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.
BTW as interesting as this discussion has been and I'd like to continue. Let's get together in the New Year and Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Best Regards
Beaver Fever.
I am just curious to see if he can cite even one. A creationist made the claim that there were 500, and has been roundly ridiculed for repeatedly failing to provide even one. Cringing Cur has at implied that he has evidence of some (though I note that he was careful not to say how many), so I've answered his questions. Either he provides some now and retains a shred of credibility, or he fails to and joins Dimensio's "proven liars" list.
I'm really curious at this point of your background in Philosophy.
I avoid it whenever I can do so honorably.
I have to admit this is the most detailed conversation I've had on this topic on FR.
Hang around.
Please send me a more detailed post of your objections. It is very interesting.
This will probably be a good deal more than you asked for: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39be7d424241.htm
Merry Christmas to you and yours, and to all FReepers everywhere...
persevere, it is a long thread & eventually severely about Godel.
I think your analysis is right on target.
You are living somewhere in a dream world if you think science isn't poking its nose into questions of life. What about embryonic stem cell research? Science is delving into what is not its territory. Creating life is God's territory.
Well, since the digs and asides aimed at religious establishment begin with paper #1, I suspect you aren't falling all over yourself in your headlong search. Here's a ref:
...
December 8, 1787
The Federalist Papers
Federalist # 19
The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
So far as the peculiarity of their case will admit of comparison with that of the United States, it serves to confirm the principle intended to be established. Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up, capable of trying its strength, it failed. The controversies on the subject of RELIGION, which in three instances have kindled violent and bloody contests, may be said, in fact, to have severed the league. The Protestant and Catholic cantons have since had their separate diets, where all the most important concerns are adjusted, and which have left the general diet little other business than to take care of the common bailages.
That separation had another consequence, which merits attention. It produced opposite alliances with foreign powers: of Berne, at the head of the Protestant association, with the United Provinces; and of Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic association, with France.
Publius
...
The federalist has about a dozen of such references indicative of the paranoia many of the founding fathers harbored for the poisonous combination of religion and state interests whose european cavalcade of horrors was far fresher in their minds than it is in ours.
Well, of course it is, but I was asked about Darwinian evolutionary theory, which is not predicated on such research. Such research is generally referred to as abiogensis, not Darwinian evolutionary theory, and Darwinian Evolutionary theory is not predicated on such research.
What about embryonic stem cell research?
Stem cell research is not predicated on abiogenetic research either.
Science is delving into what is not its territory. Creating life is God's territory
The church used to say similar things about compass needles, ameliorating the pain of surgery or childbirth, women owning property and anti-slavery movements. I think I'll consult other sources that have a history of displaying higher moral standards.
Their fear was not that references to religion would be made in public education - a system which had not yet been unconstitutionally foisted upon the public -- but in regard to the establishment of a specific denomination or church body as the official religious body of the United States.
The Dover school boards actions are so far removed from what Hamilton and Madison were discussing as the distance between galaxys.
Your interpretation of the "separation of church and state" would ultimately prohibit anyone who believed in God from holding public office or even voting.
Let us take the conversation from there.
I wouldn't know where to take it, since I'm a Popperian, and persist in my old-fashioned desire to construct arguments as sentences connected together in paragraph format, as if they were coherently connected thoughts, which I stubbornly persist in thinking mean something.
Balderdash. I was asked about arguments pertaining to separation of church and state, and lo, there they are. Whether that applies to public school curriculum, I recommend you take up with the implementers of the post-civil war amendments, and the taxing authorities who tap our wallets to pay for public education.
...and, at any rate, so what? Even if science does come up with a pursuasive naturalistic explanation for life's origins, that still doesn't make science and God duking it out for the prize. A naturalistic explanation does not rule out God as the ultimate cause of it.
This rather strikes me as a hard sell, since the constitution authorizes a rather broad mandate for securing the orderly business of the people, in and around the Commerce Clause.
Where is the specific constitutional authority for the Federal Goverment to in any way get involved in the public school education of our children or to tax me to pay for it?
Which Article or Clause? The Commerce Clause? Are you kidding?
Again you are attaching as broad a reading of the Commerce Clause as you have on the Establishment Clause. Using your interpretation of the commerce clause anything that ends up in any way "affecting" commerce can be legitimately regulated.
Perhaps you have a Federalist Paper that suggested that this kind of broad mandate to the Federal Goverment was intended by the founders?
... nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution. [Federalist #1]But there's a lot more in Federalist #10:
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.
-[snip]-
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.
-[snip]-
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.
-[snip]-
A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. [Federalist #10]
And that my friend is a clear statement of the original intent of the first amendment! To ensure (through the free exercise of religion) that there are sufficient sects scattered about the country so as to ensure that we do not end up with a national religion like they had in Europe.
The Federalist papers cannot be used to justify the decision in this case. No national religion was formed and no powerful religious sect was created by the Dover School Board. They simply proclaimed a policy aimed at appeasing the fundamentalist students who believe that Darwinianism is in dire conflict with their religious beliefs. At its worst, the policy was an accomodation of religion. Clearly there was no establishment of religion or even an attempt to establish a religion as mentioned in the Federalist paper quoted here.
Thanks for posting that and clearing this up.
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