Posted on 05/25/2006 2:59:09 PM PDT by dukeman
ADF filed friend-of-the-court brief in defense of textbook stickers which accurately stated that evolution is a theory
ATLANTA — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit today vacated a lower court decision that declared Cobb County science textbook stickers which stated “evolution is a theory, not a fact” unconstitutional. The court was critical of the district court for issuing its ruling against the stickers despite holes in the evidentiary record in the case and remanded the case back to the district court for new proceedings.
“No school should be in trouble for simply stating the facts. That’s what schools are supposed to do. Though we wish the appeals court would have ruled on the constitutional merits of the case without sending it back to the district court, we are pleased that the district court’s ruling against the school district has been vacated,” said Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster.
In its ruling today, the 11th Circuit wrote, “The problems presented by a record containing significant evidentiary gaps are compounded because at least some key findings of the district court are not supported by the evidence that is contained in the record.” The full text of the court’s ruling in the case Selman v. Cobb County School District can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/CobbCountyDecision.pdf.
The lower court judge agreed that the stickers were not applied to the textbooks for a religious purpose and were devoid of religious content. Nonetheless, he deemed the stickers a violation of the so-called “separation of church and state” for the sole reason that many people were aware that Christians supported the stickers.
According to the friend-of-the-court brief ADF attorneys filed in the case, “The District Court’s analysis will lead to absurd results…. The Establishment Clause was never meant to prohibit the passage of a secular law, for a secular purpose, simply because Christians actively lobbied for the law” (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3404).
The sticker which had been applied to each textbook read, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
Yep...late 60's. And I'm certain.
Were they wrong?
If you could do science from a philosophical logical standpoint, we would have stopped with Aristotle. Science is in the details of the world. One detail is that there is conservation of bases that make no difference to the phenotype.
And of course it's false to say you can't deduce common ancestry from similarity. Lets say you have two families of kids playing together on a playground. Three kids are black-skinned, three are white skinned. If you were forced to bet, how would you bet on which kids share the same parents?
<< The earth was only 4 Billion years old then. Now it's like 4.6 billion years old. >>
The earth is the age it is. Our measurements are getting better and better. Same with the speed of light, the distance to stars, the circumference of the earth, etc. It is a strength of science, not a weakness, and it is a huge benefit to the world, that science continues to improve its methods and its conclusions, instead of standing pat immovable pronouncements.
Stan Lee did the writing. Jack Kirby did the drawing.
placemarker
I doubt if they presented this conjecture as anything more than a conjecture.
Science generally starts with conjectures. Heliocentrism was a conjecture by Galileo and Copernicus. They didn't have the shape of the orbits right, and they had not theory as to why things orbit. It sometimes takes centuries to move from conjecture to theory.
Conjectures about biogenesis are science, even if specific conjectures are wrong. They are science because they lead to observation and experimentation. Eventually, scientific conjectures get refines to the point where they yield positive results.
This methodology differs from apologetics, which starts by assigning attributes to God and then deriving outcomes.
Say it ain't so!
Conjecture or no, it was presented as a package deal. Others my age will agree with me. (And after all, I did have a good enough memory to graduate.:>)
Given this change in the theory, what's wrong with the sticker in the textbook is the way I'm seeing it.
I lived with the changes in the theory that make the sticker's message a TRUISM.
SINCE some of their FACTS CHANGED: "evolution is a theory, not a fact”
MG: I cannot answer that one, since I am looking at the logic of common descent from a philosophical/logical standpoint, irrespective of the details [emphasis added]
MG, what's your take on one of the more famous of those trifling little details, the genetic defect shared by all the great apes (people, chimps, gorillas, et al), but found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, that prevents the synthesis of ascorbic acid (vitamin C)?
How do we know it's a defect? Add one base pair to the gene, we'd never get scurvy. Add the same base pair to the same place in their respective genomes, neither would chimps, et al.
Maybe it's an artifact of the "fall"; found this on another website:
This even explains why humans and chimps have their GLO genes "broken" in the same spot - Bonzo was standing next to Eve when the Big Guy zapped hers.
"Ya like fruit, huh? By Me, I'll fix your sorry butt so you'll get scurvy if you don't eat it every week!
..... Uh, sorry for the collateral damage there, Mr Ape...."
If you want to argue the age of the earth, please find a crevo thread or argue with someone else.
Thank you.
xzins, I do believe he thought I was serious. :-)
We could rephrase the theory: "Over the years, evolution theory has had changing facts."
ROFLMAO!
Now it all makes sense!
No, I don't agree with you.
xzins, my friend. They are attempting to steer us away from the topic at hand. Let us keep on topic. This is a legal thread. At least for us.
"What would falsify the theory that whales evolved from land mammals?"
"finding a Cambrian fossil whale."
Cha-ching!
Wherever you "learned" this non-fact, you need to go back and demand a refund. They've filled your head with falsehoods. Evolution has been tested literally hundreds of thousands of times over (and passed with flying colors).
Try reading a science journal for once instead of those creationist tracts.
All right then, that settles it!
Isn't Dembski's definition accepted by the practioners: "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory,"
"And last -- why didn't you answer my questions? Notice that I did answer yours. I am sure it was just an oversight. Here ya go: What could falsify creationism? Or ID? I have never been able to get a creationist to answer this question. I wonder why?"
"The reason I did not answer is that I do not feel qualified. Since I am not a creationist or ID person, I do not know enough about either."
I don't believe you. I have read your posts. And it raises the question: What qualifies you to challenge evolution on so many points?
The fact is -- you don't need to know that much about creationism or ID to answer my questions. Falsification is a basic element of a scientific theory. If either creationism or ID were scientific, it would be easy to determine what would falsify them.
And once again -- I get a non-answer to my questions. Batting average for the anti-evolutionary crowd on this issue = .000.
Anyone else? Step up to the plate. This is a slow lob of a pitch. What could falsify creationism? What could falsify ID? Like I said -- I really want to know.
Please -- show me the science.
Yes. Modern taxonomy (at least since about 1900) has grouped living things by ancestry. Genetic markers are more directly inherited than morphology.
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