Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
[WHACK!] Another mole done gone... (or not) ;-)
What's truly illustrated here is the duplicity of the standards set in place by the religious community. No "evolutionist" has ever demanded that evolution be taught in a parochial school as an alternative to Creation.
You will no allow secularity into your religious cosmos, but demand that the secular cosmos accept your religious teachings.
I want a wall of separation between religion and government for the same reason that Jefferson thought it a good idea; because politicians will try to be elected based on beliefs that they don't hold true, but know that gets them votes, and ministers will preach politics from the pulpit and try to govern as unelected public servants.
"our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own"
Why on Earth would you want a secular school teacher teaching religious concepts to children?
By the way...the Federal Courts did not inject themselves onto the fray, they were brought into it by the people.
It was the voters who took the decision to Court, and it was the voters who booted the school board out in disgust.
Works for me.
It's my understanding that Freudianism isn't scientific for one of the same reasons that ID isn't: it's not falsifiable:
Everything is either concave or covex
So anything we dream about has something to do with sex
Marxism, on the other hand actually made predictions, and has been falsified (eg, the American proletariat is hardly at slave-like levels of misery)
In both cases, there are still believers, but their number is shrinking, and there are no generally-accepted empirical data points supporting Freud or Marx.
The ToE is flourishing. Just in the last 20 years there have been major fossil finds (eg, feathered dinos, the sequence leading to whales), and also major genetic work (eg sequencing the human, chimp and dog genomes). None of this work, which could have damaged or even falsified the ToE, has done so. The results were, AFAIK always, in line with predictions of the theory.
I have to admit, I wasn't aware the Darwin wrote extensively about genomes, what with modern genetics not having been developed yet...
I don't know exactly what he said on the subject, but the basic idea is an immediate consequence of his theory, and is independent of the actual mechanism of inheritence: namely, that the genetic details should track the family tree of related animals or plants. This is now considered strong evidence in favor of common descent.
Perhaps you were referring to Darwin's predictions of the gazillions of intermediate fossils that would be discovered in the future. Doh!
No, I said genetic evidence, but ol' Charlie was (Doh! indeed) right again. There really were very few fossils known in his time - remember that archeopteryx wasn't found until a few years after "Origin" was published. We now have smooth amphibian-reptile-mammal sequences, the hoofed animal-whale sequence, lots of human ancestors, and, what would especially have pleased Darwin, Precambrian fossils.
Speaking of predictions, do you want to conduct a study together of how many times evolutionists have been surprised by a new discovery which did match what they were predicting and forced them to go back and come up with a revised dogma?
"dogma"? be more precise. AFAIK, the only real change (an addition) to Darwin's *theory* was the inclusion of neutral genetic drift. Gradualism vs. punk-eek is in "Origin". Modern genetic theory has made the mechanism of mutation and inheritence more precise, but didn't actually change the theory.
What has changed with the data is the phylogenetic tree. Eg, was archeopteryx an ancestor or an uncle of modern birds? Are molluscs more closely related to annelid worms or to arthropods or to what? and so forth. None of the changes to the tree have been major - eg when Archy was the only know intermediate between dinos and birds, it was placed in the direct line of descent; when older bird fossils were found, it was assumed to be a surviving ancestral species; now with the modern Chinese discoveries, it's position in the dino-bird subtree is more accurately known.
Note that at no time was anything other than one type of dino and the birds affected; no adjustment to the mammal tree, for example.
It's precisely what one would expect as more data is found - fossils are classified, put in the tree, and the tree may have to be readjusted a bit.
Good post.
However, one fine detail here.
The Court agreed with the people who were most impacted by the school board's decision, which translates into the Court backing the decision of the people of Dover, who after all, booted the school board out of office as a show of disgust over the decision to mandate the teaching of id in a public school room.
"...who after all, booted the school board out of office as a show of disgust over the decision to mandate the teaching of id inatheir public school rooms."
It would be interesting to know the number of people from the Dover school district posting negative comments about the decision in FR.
entropic placemarker
Can it not be said that a teacher in a government-funded school holds the public trust?
But you missed my first post on the matter. If a teacher or student brings up the point that Darwin proves there is no God then a student has a right to bring up ID as a matter of opinion to fight back. Since a teacher or student bringing up an opinion that Darwin proves God doesn't exist is exactly that. An opinion.
If a teacher or student brings up the point that Darwin proves there is no God ...
I've seen Dawkins accused, inaccurately, of saying this. But what is it doing in a science class; it's a theological question, not a scientific one.
a right to bring up ID as a matter of opinion to fight back.
Huh? Why wouldn't showing that the ToE is silent about theology suffice? ID adds nothing to the discussion.
And anyway, the case at hand wasn't anything like the scenario (aka a straw man) you're discussing; Dover was trying to require the teachers to lie to children by saying that ID is scientific, when, as the judge found, it isn't.
It's not so hard to figure out. How many times did YOUR mom tell you not to look at it?
Quite the opposite in fact, the church was paying for the "textbooks". But the defense lied about this under oath.
Wow... very educational stuff. You obviously have a serious education behind and a bright future ahead. No wonder evolutionary science is done so rigorously. With this type of rigorous intellectual approach, how could you go wrong...
Like Dimensio, I wait for you also, to apologize for repeating the lie that Darwin rejected evolution...
No. I have agreed that science studies the natural universe. I have disagreed with you that science must assume that everything in the physical universe can be explained through Naturalistic means. That is an assumption, and that is a philosophical axiom, not a scientifically derived conclusion. I have said quite clearly that you can study only the natural parts of the physical universe whilst not assuming that every single part of it must have a naturalistic explanation. This isn't rocket science.
Are you honestly suggesting that these scientists are claiming that such events are supernatural?
Can you read? How many different ways do I have to say this? I quite clearly didn't say that. Go back and read.
So how, exactly, would a scientist go about applying the scientific method to the supernatural. Be specific.
Once again, you're simply not reading what I've written. You seem to come at the world so full of your presuppositions that even when reading something in front of you, you can't just analyze the facts in black and white but have to force them through the prism of your presuppositional filter. Just like you do with your "science". Your behaviour in this thread is a very good data point to the argument I have made.
If you can get someone to help you understand the sentences I have written, go ahead and ask them.
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