[Jeb] Bush: Science comes before intelligent design [Jeb gets the message]

Miami Herald ^ | 26 December 2005 | Daniel A. Ricker

[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.''

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"The Watchdog Report" mentioned in the article is Ricker's own newsletter. He's the author of the article. Apparently the interview with Jeb was deemed important enough that the Miami Herald agreed to run it.

[longshadow]

Your Spectator article is not evidence. It's a vague mumble that some "scientists" somewhere, mostly at the un-Discovery Institute in Seattle, think they see evidence in complexity.

Until they get cross-examined under oath; then the truth comes out, as is reflected in the this quote from the Dover decision regarding the teastimony of Prof. Behe:

On cross-examination, Professor Behe admitted that: "There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred." (22:22-23 (Behe)).

[emphasis added]

There you have it, sports fans; Prof. Behe admitted under oath that there are no, nada, zero "....peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred." Dover will, in time be seen as ID's Waterloo.

[101st-Eagle]

What it means is that science is self correcting.

So science is both self-correcting yet ever changing? I know, we will have completely correct answers someday. Unified field law anyone?

[highball]

There you have it, sports fans; Prof. Behe admitted under oath that there are no, nada, zero "....peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."

That was after he claimed that there was. He's no more honest than the board members - a pack of liars, the lot of them.

Dover will, in time be seen as ID's Waterloo.

We can only hope. PC in any form must be destroyed.

[HitmanLV]

Why do some folks consider this a conservative issue?

[PatrickHenry]

Why do some folks consider this a conservative issue?

Some people seem to think that conservatism is all about establishing a theocracy.

[HitmanLV]

I don't even see the theocracy thingy here - that is, rule by religious leaders. This is only peripheral to that at best. It's not conservative. It's not theocratic. I don't know what it is.

[PatrickHenry]

I don't even see the theocracy thingy here - that is, rule by religious leaders.

Well, that's true. The term "theocracy" isn't technically right. I've never seen any of them actually call for that. But they do want government to operate by religious principles -- their religious principles. Banishing evolution is just the first step. Were they actually in power, it's hard to imagine how far they'd carry things. They'd probably revert to the way they used to be in many places -- Sunday closing laws, that kind of thing. Probably few of them have thought it through.