Posted on 12/26/2005 8:37:06 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Questioned about the national debate over ''intelligent design,'' [Florida] Gov. Jeb Bush last week said he's more interested in seeing some evolution of the science standards that Florida public school students must meet.
He wants those standards to become more rigorous -- and raising the standards should take priority over discussing whether intelligent design has a place in the public schools' curriculum, he said.
Nationally, the discussion over whether to teach intelligent design -- a concept that says life is too complex to have occurred without the involvement of a higher force -- in public school classes heated up after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones ruled that it smacked of creationism and was a violation of church and state separation. (President Bush appointed Jones to the federal bench in 2004.)
Jones, in his decision, wrote that the concept of intelligent design ''cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents,'' according to a Knight Ridder News Service report published Wednesday in The Miami Herald. [PH here: For a more reliable source than the Herald, here's the judge's opinion (big pdf file).]
In Florida, education officials and science teachers will be reviewing the state's science curriculum in 2007 or 2008, after the governor has left office, and ''it is possible that people would make an effort to include [intelligent design] in the debate,'' Gov. Bush told The Watchdog Report on Wednesday. ''My personal belief is we ought to look at whether our standards are high first,'' he said.
SCIENCE FIRST
``The more important point is science itself and how important it is, and we right now have adequate standards that may need to be raised. But worse: Students are not given the course work necessary to do well with those standards.''
Bush, after meeting with Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick and city commissioners concerning the community's widespread power outages after hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, also noted that the federal ruling came in a case that involves Pennsylvania's Dover Area School District.
''It is one school district in Pennsylvania,'' he said.
POINT OF VIEW
The Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin's theory of evolution?
Bush said: ``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''
Nonsense.
Just to be clear, it was B Sharp you are responding to about the Cambrian Explosion, not me.
I thought there was statutory law (made by a legislature) and common law (court-set precedents). Oh well, we're talking about what the USSC and lower courts have ruled, not laws that Congress passed, whatever the proper terminology is.
Thanks. Creos mostly don't use The List-O-Links. If by chance one of them stumbles into it, he probably goes: "Whoa ... I'm not gonna look at this stuff!" and then he never goes back.
Actually my preferred scenario would be the Sergeant at Arms of the State Senate hauling them off for a trial on high crimes. The only penalty upon conviction is removal from office and never being able to hold office again.
Rational should be rationale.
In an earlier post to another poster I mentioned the lack of consistency where Dembski uses an improbability of greater than a lower bound of 10-150 as a definition of complexity, and at another time uses high compressibility as a measure of the complex. He also discusses the use of two different methods of calculating probability without making the application clear, then goes on to use only a uniform probability distribution in all of his examples.
I do not claim my opinion to be more valid than yours or Dembski's. What I did claim is that Dembski, the originator of the 'Explanatory Filter', has developed an inconsistent, and so far, unusable test for ID. The inconsistency, and the inability of the filter to produce results, can and has been shown in a number of critiques of his work.
My mistake I missed the key word, shared. 40 with the lash for me.
Will you be impeaching the 11th Circuit en banc when they overturn the Cobb Coutny ruling as well. Or jailing them?
Perhaps we'll credit you with a gift certificate for the Darwin Central Canteen and Glee Club next time you're in the Galapagos.
I'd like to ask those parents if they'd also opt out of other theories such as gravitation, relativity and the germ theory. Evolution is every bit as sound as those, after all.
When I was in school, the theory of evolution was emphasized as being THEORY. What I strongly dislike is that they are now moving toward teaching it as fact.
I am a Christian and I also love studying Science, but I honestly believe that if not one soul on the earth believed in God and if there was no Bible to refer to when studying creation, that it would still be totally wrong to teach evolution as FACT rather than theory.
Evolution is both a theory and a fact.
Populations evolve. That is not contested - we observe that happening in nature.
The Theory of Evolution is not a fact. Theories are never proven. It is, however, as solid and substantiated as all other theories are.
There is a wealth of evidence to support it. You don't have to claim that the ToE is a "fact" to make the case that it is tested and supported, or to make the case that it is the only theory that addresses the evidence in any way.
highball: I'd like to ask those parents if they'd also opt out of other theories such as gravitation, relativity and the germ theory. Evolution is every bit as sound as those, after all.
You mean something like this?
'Evil'ution; Yes/No (default: NO)
Misc Science Stuff (Praise be the IDer): Required
Misc Science Stuff (atheistic): Optional
ID based science cources: Default 'yes' unless parents object
Aetheistic science cources: Optional - written parental approval required
Now how could anyone object to this? The student and their parents are free to choose.
There's no precedent, AFAIK, for impeaching judges for anything other that flat-out corruption.
I'm old enough to remember "Impeach Earl Warren" signs after the Brown decision came down. That would have been wrong, IMO the Court was overturning Plessey for good, Constitutional reasons.
However, the "reasoning" in Roe (emanations and penumbras?! I just love all that French/Latin jargon!) is so awful I think Congress should have intervened; there are a number of things they could have done, but all you ever hear about is pushing a Constitutional amendment which (wink wink nudge nudge) would never get by 3/4 of the States.
But as for your question, no I wouldn't support removing the 11th circuit judges that rule in favor of stickers, and as I said above, Congress has never removed judges for bad rulings. It's not quite as blatant a violation of law as telling students that "Pandas" is a supplemental *biology* text.
Impeaching the Cobb Co. School Board is up to the Ga. Legislature. If I were in it, I'd certainly introduce articles.
I remember President Ford said something to the effect that "a high crime is whatever the House says it is".
You can, of course, continue to advocate the jailing of those with different opinions.
I think if you tell a kid that he can't learn about something, it only raises his inquisitiveness. Eventually, he'll learn for himself if he has half a brain.
But, if we allow home schooling where the parent chooses the curriculum (which I support), then I'm not sure the same thing shouldn't apply in public schools as to controversial topics.
I personally don't think evolution should be a controversial topic, but it obviously is. Allow the parents to deliberately keep their kids uninformed if it's that big of a deal to them. The smart kids will eventually become self-educated and it doesn't really matter what the others think either way.
I see the issue more in terms of whether fundamentalist Christian parents must have their kids learn the theory of evolution when they're adamantly opposed to it as a matter of religious faith.
I can make arguments both ways. What I can't make is an argument for is teaching ID as a valid alternative.
Why won`t you respond to post #141?
I guess Jeb really doesn't want to be president, with his continuous backstabbing of conservatives.
I'm bound by my tagline.
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