Georgia court to hear evolution disclaimer arguments

The Globe and Mail ^ | 12/14/05 | DOUG GROSS

[doc30]

Atlanta — Nearly seven months after schools in a suburban Atlanta county were forced to peel off textbook stickers that called evolution a theory rather than fact, a federal appeals court is set to consider whether the disclaimers were unconstitutional.

In January, a federal judge ordered Cobb County school officials to remove the stickers immediately, saying they were an endorsement of religion. The ruling was appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear arguments on Thursday.

Advocates on both sides say the appeals court's decision will go a long way toward shaping a debate between science and religion that has cropped up in various forms around the country.

“If it's unconstitutional to tell students to study evolution with an open mind, then what's not unconstitutional?” said John West, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that supports intelligent design, the belief that the universe is so complex it must have been created by a higher power. “The judge is basically trying to make it unconstitutional for anyone to have a divergent view, and we think that has a chilling effect on free speech.”

Opponents of the sticker campaign see it as a backdoor attempt to introduce creationism – the biblical story of creation – into the public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court disallowed it in a 1987 case from Louisiana.

“The anti-evolution forces have been searching for a new strategy that would accomplish the same end,” said Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and co-author of the science book that was stickered. “That purpose is, if not to get evolution out of the schools altogether, then at least undermine it as much as possible in the minds of students.”

The disclaimers were placed in the books in 2002 by school officials in Cobb County, a suburb of about 650,000. The stickers were printed up after more than 2,000 parents complained that science texts presented evolution as a fact, with no mention of other theories.

The stickers read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

The school board called the stickers “a reasonable and evenhanded guide to science instruction” that encourages students to be critical thinkers.

Some parents, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, sued, arguing that the stickers violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that the sticker “conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others they are political insiders.”

In Pennsylvania, a federal judge has yet to decide whether the Dover Area School District can require ninth-grade biology students to learn about intelligent design. A few days after the trial ended earlier this fall, Dover voters ousted eight of the nine school board members who adopted the policy.

The same week, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question.

In 2004, Georgia's school superintendent proposed a statewide science curriculum that dropped the word “evolution” in favour of “changes over time.” That plan was soon scrapped amid protests from teachers.

[Senator Bedfellow]

LOL. Let's hope not - three ultra-minority parties sounds like a recipe for a long, long trek through a mighty big desert ;)

[Virginia-American]

Sorry to hear that,
Glad you're feeling better.

[microgood]

I really don't see how upholding standards in science or any other subject is either leftwing or fascist. IMO it's 100% conservative.

Please see post 139 and this. My reference to left wing that Coyoteman responded to relates to my outrage that the Federal Government, basing their action on liberal rulings in the Supreme Court of the Establishment Clause, can come into Georgia and tell this school district what to do.

I happen to agree science class is for science. But the way this is going down in Georgia, especially over a stupid sticker, sucks.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the ping to your engaging post!

It is troubling to me that the word “lie” is gratuitously thrown around on these threads. The word “lie” means there was an intent to deceive – and who can speak to what another is thinking? It is an incendiary word.

More appropriate words could be used, such as “the statement was a misrepresentation” or “it was false, incorrect, or incomplete”. None of these speak to intent. Even the word “misleading” doesn’t necessarily go to intent.

Of course, I love Truth. I love God Who is Truth.

Then again, not everyone can handle Truth.

Moreover, when some people speak of “truth” they speak conditionally – a “truth” based on a presumptive worldview or personal value of types of knowledge. Some for instance may dismiss any “truth” which is not obtained through observation or experiment.

The most tragic, IMHO, condition to “truth” is a contrived subset of reality – a hermetically sealed “second reality” which precludes everything else.

Moreover, the observer is himself part of the reality he seeks to describe, thus his "truth" is always relative. There is only one source for absolute, objective Truth.

[Coyoteman]

Thank you for the good response.

This problem with CS/ID/Evolution has been bad for FR and the Republican party.

As a scientist I absolutely cannot tolerate ID being taught as science. Anywhere else in schools, like sociology, anthropology, comparative religion, philosophy, etc., no problem.

I believe that ID, as it is currently being promoted, is based on a lie, and is designed to sneak Creation Science into the science classes after the Supreme Court decision of the late 1980s removed it. (I am aware that other forms of ID have been around for centuries or millenia.)

The Wedge Strategy spelled out the goals and methods for dishonestly sneaking ID into the classrooms, and it seems to me that that is just what we are seeing.

Most of your other points are accurate. I don't think many of us enjor seeing the current attempts to abolish "Christmas" in favor of "Holidays."

But there are certain fields that really should not be trashed. Science, and evolution, are among them. That is what separates us, and protects us, from the barbarians...for a while.

Anyway, thanks for the good discussion.

Out for the night. It's late and I haven't shaved ===> Placemarker <===

[microgood]

The "intrepretation" of the establishment clause which you dislike is the same as theirs, son.

Well then they should have put all that into the Constitution. Oops.

Are you sure you really want to try to categorize this as "left-wing", microgood?

Liberal might be a better word.

[Politicalities]

I wasn't clear. I was advocating fraud and high crime prosecutions for the liars who mandate teaching ID or creationism as though it were science.

Ohhh, you were knocking down a strawman. Why didn't you say so?

[Dimensio]

It is troubling to me that the word “lie” is gratuitously thrown around on these threads.

I admit to using the word rather gratitutiously, but I can't imagine that I misused it in relation to hosepipe. Hosepipe explicitly stated that "non-evo" scientists were the ones who uncovered fossil fakes and/or mistakes, then later -- in the very same discussion -- denied making the claim. If that's not a lie, I don't know what is.

[microgood]

If they're that offended by the truth, then they'll have to just go ahead take it personally.

Great line all by itself.

But they shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that their outrage somehow requires schools to stop teaching facts, or allows them to introduce "alternatives" to facts into science classrooms.

Remember all they did was put a sticker on the book.

Science has standards, and we're not going to let anyone break them because they're somehow "offended" by the results. That's just conservative PC-ism, as bad as (and in some cases worse than) the liberal version.

I agree. But that does not universally translate from "SCIENCE" to every school in the country. I say let them put their stupid sticker in the book. This whole case sets such a bad example for the kids.

Where did *this* hallucination come from? When and where have "evos" *ever* used courts -- federal or otherwise -- to "force" the teaching of evolution in schools (except as a response to the creationists using laws or courts to *force* evolution *out* of classrooms)?

OK, I admit FR evos may not have started it but you are complicit in that you are cheering them on and rubbing it into the noses of creationists.

The only way that evolution is not "like other sciences" is because there is an endless horde of misguided luddites who keep issuing fatwahs against it.

Another classic line all by itself.

And the rest of us aren't interested in sliding back into the Dark Ages, thank you very much.

You are welcome. Although I would describe the situation a lot differently, however it is viewed it is likely to continue if they cannot even agree on a little sticker. It is kind of uncomfortable to watch.

[Politicalities]

Your handle is on post 59 - did you have someone else typing for you when you said "My point, which I trust I made, is that there are legitimate criticisms of evolution, and that it should be examined critically... which is exactly what these stickers call for"?

Ah, I see the problem here. You think the pronoun "it" refers to the antecedent "criticisms"... which makes little sense, as the former is singular and the latter is plural. "It" refers to evolution, which should be examined critically, which is what the stickers call for.

There's debate about lots of things, and yet it's only this one thing that seems to be singled out for special treatment.

Gosh darn it, so many people have said this that I figured my copy of the Constitution must be flawed. So I went out and bought a brand spanking new one, and wouldn't you know it but the new one also lacks the "no special treatment of scientific theories" clause. Go figure! Could you tell me which article it's in? Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

Figuring out how the previous statement might apply to the Cobb County school board is left as an exercise for the reader.

Maybe I'm slow, but I just can't seem to complete the exercise. How "examine this material critically with an open mind" conflicts with any provision of the Constitution is beyond me. Please, enlighten me.

Not that I've seen - perhaps you'll be so good as to direct me to them.

The existence of universal traits that provide only a marginal reproductive advantage. The existence of systems for which at least a prima facie case can be made are irreducibly complex.

Now, people have answered some of these examples, and were this debate about the merits of evolution we could go a few rounds over them. But this thread is about whether cautioning students to keep an open and critical mind is unconstitutional.

A secondary effect of this thread, of course, has been to highlight a point I've made a couple of times: to many, evolution is a religion, to be defended at all costs, whose critics are to be ridiculed and scorned as heretics. I mean, look at yourselves. You're arguing -- with a straight face! -- that telling children to keep an open mind is unconstitutional! Do you even realize what you're advocating?

The First Amendment covers silly falsehoods as well as truthful statements.

It's funny... usually the First Amendment is invoked to encourage freedom of expression. Here you are using it to demand that telling kids to be critical is verboten.

I'd sure hate to see you in a jam like that, so perhaps you should consider whether your heretofore-unspecified difficulties are really what you think they are.

Your concern is appreciated, but you needn't worry. It's easy for me to verify the consistency of my own position by imagining such stickers on, say, a physics textbook. I wholeheartedly believe that the theory of relativity is true. If a school board were stickering physics textbooks, describing relativity as a theory and cautioning students to keep an open mind, I might think it was stupid... but I would never dare to desecrate the Constitution I revere so highly by suggesting that the stickers were unconstitutional.

This whole discussion reminds me of debates I had with liberals around the time of the Roberts nomination, when they were screaming about how Roberts upheld the detention by police of a young girl for eating french fries in a subway station. I had to explain to them -- very, very slowly -- that although the law mandating the girl's detention might have been extremely dumb, it was not unconstitutional, and it's not a judge's job to decide whether laws are dumb or not.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

I read back on the links you posted on your compendium indictment of hosepipe at 84. You omitted to mention a link from the original discussion where hosepipe explains his intent:

post 268

I didn't lie.. I misunderstood what you meant.. by "made up"..
As far as I know "the fakes" that I've read about were "fakes"..
A purely anecdotal interest precluded me checking it out further..

He wasn't interested enough to research something which obviously was troubling to you. Disinterest does not constitute an intent to deceive, thus I would say the pejorative "lie" is indeed inappropriate. The word "misinformed" would have been better, IMHO.

On the denial allegation, his original post was not a mutually exclusive statement (emphasis mine):

post 88

How come the fakes are almost never found by Evos.?.

[Ichneumon]

[But they shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that their outrage somehow requires schools to stop teaching facts, or allows them to introduce "alternatives" to facts into science classrooms.]

Remember all they did was put a sticker on the book.

If that's "all" it was about, hosepipe, then why all the fuss to get them into the books in the first place, and why all the fight to keep them there? If it was just a "stupid sticker", as you say, with no more significance than a piece of paper, why did the creationists bother writing it, printing it, approving it, and spending the time to plaster it on all the textbooks? Why did they gin up their lawyers to fight to keep the stickers when challenged? Why not just say, "oh, it was just a sticker, it's not worth all this, we'll just stop stickering the books if that causes a fuss"?

Answer that fully and honestly, if you dare.

Whether you care to admit it or not, the fact remains that there's far *more* to this matter than just "a stupid sticker".

[Science has standards, and we're not going to let anyone break them because they're somehow "offended" by the results. That's just conservative PC-ism, as bad as (and in some cases worse than) the liberal version.]

I agree. But that does not universally translate from "SCIENCE" to every school in the country.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

I say let them put their stupid sticker in the book.

And *I* say if it's actually "stupid", as you claim, they shouldn't bother with it in the first place. But come on, admit it -- there's a lot more to it than that.

This whole case sets such a bad example for the kids.

On the contrary, it sets a great example -- just not the example that the creationists had hoped to set.

[When and where have "evos" *ever* used courts -- federal or otherwise -- to "force" the teaching of evolution in schools (except as a response to the creationists using laws or courts to *force* evolution *out* of classrooms)?]

OK, I admit FR evos may not have started it but you are complicit in that you are cheering them on and rubbing it into the noses of creationists.

Read the question again and then try an answer that actually addresses it, please.

[The only way that evolution is not "like other sciences" is because there is an endless horde of misguided luddites who keep issuing fatwahs against it.]

Another classic line all by itself.

Thank you.

Although I would describe the situation a lot differently, however it is viewed it is likely to continue if they cannot even agree on a little sticker.

Again, it's not about "agreeing on a sticker". It's about far larger issues, and both sides understand that, even if you don't.

It is kind of uncomfortable to watch.

Then feel free not to watch.

[Virginia-American]

Ohhh, you were knocking down a strawman. Why didn't you say so?

Strawman? Knocking down?

A Strawman argument is misrepresenting your opponent's position in such a way that it's easier to argue against than his real position.

I've been arguing that state charges might be as appropriate as federal establishment-clause ones. I wasn't knocking any positions down.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Ah, I see the problem here.

Based on your performance thus far, I'm sure you'll understand if I'm a bit skeptical. Nevertheless, to spell it out a simply as I think I can, in deference to you, you have asserted that there are "legitimate criticisms" of the theory of evolution, and that the theory should be "examined critically" - presumably in light of those "legitimate criticisms", else the whole thing makes no sense at all. After all, if there are no "legitimate criticisms", how exactly should one proceed critically? And what are those "legitimate criticisms"? Well, gosh darn if you just don't feel like talking about them right now. But they exist and they're real, you betcha - we'll just take your word for it.

Right. Did I leave anything out, or do you plan to cap this tapdance with something else?

There's debate about lots of things, and yet it's only this one thing that seems to be singled out for special treatment.

Gosh darn it, so many people have said this that I figured my copy of the Constitution must be flawed.

Gosh darn, it's Jubilation T. Cornpone hisself. When you're done patting yourself on the back for what I assume you consider to be witty repartee, perhaps you'll be good enough to go back and try reading my previous posts for comprehension. Did I mention the Constitution in that question? Of course not. Will referring to the Constitution provide you with an answer to the question of why this theory is being singled out above all others? Seems doubtful, as you appear to note upon your reading of it, although given your ability to read my posts I'm rather doubtful you had much better luck parsing your way through the Constitution.

So, now that that silliness is properly disposed of, perhaps you'd like to answer the question as asked. Although I'm sure nobody will blame you for continuing to duck it, as a serious answer is likely to be an even bigger disaster for you than your current lambada routine is so far.

Maybe I'm slow, but I just can't seem to complete the exercise.

At this point, I'm inclined to accept your self-characterization. Shall I proceed monosyllabically, or do you think you can keep up with the current format?

How "examine this material critically with an open mind" conflicts with any provision of the Constitution is beyond me.

The answer, of course, lies in the question that you are ducking, thus far rather inartfully. Why this theory, and no others? Take as much time as you need.

The existence of universal traits that provide only a marginal reproductive advantage.

What on earth does that mean? Surely a "marginal" reproductive advantage is better than no reproductive advantage, don't you think? How, pray tell, do you imagine such a concept indicts the theory of evolution as it is currently understood? Be sure to refer to specific examples of such traits where appropriate.

The existence of systems for which at least a prima facie case can be made are irreducibly complex.

Ignoring, of course, the problem that the whole notion of "irreducible complexity" is garbage, soup to nuts. Disagree if you must, and I'll hold your hand and walk you through why that's so.

This is it? These are the "legitimate criticisms" you have in mind? Please say it's not so - please tell me you have more arrows in that mighty rhetorical quiver of yours.

Sheesh.

Now, people have answered some of these examples, and were this debate about the merits of evolution we could go a few rounds over them.

This debate, at least in part, is about the merits of evolution, or the lack thereof, as claimed by you - not especially successfully, but there you go - and by those who would promote the stickers. I rather understand why you don't wish to discuss that subject, as it's tolerably obvious it's not one you're particularly well-prepared for.

A secondary effect of this thread, of course, has been to highlight a point I've made a couple of times: to many, evolution is a religion, to be defended at all costs, whose critics are to be ridiculed and scorned as heretics.

Phew. Pretty heady stuff you've got there. Mind your fingers, that you don't cut yourself on the razor's edge. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for these wild-eyed radicals you have in mind here, although I guess I should warn you that they're really pretty thin on the ground in these parts. Practically thin enough to be a figment of your imagination, as a matter of fact.

You're arguing -- with a straight face! -- that telling children to keep an open mind is unconstitutional!

Sigh. About the best I can do on your behalf here is allow that you actually believe that. Sorry. It's the best I can do.

It's easy for me to verify the consistency of my own position by imagining such stickers on, say, a physics textbook.

Of course, that's the problem - all you can do is imagine such a thing, since there's no serious proposal to do anything of the sort. Indeed, to do that would defeat the purpose of the stickers as they currently exist, which is, naturally, to portray the theory of evolution as being somehow different from, and inferior to, other scientific theories.

This whole discussion reminds me of debates I had with liberals...

No doubt. In the interests of full disclosure, your argument here is hardly novel - it's been done to death on these threads long before you graced them with your presence. Do try to think up something original. Perhaps some more witty repartee - it's not exactly reasoned discourse, but it may allow you to distract from that with a little comedy routine.

[puroresu]

Actually, the First Amendment as written didn't apply to states or localities at all. Such application came about as a consequence of the Doctrine of Incorporation, a federal judicial creation based (purportedly) on the 14th Amendment. Neither Madison nor Jefferson envisioned federal courts interfering with the states or localities on church-state matters.

Likewise, when Tocqueville wrote of separation of church & state, it was in an era in which states were perfectly free to associate with religion.

There are differing opinions on what constitutes the mingling of church & state. Does it mean government must operate on the assumption that God doesn't exist? Or is it the more modest assertion that government shouldn't subsidize a particular denomination, but is free to recognize God's existence?

See Justice Thomas' opinion:

http://www.geocities.com/djbj597933/case17.htm

Just some things to consider!

[donh]

I see. So you think it fit to discuss the merits of a court case, but inappropriate to discuss the merits of the questions at issue in the court case? That's an interesting notion.

It would be an interesting (and foolish) notion if that's what I was saying.

Either evolution lacks scientific merit, such as to justify the special label, for biology books only, that you are lobbying for, or it doesn't. That is the crux of the issue in court, and that is the issue you are too shy to talk about. If you, a non-scientist, want to put a label on a science textbook casting doubt on a particular branch of science, don't you think it's just an eensy-teensy bit relevant to ask you to justify your action? You seem to want to make the discussion exclusively about whether you have a right to poop out this label. Very well, we can, indeed, make this simpler by adhering to your proposed agenda:

You (or a layman on a schoolboard) aren't a scientist, so you don't know squat about what should be in a science textbook, and you have no competent business slapping labels on one. If you fail to understand this, your school would be quite properly disenfranchised by accrediting institutions who demand competence in the teaching of subjects requiring expertise. The exact same thing would happen if you insisted on making a case for street rap instead of english in english class, or atonal noise in music theory class.

Keep it up, in a public school, on the public dime, and the least you are going to be guilty of is fraudulent conversion, and misappropriation of funds--or, if they continue with this coy act about their supposedly non-existent creationist motivation, perjury, as in the Dover case.

But it's not. Could you or anybody please explain how these stickers constitute an "establishment of religion"? Heck, I read the lower court's opinion and I still don't get it. As best as I can tell, the judge ruled that if religious people like something, it's unconstitutional. There is no profound and obvious reason why biology should get this special treatment "Congress shall make no law giving one science special treatment" doesn't seem to be in my copy of the Constitution.

Come now. Biology doesn't want special treatment. Biology isn't begging to have a special mark of Cain slapped on it, exclusively. You don't see astronomers besieged by astrologers in court, do you? Or geologists being asked to have their textbooks defaced by flat-earthers, do you?

It is patently obvious to the court what concerns of what special groups of creationist science cranks are behind these attempts at labeling biology textbooks, the fact that you can't seem to notice is not too telling.

Given that one understands that, the thin veil of objectivity is ripped away from the ID judicial movement ... and it is revealed for what it is--a stealth attack by christian creationists to make room for teaching their religeous doctrines in the classrooms of public schools.

Wow, cool, I'm a christian! Wait 'til I tell my rabbi, he'll be quite surprised.

Eh? I'm rather surprised myself. My remarks here are directed specifically against fundamentalist creationists who are trying to get biology textbooks wear a ghetto star, not christians in general, why don't you wait until you are pricked before you whine about the needle?

When the Christians start insisting on having their religious doctrines in the classrooms of public schools, you can raise First Amendment objections... and I'll be standing right next to you. But not before.

In the cases before the court, it is patently obvious who the culprits are, and what the religious agenda they are pursuing is, and what the advantage to that agenda is of the labels. The case for teaching ID in the classroom, in any slightest form, on its own merits, is about as good as the case for crop circles, alien abduction, crystal healing, astrology, or UFOlogy, any of which, like ID, MIGHT be true, and have at least as good positive forensic scientific evidence to weigh in with. When it comes to writing science textbooks, you aren't entitled to make unscientifc declarations, period. When you insist on doing so, and your particular declaration is avowedly in support of your religious aganda for the public schools, and your groups are the major participants in the legal actions--it would be fairly braindead of the court not to notice.

Here, lets try out your theory in another way. Suppose I wanted to put a station of the cross, a podium, a crucifix and a confessional in the rec room of my school, and invite a priest to come in part time to supervise my philosophy class, allowing to attend, oddly enough, only devote catholics. I mean, after all, it's a philosophy class isn't it? Last time I heard, the Supreme court wasn't against philosophy.

[microgood]

If that's "all" it was about, hosepipe, then why all the fuss to get them into the books in the first place, and why all the fight to keep them there?

Why fight to take them out?

If it was just a "stupid sticker", as you say, with no more significance than a piece of paper, why did the creationists bother writing it, printing it, approving it, and spending the time to plaster it on all the textbooks? Why did they gin up their lawyers to fight to keep the stickers when challenged? Why not just say, "oh, it was just a sticker, it's not worth all this, we'll just stop stickering the books if that causes a fuss"?

Two reasons:
(1) It has no effect on the students. It is just a hissie fit between special interest groups.
(2)Probably because they have an agenda to cast doubt on evolution. But whereas their agenda is local in their community the agenda of the other side is to prohibit any such activity anywhere.

Again, it's not about "agreeing on a sticker". It's about far larger issues, and both sides understand that, even if you don't.

Maybe for the national organizations exploiting this community. For the locals it is a huge mess started by one side and escalated by another. There was a time when the adults would have settled this long before it got this far.

[Ichneumon]

[There's debate about lots of things, and yet it's only this one thing that seems to be singled out for special treatment.]

Gosh darn it, so many people have said this that I figured my copy of the Constitution must be flawed. So I went out and bought a brand spanking new one, and wouldn't you know it but the new one also lacks the "no special treatment of scientific theories" clause. Go figure! Could you tell me which article it's in? Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

If you had bothered to *think* for a moment about why he considered this a relevant point for you to ponder, instead of just jumping on it as a cheap excuse to be flippantly sarcastic, then you might have been in a position to better hold up your end of the discussion.

Hint: The fact that only a single topic in the science books is being singled out by the sticker-people gives important insights into their actual agenda, motivations, and goals -- which have far less to do with "encouraging critical thinking" than they do with the desire to inject their religious views into the schools.

[Figuring out how the previous statement might apply to the Cobb County school board is left as an exercise for the reader.]

Maybe I'm slow, but I just can't seem to complete the exercise.

Obviously, despite the big hints he left for you.

How "examine this material critically with an open mind" conflicts with any provision of the Constitution is beyond me. Please, enlighten me.

Look, you're obviously a newcomer to this issue, so your lack of background excuses you from being able to come up to speed immediately. It does *not*, however, excuse your supercilious attitude on a number of your posts. You might want to consider toning that down a bit, and raising your awareness that maybe, just maybe, you don't already know everything there is to know on this issue, and maybe, just maybe, the people you're being sarcastic to might have reasons for their position that don't deserve being ridiculed by you, and that you might actually manage to learn something from.

The existence of universal traits that provide only a marginal reproductive advantage.

Okay, I'll bite -- this is a "legitimate criticisms of evolution" *how*, exactly?

The existence of systems for which at least a prima facie case can be made are irreducibly complex.

Sigh... I'm sorry to have to be the one to inform you of this, but you've been reading too many creationist pamphlets and not enough science journals. This is not a "legitimate criticisms of evolution". It's an *illegitimate* one. It's a dog-and-pony show, crafted to sound impressive to the crowd with a patina of scientific-sounding buzzwords and all the trappings, but is instead fundamentally and fatally flawed.

What else ya got?

Now, people have answered some of these examples, and were this debate about the merits of evolution we could go a few rounds over them.

Oh, let's *do*... Because ultimately, the stickers are about trying to undermine students' confidence in evolutionary biology, and if evolutionary biology isn't as shaky as the label-makers contend, it hardly deserves a "special" label giving that impression. Furthermore, advocates of ensuring that evolutionary biology is "critically considered" should first have an idea of what, exactly, they intend to present as part of a curriculum "critically considering" it.

Additionally, defenders of printing up special stickers flatly declaring that evolutionary biology is "not fact" should be sure that they can actually support such a bold statement, and aren't just talking out of their collective asses.

So again, what else ya got that might actually be a "legitimate criticism" of evolutionary biology?

But this thread is about whether cautioning students to keep an open and critical mind is unconstitutional.

...and the *answer* to that question depends heavily upon the goals, agenda, and motivations of the people doing the "cautioning"... Thus the point you keep sidestepping.

Look, by itself entirely in isolation, I agree that the Georgia sticker seems a pretty trivial thing for people to get into a huff about (on *either* side), or for any court to rule as being an intrusion of religious proselytizing

But the point you're missing is that it *doesn't* exist in isolation. Not by a long shot. I don't have the time or inclination to bring you up to speed on over 80 years of legal/political/religious/scientific wrangling over this issue, but suffice to say that anyone who has followed it for long (and I've been studying it for over thirty years myself) does not long remain so naive as to think that this latest "sticker movement" is *just* about stickers or *just* about "encouraging students to think". It isn't, and most of the time not even the sticker-pushers bother to pretend that it is. Except when they know they're being put on the record for court purposes, their religious goals are plain and open.

The Wedge Document and other publications make their intentions (of getting God "back into the classroom") explicit, and taking action (and court action) in order to trigger "academic debates" introducing creationism into school settings is part of that agenda. Again, there's vastly more than I have time or space to go into here. In the recent Dover trial, wherein a similar "sticker" was being pushed (with even more explicit ties to ID/creationism -- they sort of jumped the gun there, but it shows the common theme in these recent "sticker movements"), there were several *days* of good testimony by experts laying out the clear interwoven whole of creationism/ID/"teach the controversy"/"encourage critical examination"/blah blah blah, mostly from the writings and words of the proponents of the movement itself.

These stickers *are* all very intentionally about getting the "camel's nose under the tent" -- about getting creationism's foot into the door of the classroom, and then squeezing the rest of it in piecemeal over time.

A secondary effect of this thread, of course, has been to highlight a point I've made a couple of times: to many, evolution is a religion, to be defended at all costs, whose critics are to be ridiculed and scorned as heretics.

This is a frequently made charge, but it's just as goofy every time. Passion about a topic hardly makes it a "religion", as you strangely seem to think. People are equally -- if not more so -- passionate about liberty, which is "to be defended at all costs", and whose critics are "to be ridiculed and scorned" (and rightly so), but that doesn't make a love of liberty a "religion" either, nor its detractors "heretics".

There are many good reasons to defend science from misguided attacks, and many reasons to be passionate about it, but none of them magically make science or respect for science a "religion". That's just bizarre. Do you even understand what a religion actually is? You don't seem to. It's not just something that can raise passions. If that were so, NFL Football would be a religion...

Get a grip.

I mean, look at yourselves. You're arguing -- with a straight face! -- that telling children to keep an open mind is unconstitutional!

No, we're not. Your failure to understand the full scope of the issue is not a failing on *our* part. *We* ourselves will cheerfully tell people (children included) to keep and open mind, nor will we ever be so stupid as to say that doing so is unconstitutional. Nor would we ever wish it to be.

Do you even realize what you're advocating?

Yes, we do, but it's clear that you don't realize what we're actually advocating, or why.

It's funny... usually the First Amendment is invoked to encourage freedom of expression. Here you are using it to demand that telling kids to be critical is verboten.

Horse manure. We're not saying that at all, and personally I resent you believing such an insulting and stupid thing like that about us.

It's easy for me to verify the consistency of my own position by imagining such stickers on, say, a physics textbook. I wholeheartedly believe that the theory of relativity is true. If a school board were stickering physics textbooks, describing relativity as a theory and cautioning students to keep an open mind, I might think it was stupid... but I would never dare to desecrate the Constitution I revere so highly by suggesting that the stickers were unconstitutional.

Nor would we. Your analogy is a poor one for the current situation. Imagine instead that, say, Islamics in America found something in the physics textbooks insulting to their religion, and/or a perceived impediment to the wider acceptance of their religion. In an openly stated move to undermine this "infidel physics" and its (perceived) anti-Islam influence, they tried to introduce an oh-so-mildly worded sticker into physics textbooks around the country which, under the guise of "encouraging critical thought", purposely raised doubts in students' minds about the material in the physics books, and purposely served as a talking point for students (including Muslim students) who might want to "discuss the controversy" in the classrooms?

Now, would you consider *that* to be questionable under the First Amendment's establishment clause?

This whole discussion reminds me of debates I had with liberals around the time of the Roberts nomination,

...because you fail to grasp this one. The situations are not comparable. In the Roberts case, the liberals were the ones missing the point and not seeing the bigger picture. In this discussion, it's you.

[Virginia-American]

Islamic Science, Djinn Energy

[Ichneumon]

For starters, I find the argument from complexity to have merit. A system comprising numerous dependent parts and requiring all of them for a reproductive advantage would be difficult to evolve through random mutation and natural selection.

Yes, it would be "difficult". And it is, which is why such systems do not evolve *frequently*. Wings, for example, have evolved only a handful of times throughout the entire history of life on Earth. However, evolution is an extremely "persistent" process, and *does* achieve many results which, at first glance, might appear hard to "believe" until you're more familiar with the actual size of the mulitipier effect inherent in the evolution of large populations. Furthermore, many system which *appear* to "require numerous dependent parts" in order to be advantageous turn out not to actually be so under examination. They can and did actually arise in a "stepwise" fashion after all.

Proponents of evolution often endeavor to hypothesize ways in which such systems could evolve through a series of intermediate steps,

...you sort of "forget" to mention the countless times when the evolutionary histories of such systems have actually been determined (not just "hypothesized") and they were found to in fact have arisen through intermediate steps, each of which would itself have been a survival advantage. Or did your creationist pamphlets just not mention that, and you *presumed* that their failulre to mention it meant that such determinations had never actually been done?

which brings me to my second objection: the universality of certain traits which may provide a reproductive advantage, but a very tiny one. For an example, try this experiment. Stand with your head facing straight forward, with your eyes looking ahead. Now slowly rotate your head at the neck while trying to keep your eyes pointed straight forward relative to your head. (This means that if your head is rotated 20 degrees to the left, your eyes will be pointed at 20 degrees to the left relative to your body.) As the angle of rotation increases, you'll find this becomes difficult. Your eyes "want" to rotate in their sockets the same direction as your neck, so while your head is oriented 35 degrees in one direction, your eyes will be looking at 40 degrees or so.) This tendency is hardwired into us, and it is undeniably an advantage... it means that if you want to look at something on your periphery you'll be able to see it a fraction of a second faster than you would otherwise. But how much of a reproductive advantage does it confer? An organism with this tendency would survive an encounter with a predator that an organism without it would not if the predator approaches from a very specific angle. If the angle of approach is too shallow, an organism would see it coming even without the tendency, and if it's too deep an organism wouldn't see it coming even with the tendency.

This is an *incredibly* cartoonish analysis. Are you under the bizarre misconception that only a life-or-death struggle with a "predator" is the only thing that can confer a selective advantage? Sheesh.

So on the average, what would the reproductive rate of the organisms with the tendency be over the organisms without it? A ratio of 1.00001 : 1?

Feel free to pull any numbers out of your ass you wish, but don't try to pretend that they have any likely match with reality.

I'm not aware of any research on your one somewhat odd example specfically (there could well be some, I just haven't seen it), but in the countless cases where the specific selective advantage of a particular trait *has* been studied in detail, it has always been found that the rate at which it became fixed in the population was well in accord with the numerical analysis thereof. The same goes for lineage-specific rates of acquisition of phenotypic mutations across time, compared to computed and directly observed rates.

So I don't know what point you're trying to make, if any, other than "wow, this boggles *my* mind, maybe that means it's impossible!"

And yet the tendency is universal.

Define "universal", please. Universal among humans? Among primates? Among vertebrates? What?

"Universality" is hardly a problem for evolution -- if a useful trait arose once, it gets passed on to all descendant groups of that lineage, and is "universal" among those groups not by any sort of magic, but by simple inheritance.

If you mean that you're baffled at how a poorly selected trait could fix (i.e., become universal) within the population, then it'll be fun to *really* boggle your mind and point out that even mutations with ZERO selective advantage actually have a decent chance to fix within a population within a relatively short timespan. See for example: Population Size and Genetic Drift

The more you actually know about biology, the less "impossible" it turns out to be. But hey, actually *learning* biology before attempting to critique it is not high up on the list of priorities of the folks whining about evolution.

How many generations would it take for a trait conferring such a minuscule advantage to become universal?

Even a trait with ZERO advantage would be expected to conditionally fix within the population in 4N generations on average, where N is the population size -- even faster if the population fragments for any reason, due to founder effects. Anything over a zero advantage would only increase the speed of fixation.

So even using a ZERO advantage for your hypothetical mutation, in a population of, say, 2,000 early primates, it would be expected to fix within the population (become universal) within 8000 generations -- using a generation time of 2 years, this means within 16,000 years. That's just a fleeting instant of time in primate evolution, which has taken place over a period of 40,000,000 years.

Any other questions?

And again, this goes to all the attempts to argue against irreducible complexity by positing long strings of incremental advantage. The smaller the advantage, the longer it would take to spread.

Again, no worse than 4N generations. it's not like it'll take a billion generations or anything.

Stack a few dozen (or a few hundred) additional incremental improvements on top of that and the likelihood of the chain happening in only a few hundred million years becomes infinitesimal.

It might if evolution proceeded in a sequential fashion as you falsely presume, but it doesn't, so...

When real-world amounts of genetic change are compared against real-world rates of acquisition of genetic changes, there's not the kind of "OH MY GOD, IT DOESN'T FIT" kind of result you seem to think must be inevitable. On the contrary, they're in very close accord. Or didn't your creationist sources cover that topic?

I'd also really like to know how proponents of evolution jive their theory with increasing evidence that homosexuality is a genetic trait. One would think that a trait providing such an enormous reproductive disadvantage would be wiped out in a heartbeat, on an evolutionary scale.

First, there's hardly "increasing evidence that homosexuality is a genetic trait". The jury is still *way* out on that question. But even if it were, your childishly simplistic "analysis" fails to take into account a number of confounding factors which torpedo your gradeschool-level consideration of the question. The most glaring omission is that you have failed to consider the possibility of heterozygous advantage -- OOPS! You have also failed to consider the possibility of the involvement of a counterbalancing associated trait, especially one that manifests more commonly than the homosexual "side effect" -- OOPS. Etc., etc., etc.

Genetics are nowhere near as simplistic as your poor understanding of them. There are many, many complicating factors and interactions which make your above "analysis" completely invalid. There are dozens of ways that a "homosexual gene" could have a *net* selective advantage in the genepool, even if homosexuality *itiself* was strictly disadvantageous. Go learn some biology and then get back to us.

This is not to say that the theory that random mutation and natural selection were the sole factors shaping life is false. It may well be true.

Gosh, I'm sure the biologists will be relieved to hear that you've extended your benefit of the doubt to their massive body of work, son.

But it's certainly not proven and it certainly diserves critical scrutiny.

...and it gets it, by people FAR more qualified than you or the Dover schoolboard.

And in a large part of the scientific mainstream, it doesn't get it.

This is, quite simply, complete bulls**t. You quite clearly have never actually had any experience with what actually takes place in "the scientific mainstream", and instead have just swallowed whole the creationist propaganda.

It is, as I said, treated as a religion...

This too, is complete bulls**t. Where do you "learn" these falsehoods, anyway?

with heretics ostracized, ridiculed, and shunned.

Please do not post your hallucinations as if they were facts.

There's no such thing as a "heretic" in science, nor is anyone "ostracized" or "shunned". Some people have richly earned ridicule, however, usually for presuming to try to teach their grandads to suck eggs without having any clue what in the hell they're actually talking about.

Case in point, this post of yours. You declare that evolutionary biology "deserves critical scrutiny", based on the fact that *you* personally aren't aware of how such points as you raise can and are and have been researched and settled in countless studies long before you ever came along, and *you* personally can't imagine how such issues can and have been reconciled to the satisfaction of working biologists who have been doing this kind of thing for over a century now.

You and the clueless schoolboards and hordes of anti-evolution creationists think that evolutionary biology needs to be "critically examined" by bewildered school students battered by waves of ignorant and usually grossly inaccurate and misleading claims by PTA moms and internet cowboys and other unqualified people who have the arrogant ignorance to barge into classrooms and say, "by gosh, if *I* don't know the answers to these things I thought up on my lunch break, these *MUST* be matters requiring 'critical examination' right away right here in the classroom by Biology101 students, because there's no way biologists might have actually already covered these topics before and found well-researched answers to them already!"

You guys crack me up.