Posted on 11/03/2005 11:39:36 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Not long into his cross-examination Wednesday, Dover schools Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa talked about a seminar he had attended about creationism in public schools.
The typically calm and confident administrator started his testimony with shaky hands and a weak voice as he explained to plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Rothschild that Supt. Richard Nilsen sent him to the Messiah College seminar on March 26, 2003.
Baksa had returned to the stand in a federal civil suit over Dover Area School District’s decision to include a mention of intelligent design in ninth-grade biology class. It was Baksa’s third appearance on the stand after being bumped by out-of-town witnesses for the defense.
Knowledge of the seminar wasn’t new. But the plaintiffs’ attorneys used it and other testimony from Baksa and school board President Sheila Harkins, who also testified Wednesday, to try to tie together events leading up to the science curriculum change and show that religion played a role in the board’s decision.
A policy that had a religious purpose would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Baksa testified that hours after attending the conference, he went to a Dover board retreat. According to previous testimony, board member Alan Bonsell said at the retreat that creationism should balance the teaching of evolution. Earlier in the trial, board members, former board members and Nilsen testified about notes made during board retreats in 2002 and 2003 at which Bonsell mentioned creationism and prayer in school.
After the retreat, Baksa said, he told Bertha Spahr, head of the science department, that Bonsell wanted to give another theory equal time to evolution in science class.
Baksa received a memo dated April 1, 2003, from then-Principal Trudy Peterman that said a board member wanted to give creationism equal time with evolution.
“My first reaction is, ‘She got it wrong,’” Baksa said, referring to Peterman’s use of the term creationism. But he didn’t approach either Spahr or Peterman to correct the information, he said.
A little more than a year after Peterman’s memo, controversy erupted during June 2004 board meetings when board members, and one board member’s wife, made religious comments while talking about buying new biology books.
During Wednesday’s questioning, Baksa corroborated some news coverage by saying he heard former board member Bill Buckingham talk about creationism, saying that “liberals in black robes” were taking away Christians’ rights and that the ninth-grade biology book was “laced with Darwinism.”
Baksa said Buckingham said something about a man dying on the cross 2,000 years ago but didn’t remember if the comment was made in 2003 during talks about “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or in 2004 during discussion on the curriculum change.
He also said Buckingham made a comment about the country not being founded on Muslim beliefs but said he didn’t know when that was said.
Earlier Wednesday, Harkins testified she didn’t remember Bonsell talking about creationism or prayer during retreats. She said she heard Buckingham mention liberal judges but didn’t know whether his mention of a man dying 2,000 years ago on the cross came at a 2004 board meeting or in earlier discussions about the pledge.
She also said people in the audience were talking about creationism at the June meetings, while then-board member Jeff Brown talked about intelligent design.
“My recollection is it seems to me I was thinking Jeff was the first one to bring up mentioning intelligent design in the conversation,” she said. “I was thinking Alan, Noel (Wenrich) and Bill got in on the conversation.”
Baksa and Harkins both testified that, at those June meetings, they didn’t know what intelligent design meant.
In August 2004, before the October vote on the intelligent design statement, Baksa and others received e-mail from Stock and Leader lawyer Steve Russell. The district had asked him for advice about the pro-intelligent design textbook “Of Pandas and People.”
“Today I talked to Richard Thompson. . . . they refer to the creationism issue as ‘intelligent design,’” Russell wrote, referring to Dover’s lawyer from the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan.
After court, Thompson maintained that creationism and intelligent design were separate.
Russell’s concern, according to the e-mail, was about various talk for putting religion back into the schools.
Baksa said in court Wednesday that he considered Russell’s words as advising caution in using “Pandas.”
In the summer of 2004, the board decided not to spend taxpayer money on “Pandas” as a companion text. Baksa testified that Nilsen asked him to research how much 50 copies of “Pandas” would cost so the board could then give the information to donors.
Later that year, Alan Bonsell’s father, Donald, and members of former board member Buckingham’s church anonymously gave 60 copies of the book to the district.
Outside court, Thompson said the events simply coincided.
“I don’t think they’re connected,” he said. “I think it’s just happenstance. At that point, I don’t think they were connected. The only reason that’s brought up is because of the case that exists today.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys declined to comment Wednesday.
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Another day, another batch of lies.
Does anyone think the Church gave the books to the school to NOT advance a religious purpose?
It's seems to be wrapping up quickly.
Looks like the school board is anxious to lose and move on to the next level.
"Equal Time"?
A statement that there may be another explanation is a long way from "Equal Time".
If you balanced all the "facts" of ID with Darwin in equal time, Biology class would take, what, maybe 30 seconds?
The more you post, the more pathetic this mess is. I'm surprised the Thomas More Law Center bothered with this.
I very much doubt that there will be a next level. As I understand it an appeal does not introduce new testimony or facts. The current judges decides the facts. What would there basis be for appeal?
How could competent counsel fix the stupidity of the defendants?
Continuing ed?
I doubt the ACLU is in a settling mood.
Insanity?
It will be strictly based on legal issues -- specifically, whether the facts, as the judge finds them, mean that the school board's actions violated the First Amendment. The currently prevailing case on this is LEMON v. KURTZMAN, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
I've posted this a few weeks ago, but it's relevant now that the case is winding up.
That case lays out the three-pronged "Lemon test":
First, the statute [or state action] must have a secular legislative purpose;second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,
finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
Is there anyone who imagines that the mandatory ID statement which the Dover school board imposed on the schools can pass that test? (Don't get hung up on the word "statute." The school board's mandate undoubtedly qualifies as "state action" under the 14th Amendment.)
By the way, in Selman v. Cobb County School District, the Georgia textbook sticker case, the court cited and relied on the Lemon test. But there's a bit of Supreme Court politics involved here. In Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education v. Freiler, a creationism case where the Supreme Court denied certiorari (in 2000, only 5 years ago), Rehnquist, Scalia & Thomas indicated that they'd like to re-visit the Lemon test. So it's going to be a long and bumpy ride.
Do I see Kobe Bryant in there?
(Running for cover.)
The best that the IDers can hope for is a very narrow decision, which I think will be the case. The board can drop it's attempt and hope they don't get booted out of office. Then the IDers can go along blithely saying the Dover case was a fluke and badly handled and look for a setting where the actors are better looking and try again.
For the judge to slap them hard I think is unlikely since judges hate to be overturned.
If the voters of Dover are smart, they'll toss out the present school board next week, elect a new one that will settle the case, and cut their losses.
I think this one's going out with a whimper.
That's kind of like hearing Bill Clinton tell the truth about his childhood.
The school board is going to have to eat the expense of this litigation. It will give pause to other school districts.
This is the only way your side can keep a monopoly in public schools. If you could persuade the public, you would. If you had the proof, you'd bring it out. If you even had convincing evidence, you parade it down every main street in every American city and town.
But you don't have a persuasive argument, so you don't present it. You don't have the convincing evidence, so you just pretend you do. And even though only 12 percent think materialistic evolution is true, you want to impose your illogical, eclectic and unpersuasive worldview on a captive audience of children with the tax dollars of those who oppose such nonsense.
| BTW- another reason evolution is highly suspect: After 150 years of supposedly compiling evidence, monopolizing public schools and colleges, enjoying the support of liberals and the liberal media, and using the ACLU to suppress their opposition, and spending untold billions on research, we are still unpersuaded. And it's not because 88% of America is stupid. It's because evolutionists couldn't make a persuasive case if they had the entire GNP to spend doing it. |
Thanks for the ping!
(1) The statute [or state action, so let's substitute "the "school board's mandatory ID statement"] must have a secular legislative purpose:
They've blown this one completely. The school board is very much on record as having a religious purpose.
(2) The school board's mandatory ID statement's principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion:
Same remarks as above. Plus, the clear evidence that ID isn't science pretty much leaves any ID presentation in the religion category.
(3) The school board's mandatory ID statement must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion":
This is the fuzziest prong of the Lemon test, but I can see it shaping up as an endless involvement deciding which creation accounts get presented in science class.
So, this case seems to flunk all three prongs of the Lemon test. And flunking only one will suffice to sink the school board. It seems that no matter what the Supreme Court thinks of Lemon, they won't want to mess with this case.
Actually, there are some folks who won't even listen to the "persuasive case" that scientists have built up for the past 150 years. Any wouldn't believe a word of it if they did.
You know, I think there may be some of those folks right here on FR, maybe even on this very thread.
If we'd had to wait for the majority in the South to desegregate public schools, they'd still be segregated.
Judges also hate being lied to from the witness stand....
While that will apply to "some folks," it doesn't make sense that 88% are not convinced and that most want evo and creation taught together so that the student can make up his mind. Evolutionists don't seem to want students to make up their minds. Whatever happend to "Think For Yourself" bumper stickers?
It actually has more to do with not teaching evolution at all in public schools in some states until the 1960's. And it has to do with the poor quality of instruction.
None of the schools I went to even taught evolution. That's why most people don't know what it is.
You'd think that. We'll have to wait and see.
Probably true if Dems were in charge, though it wouldn't be because a persuasive case against racism hasn't been made. The naturalist's worldview provides for the existence of race discrimination naturally, as Darwin well knew. It is only through coercion that slavery can continue in the modern world and only through coercion that evolution will remain a monopoly in the schools. Hence the use of the courts, rather than evidence, to stop ID.
Science is not a popularity contest. It is not democratic in the least.
What percentage of the population do you suppose could describe how a television set operates, and under what principles television transmissions take place?
My guess is less than 2% of the population. Yet, 99% of the population can turn a television set on and receive programming.
Polls do not measure scientific information. They can measure levels of ignorance of science, of course, but the have nothing to do with science.
If we begin teaching the sciences based on public opinion, we have lost the whole thing.
That's a variation of "people are stupid." However, the golden opportunity has appeared for your side. Now is the time to present your case both to the public and to the courts that evolution is a certainty. Yet that's not happening. Why?
"That's a variation of "people are stupid." "
Nope. It's a variation on "People are ignorant about science." That is a true statement. Ignorance is fixable. Stupidity is not.
Most people don't really care about evolution enough to bother learning anything much about it. They don't care about the science behind anything in their lives, for the most part. That makes them ignorant of science, not stupid. They know about other things.
Even if they learned something about evolution in school, that information has probably slipped into oblivion, along with algebra, trigonometry, and half the other stuff that was taught.
Ignorance is one thing. Stupidity is another. I don't mind if someone's ignorant about the Theory of Evolution. I do mind if they are deliberately stupid about it and unwilling to learn. There are many of the second type in this controversy.
People don't know what evolution is because it wasn't in your school?
People reject evolution because they DO know what it is. To say otherwise is to imply that you are smart enough to "get it" but the other 88% is in the dark. If evolution were a new idea of only a few years, maybe that would work. But you've had 150 years.
There are 2 reasons.
1. That's not what the Dover case is about.
2. It's already been done. And we're still waiting for ID to make any kind of scientific case for anything.
Because science is complicated. It doesn't make for good sound-bites. It requires reasoning, which we all know is in short supply.
People want simple solutions, especially ones that vindicate their inborn prejudices. That doesn't change the fact of evolution.
".... and that the ninth-grade biology book was “laced with Darwinism.”"
Complaining that a high school bio text is "laced with Darwinism" is like complaining that a high school math book is "laced with Algebra," a Chemistry text is "laced with Bohrism," or a Physics text is "laced with Newtonianism." No sh@t, Sherlock!
I understand that some of the anti-science folks are at war with reality, but really, this is too rich!
"Evo" and creation are different things. They are not competing theories to be given equal balance. People on these threads have made the comparison of astronomy and astrology, and I think that is accurate. Do you advocate teaching the astrology "theory" with equal weight to astronomy? Evolutionists don't seem to want students to be taught non-scientific subjects in science class.
The problem here is simple. People who interpret their religious beliefs to be opposed to evolution are against evolution no matter what the evidence is. Proponents of CS and its spin-off, ID, have both been trying to get this religious belief into the schools. CS was stopped by the Supreme Court in the 1980s, and now ID is in the docket.
Definitions:
Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"Belief: any cognitive content (perception) held as true; religious faith
Didn't that happen when Behe, the expert witness for the defence, admitted that evolution and common descent are facts?
You can tell from the comments on these threads that most people don't. Most people aren't aware that evolutionary biology originally relied on the fossil record for it's evidence.
The best argument to that on these threads is, "They're just rocks".
As a conservative, you should be ashamed for bringing left wing populist lines of argument into this discussion.
With television, one makes a persuasive case, then demonstrates it to be true. Unfortunately, that is not possible with evolution.
Therefore you ask us to believe, not know. And I did believe in high school and college. Creationists from Morris to Meyers take the time to explain and persuade rather than demand belief like the materialists.
"People reject evolution because they DO know what it is."
I doubt it very much. Based on the threads here, it appears that the creationist crowd does not even understand the basics of the theory of evolution.
My suspicion is that if a nationwide quiz were taken, asking everyone to briefly describe the theory of evolution in a paragraph, less than 10% would be able to do so with any resemblance of accuracy.
If those arguing the issue do not understand the theory in the first place, then whatever their argument is has no relevance.
The very first error almost every creationist makes is in believing that the TOE has anything whatever to do with the origins of the universe or the origins of the first lifeform on this planet. I've seen few who know that the TOE does not address either.
Based on that, I cannot see why anyone should pay any attention to creationism in the first place, since it is not arguing against anything real. The TOE they're discussing doesn't even exist.
Ignorance is not a good starting point for decisions on how to teach sciences.
You don't. You couldn't give a coherent 900 word description of evolution if your life depended on it. You might be able to copy something from a web site, but you are not capable of presenting a best case description of evolution in your own words.
I've watched you and other evolution critics on these threads for years, and what I'm saying about you applies to pretty much every FReeper evolution critic.
Not only can they not give a coherent description of evolution, they are shocked to find out that ID advocates like Behe take common descent for granted. They don't even know what ID is.
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