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.
Of course not. Check with Professor Milecki.
Of course not.
Then you have no argument with the original assertion I made. So what's the point?
Only that it is improper for the government to prefer one religion (or sect thereof) over another.
Pretty accurate description of the current state of jurisprudence which is neutrality.
Hey, I already told you I am up to my neck in interlocutors on these threads Counselor. Go back to busting chops on the Ninth Circuit thread. LOL
I'm off to the firm Xmas party. You now have a Torie free zone for the evening. Cheers.
I'm out as well, Grandkids are spending the night and have just pulled up. Adios, enjoy the party!
In and of itself, no. When you insist on posting it in a high school science book, along with recommending a barely warmed over creationist text which a local church paid for, and than lying in court about it---yes, it is unconstitutional, it violates the 1st and 14th amendments. And intention does matter here: If the intention was to make an honest, if mistaken attempt to improve science teaching, it is merely flagrant incompetence. If, as turned out to be the case as a matter of judicial record, your intention was to divert students into reading an overtly creationist text, and you made that painfully obvious by committing perjury to hide the fact, then you are trying to divert public resources in support of a specific religeous creed. You violated the constitution, and committed perjury about it. It may well produce a ride in jail for the miscreants, intention is that important.
Don't tempt me to ribald puns, it's Christmas :-)
The "facts" that I reference are what lead to the conclusion of evolution. There's the "FACT" of a broken Vitamin C identical in multiple species of primates, suggesting that the gene became "broken" in a common ancestor that split off into the various primate species that carry the gene (including homo sapiens); for contrast, guinea pigs also have a broken vitamin C synthesis gene that is completely different than the one found in primates.
Actually the fact that humans, primates and a few other animals have broken Vitamin C mechanism is itself a proof of evolution. In mammals that produce their own Vitamin C; the Vitamin C molecule is formed from the glucose molecule; four enzymes are required to do the conversion, humans and apes have the first three, having lost the fourth in our evolutionary past.
If God the Intelligent Designer decided that humans and a few other animals did not need to produce their own Vitamin C, why put in the first three enzymes...which do us no good? How do CreationistsIntelligent Design Theorists explain that?
The evolutionary explanation is that prehuman ancestors had the complete ability to produce Vitamin C but with a fruit and leafy diet rich in Vitamin C, a mutation that lost them the ability to produce their own Vitamin C did not pose a reproductive disadvantage to its possessors, (and may have given an advantage).
However, when humans migrated out of Africa to colder climes this lack has caused hardship to humans as they had to adopt a Vitamin C poor diet. If Mankind is God's the Intelligent Desigener's special creation; why didn't He It foresee that we would need that fourth enzyme, and conserve it for us?
The Court has been trying for the past 20 years to move lower courts away from establishment clause interpretations relying on the wall metaphor. Only Stevens remains as an adamant defender of the phrase. I expect Kennedy and Alito will continue the moves against the wall.
I personally hope that the Court will move more decisively toward an emphasis on the free exercise clause rather than the establishment clause. The free exercise clause has been virtually destroyed by establishment lines of reasoning. Any mention of religion is found to be an establishment.
The Dover fishing expedition was but another example of pulling the Christian rabbit out of the hat from Behe's testimony. This should really stop. Plaintiff's should have to show that free exercise has been impeded not that some relation to religion or religious motive can be demonstrated. This would restore the first amendment religion clauses to a closer original reading than the horrendous situation we have now in this area.
I see. I guess the kid who downloads an mp3 file without realizing it's illegal is just as quilty as the guy whose been repackaging and reselling mp3 files for years. I guess the grandmother who tries to landscape what used to be her new backyard before it became a wildlife preserve, is just as guilty as the corporate polluter whose been backhoeing the same site for years.
If it's a slippery slope in civil law, it's a slippery slope in tort law. Apparently, some of think that has to be lived with, because intention is important in assessing guilt, and many people, myself included, would consider it somewhere between morally derelict, and monsterous for the law to ignore that.
Wow! Couldn't agree with you more on that! There has been so much that has changed in science over the years since I was in high school and early college years. I've even been sharply rebuked on these threads when I made reference to something that I had learned in science class that has changed. Others have had the same thing happen to them and mentioned it. The point I ended up making is that sometimes when someone makes a statement that is no longer considered "true", it could be that they are just acting on old information and not trying to lie, deceive someone, or spread *creationist myths*. Some of what is now considered *creationist myths* used to be taught as science in science classes at one time. It's virtually impossible to keep up with the current rate of change in scientific fields. Even if one has a PhD in a field, that doesn't mean he's competent in others. I had a Physics prof who considered organic chemistry "to be just about black magic". He just didn't get it and he was no slouch teacher.
You have the very good habit of sticking to the point, I see ...and couch potatoes need to learn about midget mud wrestling...
Yep. Me and my husband.
I had to quite mathematics and move into philosophy because there was a genius in my linear algebra class.
His father was an engineer and sent him to mathematics camp every year.
His exam scores brought everyone elses down and he wasn't required to attend lectures. (I only saw him once in two semesters).
Found out later that he was bored with mathematics and moved to the theater department. Go figure.
How about this? "One-Statement-Every-Four-Years-Christian-Church".
Evolution is taught in Biology, which is typically taught in one year of high school.
We will find out what the appeals court thinks when the Eleventh Circuit rules on the trial judges holding in the Cobb County case. If I were you, I wouldn't bet the house that they put much weight on the religious motivations of the authors. They will examine the action and the text and decide that the trial judge was out to lunch. That's a prediction you can hold me to account for if you'd like.
Dover will never reach SCOTUS which is why Judge Jones saw fit to wax poetically about things he is unqualified to wax about. He would have been overturned for imitating a peer review board without a license.
Cobb County is where the action is at. the ACLU will pursue it to SCOTUS after the 11th Circuit overrules the trial judge, perhaps even with prejudice.
With Alito on board, they may have enough votes to grant cert for the sole purpose of writing some religious clause jurisprudence that doesn't resemble Timothy Leary on a bad day.
Dover will never reach SCOTUS which is why Judge Jones saw fit to wax poetically about things he is unqualified to wax about. He would have been overturned for imitating a peer review board without a license.
Cobb County is where the action is at. the ACLU will pursue it to SCOTUS after the 11th Circuit overrules the trial judge, perhaps even with prejudice.
With Alito on board, they may have enough votes to grant cert for the sole purpose of writing some religious clause jurisprudence that doesn't resemble Timothy Leary on a bad day.
This thread addresses the "seperation of church and state" issue.
"Judge: ACLU not 'reasonable Court whacks civil-liberties group, OKs Ten Commandments display"
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1544226/posts
I don't care enough to hold you "accountable". Regardless of which way the wind blows the courts these days, it was fraudulant in a general sense to claim that ID is anything remotely resembling a viable science on the order of the theory of gravity or the theory of evolution, and fraudulent in a specific legal sense to commit perjury to hide the fact that the church was paying for the alternative text that was being touted. They didn't have a problem lying for God, they didn't have a problem stealing class time in compulsory public schools to discuss issues scientists don't particularly regard as science--on account of their hidden [in the end, not very well] religious agenda, and that was morally reprehensible on both counts, and if the supremes recind their judicial spankings, that will be morally wrong, no matter how much you manage to micro-parse criminal vs. civil harm, or free expression vs. establishment.
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