Posted on 01/19/2005 8:52:24 AM PST by FeeinTennessee
Pa. Students Learn 'Intelligent Design' By MARTHA RAFFAELE The Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. - High school students heard about "intelligent design" for the first time Tuesday in a school district that attracted national attention by requiring students to be made aware of it as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
Administrators in the Dover Area School District read a statement to three biology classes Tuesday and were expected to read it to other classes on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which was speaking on the district's behalf.
The district is believed to be the only one in the nation to require students to hear about intelligent design - a concept that holds that the universe is so complex, it had to be created by an unspecified guiding force.
"The revolution in evolution has begun," said Richard Thompson, the law center's president and chief counsel. "This is the first step in which students will be given an honest scientific evaluation of the theory of evolution and its problems."
The case represents the newest chapter in a history of evolution lawsuits dating back to the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee nearly 80 years ago. In Georgia, a suburban Atlanta school district plans to challenge a federal judge's order to remove stickers in science textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact."
The law center is defending the Dover district against a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of eight families by two civil-liberties groups that alleged intelligent design is merely a secular variation of creationism, the biblical-based view that regards God as the creator of life. They maintain that the Dover district's curriculum mandate may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
"Students who sat in the classroom were taught material which is religious in content, not scientific, and I think it's unfortunate that has occurred," said Eric Rothschild, a Philadelphia attorney representing the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.
Biology teacher Jennifer Miller said although she was able to make a smooth transition to her evolution lesson after the statement was read, some students were upset that administrators would not entertain any questions about intelligent design.
"They were told that if you have any questions, to take it home," Miller said.
The district allowed students whose parents objected to the policy to be excused from hearing the statement at the beginning of class and science teachers who opposed the requirement to be exempted from reading the statement. About 15 of 170 ninth-graders asked to be excused from class, Thompson said.
A federal judge has scheduled a trial in the lawsuit for Sept. 26.
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Dover Area School District: http://www.dover.k12.pa.us
Thomas More Law Center: http://www.thomasmore.org
January 18, 2005 6:44 PM
What are you referring to?
The first part is, not the second. The second is a scientific theory that I can fit confortably into my religious beliefs but which does not NEED my religious beliefs.
PS. I tried teaching high school children for a month and a half back when I was 22 and rest assured that I would never inflict myself on the poor kids again. ;)
Here is a whole truckload of evidence that supports evolution.
BTW, do you believe that those things up in the night sky are suns similar to ours. Why do you accept that (assuming you do) when no-one has ever been there and seen them? A literal reading of the bible would indicate that they aren't anything like our sun.
"A Bronze Age person would have thought that of my computer, so what does that mean?"
Bill Gates is God?
No. What's your point?
Ever seen one turn into a human?
Sigh. We came from apes, certainly, but not from the currently-existing apes. All of us apes (humans, gorillas, chimps etc.) evolved from a common ancestor ape, but we evolved into different types of apes.
Ever seen a half human half ape?
You mean, like Austrolopithecus?
* Or whatever the heck it is. I dunno jack about flowers - can barely tell a daffodil from a poinsettia..
The public schools shove plenty down students' throats, or haven't you noticed? Do you have children in public schools? Don't worry - vouchers are on the way, then we can all be happy.
Is there any chance that at any stage the creationists might reveal one iota of this "creation tenet supporting" solid scientific evidence to the rest of us?
This strikes me as odd too. Christianity is anything but monolithic. The result of governmentally sanctioned religious teaching seems to invite one of two results: the selection of one sect of Christianity to the exclusion of the almost countless other variations, or the watering down of Christian theology into, effectively, "have a nice day" meaninglessness.
I don't see how this can be perceived as a laudable goal. If anything, separation of church and state protects the integrity of the church even more than the integrity of government.
"This is science. This is religion. And never the twain shall meet."
I know this is out of context, but the above is true, IMHO. Religion and Science have 2 completely different, non-overlapping epistemologies. These threads prove it. Science says "prove it", religion says "I believe", which is irrational, by definition. "I believe" says you accept something without proof. Science demands proof, so as Kipling said (and you above) about East and West, "Ne'er the twain shall meet". Neither side can convince the other, because an scientist would have to prove disbelief which cannot be done, by definition. A scientist wants real, reproducible, rational proof, which cannot be produced by belief.
Two non-intersecting Euler Circles.
The Bible says that God created the earth, firmament, seas, animals and formed man out of the dust of the earth. If one embraces that method, one has embraced a religious viewpoint. If one rejects God's personal involvement in the creation of the universe and man, believes that the Genesis account is figurative language and that evolution was God's instrument, that is more than adoption of a scientific theory. It is a view of God and what He did or did not do. Hence, it is a religious viewpoint.
RE statistics - sorry to have not been clearer - of course the changes don't take place at the same time, and they would happen in parallel across an entire species, but this still doesn't explain a lot - i.e. why isn't there more variation in the outcome? With so many changes occurring during the transition from one species to another, why did so few of the billions of potential combinations work out to be new species? And can chance alone still account for the complexity seen at the micro level? It is still more parsimonious to assume that there was a guiding intelligence (God or otherwise) at work with a blueprint in mind. If I were to stumble across a watch lying on a beach, I would naturally assume something so complex were designed by an intelligent being, not that it were to have been formed on its own by chance.
For me, the bottom line is this. I don't think religion or 6 day creation (sorry, guys, but I don't buy the science of that any more than I do evolution by chance!) should be taught in public schools. But I do resent the fact that I had to be a 35 year old with a PhD in psychobiology before I knew that evolutionary theory has some big holes and that alternative theories exist. Exploring these alternatives is becoming more and more of a "hot topic" in science, and kids do not need to be sheltered from alternate theories, but encouraged to examine all of the ideas on the subject and make up their own minds. All of my science textbooks say that certain animals have similarities because they evolved from a common ancestor - as if this is a proven fact. It may be so, but it may not, and it is poor science instruction to state it as fact.
Speaking of poor instruction, I need to get back to my homeschooling duties! I'm glad people are talking about this, though!
"Teaching biology students both evolution and 'intelligent design' makes about as much sense as teaching astrophysics students to calculate planetary orbits using both a Copernican (heliocentric) model and a Ptolemaic (geocentric) model."
Or teaching students of predestination Astrology.
The Intellegent Designer is actually a Flute Playing Locust.
Way to go homeschool mom! My missus is schooling two.
Good point.
You sound a little closed-minded. Shouldn't science be open to more than one option?
That's not a Mantis?
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