Posted on 12/14/2005 12:02:42 PM PST by 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.
You make several false assumptions. First, you assume that homosexuals don't have children. Second, you assume that there can be no advantage to a species in having non-reproducing individuals. Didn't you learn about the birds and the bees? Particularly the bees?
Hmmm. Let me get out my copy of the Constitution here:
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or singling out any particular field of science for special treatment
Well, gosh darn it, you're right! How could I possibly have missed that after all these years of reading the Constitution?
By the way, if the students of Cobb County equate "theory" with "guess", their schools have a bigger problem than a few stickers.
No, I assume that homosexuality is a reproductive disadvantage.
Second, you assume that there can be no advantage to a species in having non-reproducing individuals
No, I assume that evolution doesn't care a bit about "advantage to a species," it cares about the reproductive characteristics of an individual. Species don't pass on genes; individuals do. If you have a tendency to homosexuality, you are less likely to pass on your genes than an individual who has no such tendency. Evolutionary theory says that such tendencies should be gone in the blink of an eye.
Didn't you learn about the birds and the bees? Particularly the bees?
You mean the bees who are all genetically related to their queen?
Being homosexual is obviously a disadvantage, but disadvantages linger in any population because they can be paired with or associated with advantages. A lot of women like gay men, and it is women who do the mate selection.
Your baseless claim that I don't understand is duly noted as a cop-out.
Look up "phenotype".
Why? I already know the definition.
But thanks for the neat idea. I think from now on I'll debate by insisting that people look up words.
A lot of women like gay men, and it is women who do the mate selection.
Uh, the majority of human evolution didn't take place in the days of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and men bringing over flowers and begging for sex. No, we're talkin' caveman days here, where you clocked your woman on the head and dragged her over by the hair... and where, more to the point, competition for mates was fierce and primarily physical. A disinclination to engage in the competition would put one at a serious disadvantage when it comes to passing on one's genes.
Complexity is not an arguement for design. Snowflakes are comlicated structures and no two are identical, but their formation is governed strictly by the chemical and thermodynamic characteristics of water. Therefore complexity does not prove design.
Also, specific research would need to be conducted to explore each instance of interdependence, but I'' briefly dissect the flagellum argument popularized by Behe.
THere has been research that traces the genetic history of such a biological structure. THe complexity argument that leaving out a componenet makes it non functional is a red herring. Such an argument fails to consider that an efficient structure like the flagellum evolved from a less complicated one. In reality, evidence shows that the flagellum evoultion comes from a more complicated structure where parts are removed to give the final structure. It's like building an arch. You need a support structure around it before the arch can be completed. You can't simply build it by straight addition of components. COmponents must be reomved to get the final structure.
There is a lot of research and understanding on these subfields of evolution and it would be good for your to review them. Much of this has been addressed by people more knowledgeable than I on the deep parts of evolution.
Cartoon caveman placemark
I didn't say it was. I said it was an argument against random mutation and natural selection. Design isn't the only alternative. And, for the record, the stickers which are the subject of this thread say nothing about design.
Therefore complexity does not prove design.
A mischaracterization of the argument from complexity, which I can only assume is deliberate.
Who says all of them are required for a reproductive advantage?
I don't have the time or inclination to get into a large debate over the merits of evolutionary theory at the moment. 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. And that to claim that the stickers constitute an unconstitutional "establishment of religion" is absurd on its face.
There are legitimate criticisms, but you don't feel like discussing them?
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