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.
I originally defined this term based on the google definition, found here:
define:dogmaWhile there are other definitions, none seemed appropriate to the way scientists view things. Critics of the theory of evolution may disagree, for religious reasons, but scientists do not hold to "dogma" as that term is usually defined, i.e., as being associated with beliefs, rather than with evidence.
If you have another definition, let me know.
Please don't ping me back here.
Thank you.
You obviously have never tried to teach history to high school students. It is not the purpose of a high school course in history to train historians. It is not the purpose of a high school course in biology to train biologists. Maybe I should say that it is not the PRACTICE of school districts to train historians or biologists. Back in the '60s a high school in Ft. Worth Texas had a biologyt lab that was better than any junior college biology lab I ahd ever seen. BUT that was due to the knoiwledge and drive of a single young teacher. When the school refused to support his lab, he quit and took a job at a four-year college. Within a few years the prize-winning students he was turning out in considerable numbers became rare at that school.
Can someone tell what this has to do with Amendment I? The Cobb County School Board is NOT Congress. This nation was founded on the ideal of self governance. What right does the federal government have in dictating what the locally elected Cobb County School Board can and cannot do?
Sneaking "theism" into the curriculum? Don'thave to do that in biology class. All I had to do was to quote the Founding Fathers. I suggest you read the
Religious Liberty statute that Jefferson and Madison got passed in Virginia. It is expressed not just in theists but in Judeo-Christian terms.
It didn't ignore this at all. Nor did any part of its conclusion rest upon, or even indicate, any alleged notion that high school biology courses might be for the purpose of "training scientists".
Are you sure you actually read it?
On the contrary to your silly claim, the decision did indeed cover the concept that high school biology class is for the purposes related to the needs of the general student. For example, in sections "n" and "r" it examineed at length the defendants' claim that the "ID sticker" was for the purpose of "improving science education and encouraging students to exercise critical thinking". Nothing in these sections mentions anything like your straw man about "training scientists".
For example, beginning at page 130:
Even if it had actually done as you say and "ignored the fact that the purpose of a high school biology course is not to train scientists", what relevance would this alleged "oversight" have to the decision's conclusions, based as they were on the First Amendment and whether "ID" is actually science or not? Oh, right, nothing -- the decision wasn't based on what might or might not constitute a good biology curriculum, because that in itself is not the province of the federal courts (nor was that the basis for this decision, nor would it have been proper for it to have been the basis).Defendants Presented No Convincing Evidence that They were Motived by Any Valid Secular Purpose
Although Defendants attempt to persuade this Court that each Board member who voted for the biology curriculum change did so for the secular purposed of improving science education and to exercise critical thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the record evidence. Their asserted purposes are a sham, and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow.We initially note that the Supreme Court has instructed that while courts are “normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (citing Wallace, 472 U.S. at 64)(Powell, J., concurring); id. at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). Although as noted Defendants have consistently asserted that the ID Policy was enacted for the secular purposes of improving science education and encouraging students to exercise critical thinking skills, the Board took none of the steps that school officials would take if these stated goals had truly been their objective. The Board consulted no scientific materials. The Board contacted no scientists or scientific organizations. The Board failed to consider the views of the District’s science teachers. The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC. Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving science education is belied by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in favor of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know, nor have they ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose against this backdrop is ludicrous.
Finally, although Defendants have unceasingly attempted in vain to distance themselves from their own actions and statements, which culminated in repetitious, untruthful testimony, such a strategy constitutes additional strong evidence of improper purpose under the first prong of the Lemon test. As exhaustively detailed herein, the thought leaders on the Board made it their considered purpose to inject some form of creationism into the science classrooms, and by the dint of their personalities and persistence they were able to pull the majority of the Board along in their collective wake.
Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective. McCreary, 125 S. Ct. at 2735; accord, e.g., Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 308 (“it is . . . the duty of the courts to ‘distinguish a sham secular purpose from a sincere one.’” (citation omitted)); Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (“While the Court is normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.”). Defendants’ previously referenced flagrant and insulting falsehoods to the Court provide sufficient and compelling evidence for us to deduce that any allegedly secular purposes that have been offered in support of the ID Policy are equally insincere.
Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause.
So... what point were you trying to make again?
The Fourteenth Amendment extended the protections of the First Amendment to the actions of state and local governments as well.
"You obviously have never tried to teach history to high school students."
Obviously? (guffaw!) Actually -- I have. I have taught history and a couple of other subjects to both college students and high school students over the last few decades.
My specialty was medieval history. Your powers of perception are uncanny!
"It is not the purpose of a high school course in history to train historians. It is not the purpose of a high school course in biology to train biologists."
Didn't we just go over this? LOL! ID is not about teaching biology. It is about questioning evolution and sneaking theism into the curriculum -- according to its own adherents. Evolution is a major element of biology.
To use your own history analogy: Way back when, I studied historiography and "methods of history" while working toward a master's degree in history. We studied a lot of different approaches to history, and examples of those different approaches throughout history -- from Herodotus to modern historians.
Funny thing, though -- we never got around to studying how to give equal time to all the cranks and cuckoos out there who wanted to come in and "teach the controversy" and do nothing but question everything about mainstream history because of their belief in a vast, galaxy-wide conspiracy to cover up our real history. Von Daniken couldn't get a foot in the door at all! Go figure!
In the same way -- general biology covers general biology -- an ID is not biology. It is philosophy and religious apologetics in disguise. Sorry if you don't like that -- but there it is. And to cover general biology without spending at least some time on evolution is nonsensical.
"Back in the '60s a high school in Ft. Worth Texas had a biologyt lab that was better than any junior college biology lab I ahd ever seen."
Hey -- I went to high school in Ft. Worth in the 60s. Go figure. What high school did you attend? What years?
"Sneaking 'theism' into the curriculum? Don'thave to do that in biology class. All I had to do was to quote the Founding Fathers. I suggest you read the Religious Liberty statute that Jefferson and Madison got passed in Virginia. It is expressed not just in theists but in Judeo-Christian terms."
As you are certainly aware, we are talking about the science curriculum, not history or political science. Good luck with using Jefferson to teach theism! LOL!
The First Amendment protects us solely from Congress. Amendment XIV does not place the same restrictions on local governments. It only states that equal protection exists, i.e. everyone has the same protection from an act of Congress as described in Amendment I.
Amendment I differs from the other amendments in that it does not state rights of the people - it merely places a restriction on Congress. However, the rights of the people are indeed expanded by Amendment XIV as described in the remainder of the Bill of Rights.
What?
I consider myself an "evolutionist" as I studied quite a lot of evolution, osteology, paleontology, etc., in grad school. But I don't do "metaphysics" and I don't know what a "metaphysical given" is. I simply don't do that kind of stuff, as I have yet to have it explained to me that it means anything.
As far as evolution being "impervious to the possibility of falsification" -- you perhaps should study a little more of the evolutionary sciences (or any sciences) and a little less of this "metaphysics" stuff.
Just what do you think a scientific theory is, anyway?
Do not carry disputes from thread to thread.
There are a few counterexamples: Mendel, Teilhard de Chardin (Piltdown man, Peking man), LeMaitre (expanding universe).
I think it's safe to say that theological "insight" or "reasoning" has contributed nothing.
This is a keeper.
The anti-evolution crowd is clearly motivated by concerns that have nothing to do with evidence, but somehow related in their minds to "morality". By which they mean sex. They do not intend dishonesty to be one of their "moral concerns" since the creationists, Noah's Flood apologists practice this all the time. No, it is something about sex that keeps bothering them.
Or maybe it is the materialistic methodology, naturalist, nazi, communist, atheist, racist, feminist plot to fluoridate the water supply. Sometimes it is hard to know which kinky notion motivates the poster.
Beautiful! Notice the two comments, made by the same person, in the same argument:
Among the gems of nonsense in your post, I particularly like the juxtaposition of these two statements:
"Maybe you can point out what "need" ( You must be a teacher to appreciate how intellectually that term is in the context of a public school education; it trasnlates into "feelings") what "need" is served by teaching evolution to high school students."
"As for the board, I think they were wrong to assert anything except that they were trying to accommodate the feelings of those of their religiously minded clients and that no student suffered harm from being told that Evolution is a useful theory but that it does not disprove the religious views of anyone."
So -- "need" translates to "feelings." And there is no "need" to teach evolution to high school biology students. But there is a "need" to include ID because of the "feelings" of some students.
You must spend a lot of time dealing with dizziness brought on by your self-contradictions.
Science? Faith? That's two by my count.
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