Posted on 09/28/2005 4:11:22 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A former physics teacher testified that his rural school board ignored faculty protests before deciding to introduce the theory of "intelligent design" to high school students.
"I saw a district in which teachers were not respected for their professional expertise," Bryan Rehm, a former teacher at Dover High School, said Tuesday.
Rehm, who now teaches in another district, is a plaintiff in the nation's first trial over whether public schools can teach "intelligent design."
Eight Dover families are trying to have the controversial theory removed from the curriculum, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. They say it effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation.
Proponents of intelligent design argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, and that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.
Aralene "Barrie" Callahan, a former member of the Dover school board and another plaintiff in the case, said that at least two board members made statements during meetings that made her believe the new policy was religiously based.
At a retreat in March 2003, a board member "expressed he did not believe in evolution and if evolution was part of the biology curriculum, creationism had to be shared 50-50," Callahan testified.
At a school board meeting in June 2004, when she was no longer on the board, Callahan recalled another board member complaining that a biology book recommended by the administration was "laced with Darwinism."
"They were pretty much downplaying evolution as something that was credible," she said.
In October 2004, the board voted 6-3 to require teachers to read a brief statement about intelligent design to students before classes on evolution. The statement says Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
In a separate development Tuesday, two freelance newspaper reporters who covered the school board in June 2004 both invoked their First Amendment rights and declined to provide a deposition to lawyers for the school district.
Both are expected in court Wednesday to respond to a subpoena to testify at trial, said Niles Benn, a lawyer for the papers. Lawyers for the school district have questioned the accuracy of articles in which the reporters wrote that board members discussed creationism during public meetings.
In other testimony Tuesday, plaintiff Tammy Kitzmiller said that in January, her younger daughter opted out of hearing the statement - an option given all students - putting her in an awkward position.
"My 14-year-old daughter had to make the choice between staying in the classroom and being confused ... or she had to be singled out and face the possible ridicule of her friends and classmates," she said.
The Dover Area School District, which serves about 3,500 students, is believed to be the nation's first school system to mandate that students be exposed to the intelligent design concept. It argues it is not endorsing any religious view and only letting students know there are differences of opinion about evolution.
The non-jury trial is expected to take five weeks.
Hmmm....I wonder what the word 'metaphysics' meant in Darwin's day.
"Privately Darwin had begun a remarkable series of notebooks in which he initiated a set of questions and answers about "the species problem.""
Such damning evidence against the ToE. No wait, maybe it isn't.. did I see that he was actually formulating answers to his own questions?
Noodly Appendage placemaker
Thank you. Without this quote I would never have known that flatulence, vomiting, insomnia, and palpitations can invalidate the written word.
Perhaps Moses suffered from a similar malady.
Doesn't matter. Creationists, if they don't find a quote they like, will just make one up.
Excellent webpage.
Plaintiffs reiterated evolutionist Dr. Kenneth Miller's testimony that whereas design theorist Dr. Michael Behe's irreducible complexity argument is testable and, therefore, scientific, "Irreducible complexity is just a negative argument against Darwinism, not a positive argument for design." Thus, while irreducible complexity is a scientific hypothesis, the design inference supposedly is not. Miller insisted this holds for all intelligent design hypotheses. None of them, Miller argued, contains positive evidence for design.
Setting aside any argument that the ID side may or may not have positive evidence for design, Miller is correct that the ID side uses a negative argument against Darwinism/evolution.
Disproving Darwinism/evolution does not prove ID/creation; but it does tend to disprove Darwinism/evolution. If one can disprove or at least point out problems with Darwinism/evolution, a reasonable person would pretty much have to be open to the possibility of some other or additional explanation for life as it exists today.
As an illustration, one could compare this trial to a murder trial. If the prosecution accused someone of committing a murder, but the defense offered evidence that established that the defendant couldn't possibly have committed the crime, that doesn't prove a murder wasn't committed. It merely establishes that particular defendant didn't do it.
It is a negative proof, similar to the at least a portion of the argument of the IDers against evolution. In the case of life as it exists, no one is arguing that it does exist in its present forms (just like the existence of a murder victim). The question is, "How did we get here?" IDers have a pretty reasonable argument that it isn't by evolution.
It does not establish that ID is the cause unless one were to accept the premise that it has to be only a choice between evolution and ID.
This is the real crux of the entire debate. Despite what anyone claims, it really boils down whether there is or is not a God who created the world and everything in it.
This is true for both sides, not just the ID/creation side. If this were not the case, the plaintiffs would not have bothered with this lawsuit. Otherwise, what's the big deal about one minute statement?
I took tha class and whipped it.
Why make up a quote when Miller's own words will suffice?
You know, that poor guy gets blamed for almost as much as that God guy did.
He probably built and sold trinkets at the bazaar his whole life and never even heard of Egypt.
And the physical evidence is located where?
I look at the fossil record myself. DNA would also work, but I like fossils.
Well being as how Creationism was being taught -- and prayers were being said and the Bible being read -- in tax funded schools well after Dec. 15 1791, I'd say yes.
And you can name which primates that have the same number of chromosomes as humans? That would only be a start.
Can you name even one animal that has successfully produced an offspring by mating with another species with a different number of chromosomes?
When public shooling became popular the textbooks were McGuffey Readers and the Bible.
Before that time there were no tax-funded schools, so of course the founders would have no jurisdiction over those school boards.
Well, actually among the first instances of government funding of schools occurred with The Land Ordinance of 1785 in the prime of our Founders.
Can you name even one animal that has successfully produced an offspring by mating with another species with a different number of chromosomes?
Check with one of the other folks. I like bones, not chromosomes.
Can I interest you in this?
In 1995, Meave Leakey, the wife of Richard Leakey, began discovering bones of a very early australopithecine species at several sites southwest of Lake Turkana. She named it Australopithecus anamensis ("anam" is "lake" in the Turkana language). The dentition of this hominid seems to be transitional between apes and later australopithecines. This fits with the 4.2-3.9 million year dates for the volcanic ash associated with the anamensis fossils.http://anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/australo_1.htm
Why should a another primate have the same number of chromosoomes as humans?
Although there are animals that have successfully mated (meaning they have prodused viable, if not fertile, offspring) with other with a diffrent umber of chromosomes, what difference does it make?
The dentition of this hominid seems to be transitional between apes and later australopithecines.
Seems? Seems = speculation.
The answer is in your question.
I do see your point, however. And I will concede that it was overwhelmingly likely that at least some schools that received public funds of some sort maintained a religious curriculum. But I stand on the point that this was the driving force behind the push to make the school system public. It culminated in 1835, when Michigan was the first state to constitutionally prohibit the use of public funds "for the benefit of religious societies or theological seminaries."
So I guess it could be argued that it was the founder's disdain of the rampant religious permeation of the schools that led in desperation to the birth of what became our current secular public school system.
Class dismissed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.