Posted on 10/06/2005 6:13:37 AM PDT by Junior
HARRISBURG, Pa. - References to creationism in drafts of a student biology book were replaced with the term "intelligent design" by the time it was published, a witness testified Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school board's decision to include the concept in its curriculum.
Drafts of the textbook, "Of Pandas and People," written in 1987 were revised after the Supreme Court ruled in June of that year that states could not require schools to balance evolution with creationism in the classroom, said Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University.
Forrest reviewed drafts of the textbook as a witness for eight families who are trying to have the intelligent design concept removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum.
The families contend that teaching intelligent design effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the separation of church and state.
Intelligent design holds that life on Earth is so complex that it must have been the product of some higher force. Opponents of the concept say intelligent design is simply creationism stripped of overt religious references.
Forrest outlined a chart of how many times the term "creation" was mentioned in the early drafts versus how many times the term "design" was mentioned in the published edition.
"They are virtually synonymous," she said.
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. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."
Forrest also said that intelligent-design proponents have freely acknowledged that their cause is a religious one. She cited a document from the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents intelligent-design scholars, that says one of its goals is "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
Under cross-examination by school board lawyer Richard Thompson, Forrest acknowledged that she had no evidence that board members who voted for the curriculum change had either seen or heard of the Discovery Institute document.
The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.
general_re left on his own hook, for reasons I'm not privy to.
I hope he returns.
he is not, however, a fallen warrior of the CREVO wars.
Ah, I see.
ID rejects the Creator God. Or didn't you know that??
A thought…
If a “G(g)od” created the universe then some facts hold true.
He created at least one planet that has many religions. Of these many religions - They all acknowledge a god in some form or another, or lack there off. Therefore, I say God is not so vain as to require anyone to be aware of Him or acknowledge Him in any specific way; else He would not have created a universe with so many contradictions.
It's interesting to note the origin of this faux rule about prepositions -- and the one about split infinitives. When English grammar texts were in their early stages, about 300 years ago, the grammarians were far too enamored with Latin and its grammar.
For some inexplicable reason, they founded these rules on what they observed in Latin grammar: Latin did not end sentences with prepositions [primarily because most Latin prepositions were imbedded in the ablative or dative endings of nouns and pronouns] -- and Latin did not split infinitives [because Latin infinitives consisted of only one word, not two words as in English].
Based on this totally bogus reasoning, they tried to impose those two "rules" -- and we are still dealing with the problem today. As you pointed out -- the real rule for both is "whatever seems to sound the best" or "what sounds the least awkward."
Oh, well -- I still don't understand why grammarians cannot fill stadiums with paying customers to listen to them discuss these things. Life's not fair!
M
"We, as a society, need to place more faith and confidence in our children’s ability to learn, reason, and develop there own perceptions of the world around them."
*Whole Science* placemaker.
<< Already you up give? Hah! >>
Maybe he -- but I refuse up to give!
M
You forgot No-Kin-to-Monkeys.
Oh wait!.....
[clack]![clack]!
There's also the fact that it's a silly phrasing given that ending a sentence with "put up" is perfectly acceptable, as "up" is an adverb in the context of the statement.
You asked me previously what I meant by supernatural. Since the post that question was a part of was already answered in a manner that I agreed, I saw no point in replying simply to address what I thought was a rhetorical question. However, our current discussion seems to require it to be addressed. My use of 'supernatural' meant no more or less than 'beyond nature'. Man, by the way, is a part of nature. So is technology. I've been inferring from your line of reasoning that you fail to draw a distinction between 'within the scope of nature' and 'naturally occurring'. Technological objects that are a creation of man do indeed have a designer, but that designer (man) is himself a part of nature. Furthermore, not a single technological advance or item created because of them are beyond the laws of nature.
The upshot of all this as it applies to ID is that no matter what obfuscation regarding man-made design is applied, it does not open the door for the allowance of science to evaluate something not pertaining to nature, i.e. supernatural.
ah, well... just as the bias against "four-letter words" is a holdover from the results of the Battle of Hastings in 1066
<< ah, well... just as the bias against "four-letter words" is a holdover from the results of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 >>
Yeah -- but what's so weird about that is that you can use the French-based word -- urinate, defecation, copulate, etc. -- but if you slip and use the Saxon-based word, you have to immediately follow it with: "Pardon my French."
Those damned Normans. But they got their comeuppance when, due to their isolation from Paris, their own dialect was eventually considered "hick-talk," leading to the resurgence of English in the 13th-14th centuries.
M
Well, I said it is fallacious, but your assertion goes too far. For example, there is a remote analogy between computer programs and expression of DNA. For another, there is an analogy between DNA transcription and information encoding. For another, we often speak of "biological clocks" which is an analogy.
nor is there anything designed by humans remotely similar to living processes
I guess you must disagree, but I consider the products of genetic and evolutionary programming techniques to be (human) designs because their functions satisfy a prior specification. These techniques are very similar to biological evolution.
But the main reason why it is hard to believe is that ID advocates are such cruddy liars.
Every last one of them? I think you need to distinguish between error and lie. Most of the anti-evos who post here are simply ignorant.
This is especially needed in church, where all alternative religions need to be discussed in a non-judgemental way, so the children's reasoning abilities can be developed.
There is absolutely nothing designed by humans that looks like life. There are a few atttempts to copy the mechanism of evolution in computer programs, and some of these are commercially useful. The model they follow, however is stochastic variation and selection.
Life is messy, brutal, wasteful, painful and remorseless. If a human designed anything with the attributes of our ecosystem, he would join Hannibal Lector in the plexiglass cage.
Just differently designed fish. It takes a tremendous amount of faith to believe man evolved naturally from single celled creatures to its current form based on that fish. It takes less faith than that to accept the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that Jesus rose from dead.
Who said anything about "looks like?" I didn't. I said there are analogies between certain aspects of biological organisms and human artifacts and I mentioned several.
The model they follow, however is stochastic variation and selection.
You left out reproduction and inheritance and your "however" is unwarranted. These are all important attributes of biological evolution and, since humans are using a process very similar to biological evolution to produce designs, your claim that nor is there anything designed by humans remotely similar to living processes is false.
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