Posted on 09/15/2005 6:36:25 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Creationism is prominent in a recent lawsuit that charges the University of California system with violating the constitutional rights of applicants from Christian schools whose high school coursework is deemed inadequate preparation for college. The complaint was filed in federal court in Los Angeles on August 25, 2005, on behalf of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California, and a handful of students at the school. Representing the plaintiffs are Robert H. Tyler, a lawyer with a new organization called Advocates for Faith and Freedom, and Wendell R. Bird of the Atlanta law firm Bird and Loechl.
Bird is no stranger to litigation over creationism. As a law student in the late 1970s, he published a student note in the Yale Law Journal sketching a strategy for using the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to secure a place for creationism in the public school science classroom. Bird later worked at the Institute for Creation Research, where he updated its model "equal-time" resolution. The ICR's resolution eventually mutated, in Paul Ellwanger's hands, to become model "equal-time" legislation. A bill based on Ellwanger's model was passed in Arkansas in 1981 and then ruled unconstitutional in McLean v. Arkansas.
Although Bird was not able to participate in the McLean trial -- he sought to intervene on behalf of a number of creationist organizations and individuals, but was not allowed to do so -- he was involved in Aguillard v. Treen, which became Edwards v. Aguillard. Named a special assistant attorney general in Louisiana, Bird defended Louisiana's "equal-time" act all the way to the Supreme Court, where in 1987 it was ruled to violate the Establishment Clause. His The Origin of Species Revisited, which compared evolution and "abrupt appearance," was subsequently published (in two volumes).
At issue in the present suit are the guidelines set by the University of California system to ensure that first-year students have been adequately prepared for college in their high schools. The complaint (1.6M PDF) cites a policy of rejecting high school biology courses that use textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books as "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community." Such a policy, the complaint alleges, infringes on the plaintiffs' rights to "freedom of speech, freedom from viewpoint discrimination, freedom of religion and association, freedom from arbitrary discretion, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from hostility toward religion."
Robert Tyler told the Los Angeles Times (August 27, 2005) that "It appears that the UC system is attempting to secularize Christian schools and prevent them from teaching from a [Christian world] view." But creationism is a matter of theology, not of science, Robert John Russell of the Center for Theology and Natural Science told the Oakland Tribune (August 31, 2005). "It's almost ludicrous anyone would even take this seriously," Russell said. "It seems absurd that a student who had poor biology would meet the same standards as a student with 'good' biology. ...This has nothing to do with First Amendment rights."
A spokesperson for the University of California system would not comment on the specific allegations leveled in the complaint, but told the Los Angeles Times that the university was entitled to set course requirements for incoming students, adding, "[t]hese requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed."
In its fall 2005 newsletter, ACSI expresses concern that the University of California system's "secular intolerance might spread to other institutions and to other states. ... If this discrimination is allowed to continue unchallenged, it is only a matter of time before secular institutions in other states will join the bandwagon." Interviewed by Education Week (September 7, 2005), however, a spokesperson for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers expressed the opposite concern, reportedly worrying "about the potential implications of asking a university to ignore its course requirements -- which had been shaped by experts in various fields -- in favor of a 'free-for-all,' in which any interest group is allowed to shape policy."
Frankly narby, yes, there is one correct interpretation.
BTW, my original post that you responded too had nothing in it regarding the "correct" interpretation but because youre unclear about it I'll help you.
Christ came to earth to sacrifice himself for your sins. God loves you and wants you to be with him in heaven.
You either choose to accept that or you dont. God gave you a free will to decide. It is what the Bible says.
This does not require a lot of biblical study.
If only actual living Christians left it at that, these threads would not exist.
I doubt it.
BTW, I havent noticed any dead ones posting lately... ;)
Like I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. But... ALL the evidence? I doubt that.
OK, let's get specific. Michael Behe (the biochemist, not the theologian) wrote, say, 10 years ago, that he fully expected the scientific literature to comprise countless articles on how organelles like flagella could have evolved over time via minute incremental steps, each step being selected as it conferred a benefit to the cell or organism, as postulated by Darwinian models. He found --- zilch. Nobody was even attempting to show how selection pressure would work to develop new structures like cellular organelles.
(I hope I'm not mis-stating his position. I'm not a biochemist and I can only write as a modestly well-read layperson.)
Since you, with your List-O-Links, have apparently specialized in the crevo polemics here --- and I'm a rank newbie --- could you steer me toward the people who do explain the accumulation of minute modifications which would refute Bhe's famous "mousetrap" argument?
I must emphasize my sincerity in this quest. If Behe is wrong, I would love to see somebody take him apart. But as of now, the insinuation that he's in "serious reality denial" looks more like insult than analysis.
We're here to help:
Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument is fatally flawed. Ichneumon's post 35.
Irreducible Complexity Demystified. Major debunking of ID.
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity," Kenneth R. Miller. Critique of Behe.
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Let's start with what should be two relatively easy "correct interpretations":
-- What's the correct interpretation of the correlation between man's acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil and the consequence of death?
-- What's the correct interpretation of the word "death" in connection therewith (e.g., complete spiritual death; a spiritual death capable of remediation; immediate physical death; delayed physical death; the death (spiritual and/or physical) of man alone; the physical death (immediate or delayed) of man-plus-certain-selected-biological-life-forms (with which life forms included and excluded?); the physical death (immediate or delayed) of man-plus-all-biological-life-forms; etc., etc.)
While we're on the subject, I would like to file my own suit demanding that the UC physics department give my theory (the Earth sucks) equal time with the orthodox Theory of Gravity.
But... but... but... the "intelligent design" people insist that they are simply offering an alternative scientific theory, and have nothing to do with any particular religious viewpoint.
Surely they couldn't have been... this is difficult, so I shall fall back on the Houyhnhms' euphemism... saying the thing which is not?
Why, next I might have to consider the possibility that the previous President of the United States was less than completely candid with the American people....
If you learned math from a textbook that says that two plus two makes five, or learned history from a textbook that says that the Holocaust was a bogus story invented by the Jews, or learned economics from a textbook that says that the government can lift people out of poverty by printing more money, then I think it's reasonable to conclude that you are simply not prepared for any sort of academically credible college.
The same is true if you learned biology from a textbood that says that evolution did not happen.
That's presuming that evolution is a fact. Those other things are facts. So far as I've heard it's still called the THEORY of Evolution.
My favorite allegation is "freedom from viewpoint discrimination," a concept without even the pretense of justification or precedent.
Wonder why they call them aptitiude tests then?
As soon as I spend a week studying exactly what your second question says...I'll get back to you.
LOL -- Any student who gets an answer marked "WRONG" could make that complaint.
Ok, start with the first question.
And the second question should be perfectly understandable to even a casual Biblical scholar. Genesis 2:17 states that God instructed Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." What is the correct interpretation the "death" referenced in that sentence?
As predicted in my original post, you're confident that your interpretation is correct, and others are wrong.
This is why I have respect for science, and none for faith. Scientists may be stubborn, and resist new ideas, making new theories work overtime to demonstrate their validity. But science does eventually have an open mind to new information, while religion does not.
Religion is stuck in the past, and science is the future.
The Christian denominations used to be open to science, and indeed science came from the Renaissance of Christian Europe. I was taught in a Southern Baptist youth camp that there were no conflicts between the Bible and science. That science was the study of Gods creation.
But the recent spread of fundamentalist Christian denominations and their descent into cult-like denial of reality is a sad departure from what I was taught as a youth. Like any cult, they have a strong hold on their congregations, because that's necessary in order to shut out conflicting realities. I'm sure it does wonders for the tithe every Sunday, but I cannot accept such irrationality.
"So did the heliocentric view of the solar system, the idea that the Earth was round, spontaneous generation, the germ theory, etc. Each of these ideas was pursued, studied, and later proved to be true yet the men behind these ideas were mocked and threatened"
Spontaneous generation was proved true? When? I hope this was a mistake on your part.
As for creationism, it used to be the prevailing wisdom; it had it's day and was found inadequate. There is no need to continually dig up the dead corpses of old theories that science and the evidence has passed by.
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