Posted on 10/05/2005 3:53:39 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A philosophy professor and two science teachers were expected to testify Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school board's decision to include a reference to "intelligent design" in its biology curriculum.
Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, is being called as an expert witness on behalf of eight families who are trying to have intelligent design removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum. The families contend that it effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
Forrest's testimony was expected to address what opponents allege is the religious nature of intelligent design, as well as the history and development of the concept, according to court papers filed by the plaintiffs before the trial.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was also expected to hear testimony from Bertha Spahr, chairman of Dover High School's science department, and biology teacher Jennifer Miller.
Under the policy approved by Dover's school board in October 2004, students must hear a brief statement about intelligent design before classes on evolution. It says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact," has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Intelligent-design supporters argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, and that natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.
The plaintiffs are represented by a team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The school district is being defended by the Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that says its mission is to defend the religious freedom of Christians.
The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.
I'm with you.
There will never be another assembler like Macro-11TM. I mean, anybody can get a computer with 256 megabytes of memory to do something.
MCR>to which you might respond
MCR> PIP [314,321]*.*;* /LI /FUand "man pages?" We didn't need no stinkin' "man pages." "Help" function? Geddoudahere!! Full-screen editors? We had LINE editors! And we loved 'em! If we couldn't hack it, natural selection weeded us right out.
Programming's gone too soft anymore, that's all.
I don't see much controversy surrounding the theory of gravity; do you? To try and claim all scientific theories are equally credible is being intellectually dishonest.
The fact that you attempt to lend credibility to the ToE by implying it is on the same level as all other scientific theories indicates that you realize that it cannot stand on its own merits.
There's plenty of controversy regarding the theory of gravity. It cannot be reconciled with quantum mechanics. What's the force law on scales of distances less than 0.1 mm? Where are the gravitons? There are in fact more controversies surrounding the theory of gravity than there are evolution. Note that the theory of gravity is something very different from the LAW of gravity, which is solely descriptive, not explanatory. If we were to talk analogously about a LAW of evolution, we would have to say it's something like that the genetic makeup of species changes over time, and that would be completely non-controversial.
Also, of course stating that there are gaps in the theory of gravity lends no support for the "alternate theory" that God pushes everything together.
I used to program in BASIC, and even tweak programs in binary, back when I had an Apple ][. Those were the days. Now I'm terrified to even think about what's lurking in the registry.
And as we all know, fibre is good for you.
(Have you noticed the sparseness of English spelling here? The spell checker wanted fibre spelled as fiber...sheesh.)
You have experience of this I assume?
I've found that the best position to be in when confronted with 'bad' customers is as manager. Being rude to a customer all the while appearing to be sycophantic can be quite funny. (I managed a Consumer's Distributing for 3 years)
You can delete an old program folder, run regcleaner, and it will remove all obsolete references from the registry.
lengthy experience, yes.
when attempting to force myself to "reason" like a fervent IDiot, contemplation of my toenails is an invaluable aid.
I read too much Kipling, I guess... I sometimes go Anglophonic (um, er... "Anglographic"?)
I've got it, and I've used it. But not much. It's unnerving, because I'm so clueless about what's going on. I like the old days, when everything pertaining to a program was in its directory, or its sub-directories. I can't stand it when a program tosses bits and pieces of itself all over the place. The result is a hard drive that's mostly filled with mystery files. Good ol' Apple DOS let you run a clean machine. But that was long ago ...
It would be nice if Windows had a viewer that allowed you to see each program's registry entries. I've never figured out why there isn't a third party program for this.
All kinds of slimeware lurks in the registry. It's amazing what some programs manage to put there.
"Soft, I tell you! Soft!"
Ah yes, C. Aubrey Smith. I remember him in "The Four Feathers."
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