Returning to Dover [evolution trial in Dover, PA: week 2]

York Daily Record [Penna] ^ | 03 October 2005 | TERESA MCMINN

[PatrickHenry]

After a weekend break from a court case involving intelligent design, the Dover school board officials will face business as usual. The board today will hold its first school board meeting since the trial began.

On Sunday, Dover school board member David Napierski said he sympathized with the time fellow members Shelia Harkins and Alan Bonsell have spent on the court case.

“I really haven’t seen it erode them from their duties,” he said. “It definitely has taken a lot of their time . . . I think it is sapping some of the people, too.”

The trial began Sept. 26 in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg. It resumes Wednesday.

Napierski hopes to attend at least one day per week of the trial.

“We’re seeing one side of the whole picture right now,” he said. “I think it’s going to go all the way up to the Supreme Court.”

He said dealing with the court case while running the school district is a “double-edged sword.

“I just hope and pray that our focus will stay on business,” he said.

School district residents might have a difficult time resuming day-to-day life as it was before the trial began.

Lonnie Langioni left his position as a school board member in Dover in 2003. He said the issue has divided the community and he wants folks to again be friends.

“We’re just going to have to let it run its course,” he said about the trial. “I’m just waiting for the day that this is all over and that the people of Dover can go back to talking to each other again.”

He said he follows the case and reads newspapers and articles online.

“It’s crossed all kinds of lines,” he said of the trial. “Dover is a great community. We all need to respect each others’ viewpoints.”

Former Dover school board member Barrie Callahan, a plaintiff in the court case, is ready to spend more time in court this week.

“The case needs to proceed,” she said Saturday. “I know the issue. To see it through the process is truly fascinating.

“You’re seeing the best of the best,” she said about attorneys. “It is an honor to be in their presence.”

She said she’s been following news of the trial posted online.

“It’s not about little tiny Dover,” she said. “This case really, really is important.”

UPDATE

Trial schedule: The trial resumes Wednesday and Thursday in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg and is scheduled to continue Oct. 12, 14, 17 through 21, 24, 27 and Nov. 2 through 4.

At stake: It’s the most significant court challenge to evolution since 1987, and it’s the first time a court has been asked to rule whether intelligent design can be taught in public schools. Experts say the case’s outcome could influence how science is defined and taught in schools across the country. The lead defense lawyer said he wanted to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Coming this week: Among the scheduled witnesses: Dover school district science teacher Bertha Spahr and Jennifer Miller and plaintiffs Cynthia Sneath, Joel Leib and Deb Fenimore.

Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University, also is scheduled. Forrest co-authored “Creationism’s Trojan Horse,” subtitled “The Wedge of Intelligent Design.”

[CarolinaGuitarman]

The statement was false. This is what Patterson said,

"Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson "
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

If you has read the above link, you would have known that Patterson was not saying that there are no transitional forms between higher taxa. When you say something is transitional, you have to specify transitional between what two things. *Transitional* in paleontology can mean between species, family, phyla, and so on.

"it's the author of the article which is refuting what he said, not patterson himself. the Author says this is HIS interpretation of what Patterson said, not pattersons himself. hardly what I would call an unbiased author either."

Again, from Patterson's letter to this article's author:

"I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false."

Clearly Patterson has been misquoted.

[Nathan Zachary]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html#pred

I just took their word for it. It figures. I guess if there are no facts, making them up is just as good, LoL

[Doctor Stochastic]

Do you know what anthropologists do?.

Tell apes, "I'm so sorry."

[dmz]

Don't like the walking catfish, do a little reading on the northern snakehead.

can live for a few days out of water, can crawl between water sources.

don't know if it has lungs or not, but it is an interesting phenomenon regardless.

[Nathan Zachary]

For all I know, this entire web page could be a "creation"
considering the source. Plus the FACT that there are no fossils showing transitional progression when there should be clear evidence of it.

[VadeRetro]

Nothing in the linked section implies that Kathleen Hunt is a fraud.

You are neither making sense nor looking honest here.

[dmz]

It boggles the mind that the same individual could write these 2 lines in the same post.

1)Now, do you have anything intelligent to say? or are you just going to continue your childish behavior? which has nothing to do with the topic of this thread?

and

2)Grow up. I suspect you got beat up alot in school and don't have any friends.

Too funny.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Fred Waring was the Designer?

[wallcrawlr]

Your presence on these threads shows the lurkers exactly the mentality and tactics of the ID/creationist crowd.

Have you read a crevo thread on Fr...? No one has the right to claim the high ground. Hopefully most people can recognize differences between how people behave on here.

btw, dont you have a new candidate for the lost crevo warriors? Is there a time limit requirement?

[Nathan Zachary]

I catch musky and Northern pike all the time. they don't live out of water long. they are freakin fish for God's sake. We call them snakes because of the long body.

Those chinese Snake things ( I think those are what you are thinking of) haven't changed for centuries either. They were introducted to some ponds here in ND and on Ohio and are a pest fish because they do the same thing that walking catfish fish does, cross from pond to pond. The bad thing about them is that they eat all the other fish and take over the pond. then they go to the next. That's why they are banned here. they don't have lungs or any feet, they can go about two miles before they die I believe. They drained ponds around here to try kill them off, fearing that they would get into a major river.

I've had a catfish live for 36 hours out of the water. I forgot about it and was suprized to find it still alive. A tough fish isn't evidence of evolution though.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"For all I know, this entire web page could be a "creation"
considering the source. Plus the FACT that there are no fossils showing transitional progression when there should be clear evidence of it."


Then go to a library and read Patterson's book where he says there are transitional fossils.

" "In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ." ("Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., (p131-133) )

[js1138]

Fred Waring was the Designer?

Entertainers weren't always so dumb. An actress (can't recall the name) is generally credited with inventing spread spectrum.

[dmz]

we had the same problem down here in maryland, someone let a couple of them go, and they took over. we're finding them now in the potomac river as well.

i simply stated it to be an interesting phenomenon, one that stretches what it is to be called a fish by a little bit.

Yes they are indigenous to China and the name of the fish is (as I said), the northern snakehead.

[Junior]

Have you read a crevo thread on Fr...? No one has the right to claim the high ground.

No one is claiming the "high ground." I'm simply pointing out he is the poster boy of creo thinking -- and the lurkers can see that. Whether you consider that characterization a compliment or an insult is your business.

[Nathan Zachary]

Depends on where your sitting I guess. I guess he has a friend after all.

[VadeRetro]

Plus the FACT that there are no fossils showing transitional progression when there should be clear evidence of it.

From here and here.

From here.

Click on some of the links you've been given already. There's more.

[anguish]

Do you know what anthropologists do?.

Tell apes, "I'm so sorry."

ROFL!

[VadeRetro]

Any bets as to how many of them last the week....????

I was about to bet Phoroneus ain't long for here, but Phoro already ain't no more-o.

[Nathan Zachary]

HuH?

Take a look at who post what. I said "it figures" In respondse to another post. Makes perfect sense to me, and isn't dishonest in any way. Maybe if you weren't so obsessed with bashing people, and instead focused on the topic, stuck to information which you can use to prove your position, things would go much smoother and things would be more civil around here. I have no problem looking at stuff that is presented honestly. I haven't even had the time to check on just who "kathleen hunt" is, Although a quick search turned up nothing at the university. so far.

[wallcrawlr]

Jr., its a blanket statement with no knowledge of whether it represents the majority of creo thinking (or a poster boy of it).

Do you think I represent the "...mentality and tactics of the ID/creationist crowd."?