum, Rehm and Callahan said, discussions of creationism evolved into talk of intelligent design.
"But it still had the lingering echoes of creationism from June," Rehm said.
HARRISBURG -- Bryan Rehm's family used to be able to count on friendly exchanges in restaurants or other public places around Dover. But on the witness stand yesterday, he told the court how different the Dover area community became once it was divided by the battle over intelligent design.
The kids at school tell his daughter she "came from monkeys," he said.
They ask her why her parents are helping to sue their school district.
Rehm, who said he and his wife are active in their church and vacation Bible school, said people call him an atheist.
And they have said worse things than that, but Rehm said he wouldn't repeat them in court.
After a day of scientific testimony Monday, Rehm and fellow parents and plaintiffs Tammy Kitzmiller and Barrie Callahan took to the witness stand yesterday.
Rehm, a physics and science teacher at the high school in the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years and father of four Dover Area students, said he left the district after the school board started trying to promote intelligent design among its science teachers.
Says teachers felt pressured: Rehm, who now works in another area high school, testified that board member Alan Bonsell told him and other science teachers he wanted to balance creationism and evolution in science classes.
Science teachers, feeling pressured, "repeatedly explained to him, 'We're not going to do this (teach creationism and evolution),'" Rehm said.
He said he attended meetings last year and heard former board member William Buckingham, who was then chairman of the board's curriculum committee, say the high school's biology book was "laced with Darwinism" and the board should take a stand for "somebody" who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.
He said he "couldn't believe" board members were talking in such religious terms at a public meeting.
Rehm is running for a seat on the school board. Even if he is elected, his ninth-grade daughter's biology class will begin to study evolution in January, and she might have to decide whether she wants to sit through a statement telling students that intelligent design is an alternative "theory" to evolution.
School board retreat: Callahan, a former board member who lost a 2003 bid for re-election, testified yesterday that during a board retreat in March 2003, Bonsell said creationism should be taught "50-50" with evolution.
Steve Harvey, one of the parents' attorneys from Pepper Hamilton LLC, pointed to handwritten notes Callahan took during the retreat.
Beside Bonsell's name, Callahan noted Bonsell's "50-50" proposal and noted that Bonsell said he "does not believe in evolution."
Attorney Patrick Gillen from the school board's defenders, the Thomas More Law Center, pointed out during cross examination that there were no votes taken during the retreat and it was not "an official" board meeting.
But Callahan also testified she heard board members making religious comments and promoting creationism at public meetings.
Tammy Kitzmiller, who has two teenage daughters at the high school, said she hadn't attended many meetings, but learned about the talk of creationism from reading newspapers.
At the mention of several stories published in The York Dispatch and York Daily Record, Gillen reminded Judge John E. Jones III that his clients have a standing objection to testimony related to the "hearsay" contained in the newspaper stories.
Newspapers appealing: The two York newspapers are appealing Jones' order for Heidi Bernhard-Bubb, a freelance writer for The York Dispatch, and Joseph Maldonado, a freelance writer for the York Daily Record, to testify about what they saw and heard while covering Dover's school board meetings.
In reporting discussions about intelligent design, they quoted board members making religious statements that the board members now deny making.
The ACLU, representing the parents, wanted the reporters to testify that their stories were accurate, but The Thomas More Center subpoenaed the reporters in an attempt to ask them about details that were not published in the newspapers. Gillen has called the newspaper reports "fabricated."
The newspapers argue many other residents heard the board members make the comments, and reporters, under the First Amendent, should be the last resort for testimony.
The newspapers' managements have said they don't want to be involved in the news -- they want to report it.
The newspapers' attorney, Niles Benn, has said that both Bernhard-Bubb and Maldonado stand by the accuracy of their articles and have decided that, if necessary, they will be held in contempt of court for refusing to testify.
Yesterday, the two reporters appeared for depositions in Harrisburg but did not provide them. Both invoked reporter's privilege, which says reporters have the right not to be bound to testify or disclose sources and information in court.They are both scheduled to testify today.
ACLU attorney Witold Walczak and The Thomas More Center's chief counsel, Richard Thompson, said yesterday they would decide how to proceed with the reporters after they appear in court this afternoon.
The reporters could be fined or imprisoned if Jones finds them in contempt of court.
I'm still waiting for a Buddist or Hindu to support ID. Science crosses the boundaries of believe. ID does not. Therefore.....
Five weeks is a long time for a slam-dunk case?
ID would take us "backwards," MSU professor testifies
For anyone who ever napped through a college philosophy class (like this writer, for example), the morning session might not seem particularly attractive as it featured Dr. Robert Pennock, a professor of philosophy of science at Michigan State University. However, Dr. Pennock offered insightful testimony to further bolster our case. He even managed to bring some levity to the situation.
Dr. Pennock and Eric Rothschild, who handled direct questioning, analyzed statements by Dr. William Dembski, a key proponent of ID. The testimony included quotations from several of Dembski's writings. "They want to revolutionize science" Dr. Pennock stated. "They want a theistic science."
"They would turn us back to an earlier era," he noted, causing "the scientific community to take a number of steps backwards."
The various factions of creationists were also discussed, including Young Earth Creationists, Old Earth Creationists, and Special Creation. Dr. Pennock stated that intelligent design is an attempt to unite the factions.
"It is a strategy to unite against a common enemy," he said.
The morning session included several light moments. Dr. Pennock testified that referring to a "designer" rather than "God" is like referring to "Ambassador Wilson's wife" rather than "Valerie Plame Wilson." As the gallery laughed, Judge Jones chuckled and said, "As an example."
Also, when opposing counsel Patrick Gillen asked if he had ever heard evolution referred to as a "big tent theory," Dr. Pennock said curiously, "I can't say that I've ever heard it referred to as a 'Big Ten theory.'" When he realized his mistake, Dr. Pennock noted his position at Michigan State, and Gillen referred to his own degree from the University of Michigan.
This afternoon the court will deal with the issue of two York newspaper reporters who have been subpoenaed for testimony.
Submitted by Andy Hoover, community education organizer, ACLU of PA
My comment: very good news indeed for the plaintiffs. The newspaper reports of school board meetings are one the principal threads of evidence that the school board was religiously motivated. The defendants were hoping to give the reporters the third degree to impeach their reporting. By putting tight constraints on what they can be asked, Judge Jones has made it very difficult for the defense to do this.
Reporters avoid contempt charges
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Two reporters subpoenaed for the Dover schools intelligent design trial say now they will testify after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III guaranteed them that all questions will be limited to the accuracy of their stories. Joseph Maldonado, a freelancer for the York Daily Record/Sunday News, said he and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb, a freelancer for The York Dispatch, will testify to “what we said all along, ‘yes we wrote them (the articles), yes we stand by them.’”
The reporters’ attorney, Niles Benn, said Jones will issue a “very closed, protective” order before Maldonado and Bernhard-Bubb are deposed and testify, which will serve to limit the questioning.
The two had both invoked their reporter’s privilege against being called to testify at depositions Tuesday, risking contempt charges.
Today’s development took place this afternoon in U.S. Middle District Court after a morning of testimony.
Supporters of intelligent design have argued the concept is not religious because the designer is never identified.
But in the third day of testimony in the federal court case challenging the school district’s inclusion of intelligent design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the designer is God.
Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin on Trial” and “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.”
Johnson, known as the father of the intelligent design movement, wrote of “theistic realism.”
“This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that this reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology,” the writing stated.
"Everything you do in the classroom is teaching"
Plaintiffs testify at afternoon session
This afternoon, three plaintiffs in our case testified regarding school board meetings they attended and their feelings about the curriculum change. Julie Smith, Christy Rehm, and Beth Eveland all took the stand.
Mrs. Rehm, who is a teacher in a public school outside of York County, testified about the impact of behaviors in the classroom.
"As a teacher, I feel teachers in general have been harmed," she stated. "Everything you do in the classroom is teaching. How I dress is teaching. Statements I don't make teach my students."
"This has spilled over into other classes," she continued. "Children of school board members say, 'Do you think we came from monkeys? How can you think we came from monkeys?'"
Mrs. Rehm is the mother of four children, including a daughter in the ninth grade.
Earlier, Julie Smith conveyed her concerns about the impact of school events on her family's religious life.
According to Mrs. Smith, her teenage daughter said, "Mom, evolution's a lie. What kind of Christian are you?"
Mrs. Eveland discussed board meetings, calling them "a circus-like atmosphere."
"I remember [Dover School Board member] Bill Buckingham saying, '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Isn't someone going to take a stand for him?'"
Mrs. Eveland responded by sending a letter to school officials and a letter to the editor of the York Daily Record, which the paper published. When Steve Harvey, our attorney who handled direct questioning, asked her to read the letter, opposing counsel objected, calling it "hearsay."
"Why is it hearsay?" Judge Jones asked.
After listening to the defense counsel's point, his honor asked, "Who wrote the letter?"
"She did."
"Overruled."
Whether ID is "infused with theology" or not is irrelevant since the Dover School Board curriculum does not teach ID. The case is more specifically about who decides local school board issues, the locals or technocrats and the judicial oligarchy.
It also has the virtue of unmasking CINO's which abound here at FR.