Posted on 01/14/2005 1:52:17 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
A federal judge ordered the immediate removal of evolution disclaimers from Cobb County textbooks Thursday because they convey an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said the stickers, which call evolution "a theory, not a fact," violate both the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.
Affixed to textbooks in 2002, the disclaimers send "a message that the school board agrees with the beliefs of Christian fundamentalists and creationists," Cooper said.
The stickers might be small in size compared with the numerous pages of material on evolution in Cobb textbooks, he said, but "the message has an overwhelming presence."
Cobb school board Chairwoman Kathie Johnstone said the board would have no official comment until it could meet to review the ruling and talk with its attorneys.
The school district issued a statement saying it was "disappointed. . . . and maintains the textbook stickers are a reasonable and evenhanded guide to science instruction and encouraging students to be critical thinkers."
Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has retreated from a stance supporting strict separation of church and state in public schools and has become more deferential to state and local governments, said John Witte, director of the Law and Religion Center at Emory Law School. This has encouraged some school boards, particularly in the South, to reintroduce religion into public schools in more direct ways, such as allowing prayers before graduation ceremonies and athletic events, and in indirect ways, such as with the evolution disclaimers, he said.
Yet Witte said he was not surprised by Cooper's ruling.
The Supreme Court "has said repeatedly that creationism cannot be required and evolution cannot be prohibited in public school teaching," Witte said. "This case takes the next step in saying that evolution cannot be deprecated either — especially for the sake of protecting the religious sensibilities of those who don't believe in evolution."
30 days to appeal
One issue that must be resolved soon is what to do about the disclaimers on tens of thousands of textbooks. If they are not removed, the school board will be in violation of Cooper's court order. School board attorney Linwood Gunn said removal of the disclaimers in the next few days appears unlikely.
The board has 30 days to decide whether to appeal Cooper's decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Curt Johnston, a school board member who was chairman when the board voted unanimously to approve the disclaimers, said he was concerned about the costs of litigating the case further. "I'm not inclined to challenge it . . . having lost it once," he said.
The Cobb disclaimer case, watched by school boards across the nation, is only the latest challenge to determine what can be made part of a school's curriculum concerning the origin of the species without running afoul of the Constitution.
Nick Matzke, spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for evolution instruction, called the judge's decision "a tremendous victory for science, and it's a big defeat for the new creationist strategy."
If the court had allowed the disclaimers to stay, he said, "we would have seen it pop up all over the country. All of the creationist groups have been watching this case. The whole challenge for creationists for the last 30 years has been to try something that will pass constitutional muster."
The lawsuit challenging the disclaimers was brought by six parents who contended the stickers violate the principle of the separation of church and state.
Jeffrey Selman, the lead plaintiff in the case, was thrilled by Cooper's ruling. "I got what I wanted," he said.
His attorney, Michael Manely, who brought the case with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he would press for removal of the disclaimers as soon as possible. "It would be quite a ceremony if children were actually sitting in a classroom pulling these off," he said.
The disclaimers 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."
The stickers stem from a drive begun in 2002 by Marjorie Rogers, a creationist who collected 2,300 signatures on a petition that prompted the school board to stick the disclaimers on the inside front covers of 13 science books used in middle and high schools.
Cobb school board member Lindsey Tippins said that by not recognizing "the nature of the controversy" about evolution, the judge had "erred" in his ruling.
But Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the 56,000-member National Science Teachers Association, said Cooper got it right. "It's great news for the kids in Georgia," he said. "It's a strong signal that religion doesn't belong in the science classroom."
Georgia State University constitutional law professor Lynn Hogue said, "Anti-evolutionists can take their case to the pulpit, but they have no business making it in public school classrooms through stickers in textbooks paid for by taxpayer dollars."
Closely watched case
Cooper, appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, acknowledged there was no evidence before him that showed Cobb's school board included the statement "evolution is a theory, not a fact" to promote or advance religion.
Nonetheless, he wrote, "By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories."
In light of the historical opposition to evolution "by Christian fundamentalists and creationists in Cobb County and throughout the nation, the informed, reasonable observer would infer the school board's problem with evolution to be that evolution does not acknowledge a creator," Cooper wrote. By adopting the language it did, "the Cobb County school board appears to have sided with . . . religiously motivated individuals."
Edward Larson, law and history professor at the University of Georgia, said the ruling is significant because it discourages other school districts from moving down the same path.
Cooper made particular note of what his decision did not address. It does not, he wrote, resolve whether science and religion are mutually exclusive and he took "no position on the origin of the species."
The judge also said his decision is not about whether public schools can teach the notion of intelligent design and it does not resolve the "ongoing debate regarding whether evolution is a fact or theory or whether evolution should be taught as fact or theory."
Instead, Cooper said, "this opinion resolves only a legal dispute."
Please briefly remind me of the 'scientific' theory of how inert molecules came to organize, reproduce and overcome equilibrium?
You'll note the Judge and the ACLU found the loophole.
This prohibits Congress from making such laws, obviously not Judges!
If the Founding Fathers were around today, they would be reaching for the buckets of boiling hot tar and feather ticking even as we speak.
As I'm sure you are aware, "theory" means in science "a possible explanation supported by logic and empirical evidence". I will give that evolution is quite logical. I don't see a lot of evidence for it, I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to the "irreducible complexity" problem, but evolutionary theory is quite logical and does make a lot of sense on a surface level.
What is not true is the statement that most textbooks state clearly (or even at all in some cases) what a theory is. Evolution is often presented as incontrovertible fact, when the truth is really, science can prove nothing beyond a shadow of a doubt. It can disprove things incontrovertibly, but nothing can be 100% proven. This is just part of how science works, but the fact seems to be missing from most middle school texts.
Judge Cooper just stomped on the school board's First Ammendment gurarantee of freedom of speech.
Theory: A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis.
In general, both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.
The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law governs a single action, whereas a theory explains a whole series of related phenomena.
An analogy can be made using a slingshot and an automobile.
A scientific law is like a slingshot. A slingshot has but one moving part--the rubber band. If you put a rock in it and draw it back, the rock will fly out at a predictable speed, depending upon the distance the band is drawn back.
An automobile has many moving parts, all working in unison to perform the chore of transporting someone from one point to another point. An automobile is a complex piece of machinery. Sometimes, improvements are made to one or more component parts. A new set of spark plugs that are composed of a better alloy that can withstand heat better, for example, might replace the existing set. But the function of the automobile as a whole remains unchanged.
A theory is like the automobile. Components of it can be changed or improved upon, without changing the overall truth of the theory as a whole.
Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced.
A theory is a supported explanation. Atomic theory is a good example. It is supported by a good many observations that have been made as microscopes get better and better, but, to date, it has yet to be proven. It is a good explanation based on inductive reasoning, which I honestly don't have a lot of doubt in.
Evolutionary theory has some evidence to back it up. It is logical, as I said. However, I find the questions it doesn't answer far too compelling to give up my disbelief of it.
I am also disappointed that ensuring that people understand what a theory is is suddenly a bad thing. Many middle and high school texts do not cover this. They need to. Everyone should understand the definitions of a theory, a law, and a hypothesis. Everyone should be taught that science operates by falsifying ideas, and not proving them. Everyone should be taught that only what is observable can be known to be fact. None of this is religion. It's just a good way to keep one's mind open to possibilities of anything.
I saw a pro-drug thread that where the author used this same argument against STATE laws prohibiting marijuana as being unconstitutional.
It is darkly amusing and deeply ironic to see supposedly rational atheists and materialist scientists consumed with irrational panic and fear over a simple plea for students to keep an open mind.
I took tha tdefinition right off a scientific web page. It's not my explanation. Interesting that you would dispute even the definition of scientific law and theory.
ID makes no statement about who the intelligent agent might be.
Well since you're an open minded Christian let me know when you'd like me to come to your church and deliver a scientific explanation for evolution.
You're not satified with having a state-enforced monopoly over "proper thoughts" in the public schools?
I took the definitions I'm using right out of my college science course at a liberal university. They're not my explanations, either.
I knew that would be your answer.
I say we let the disclaimer stand and that you be allowed to add your own disclamer to the effect, "Creationism is junk science."
Why do you fear competition in the marketplace of ideas? Are you concerned that your theory is not up to the challenge?
I agree. Ideas should be tested in the marketplace. Like I said, I'll be happy to come to your church anytime and deliver a scientific lecture on evolution.
You're free to come to any scripture study group that I attend. You wouldn't do it, or if you did, you wouldn't be back a second time. You couldn't compete. It would be too deeply unsettling to your faith.
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