Posted on 12/28/2005 3:49:52 AM PST by PatrickHenry
US. District Judge John E. Jones III's decision to bar the teaching of ''intelligent design'' in the Dover, Pa., public school district on grounds that it is a thinly veiled effort to introduce a religious view of the world's origins is welcome for at least two reasons.
First, it exposes the sham attempt to take through the back door what proponents have no chance of getting through the front door. Jones rebuked advocates of ''intelligent design,'' saying they repeatedly lied about their true intentions. He noted that many of them had said publicly that their intent was to introduce into the schools a biblical account of creation. Jones properly wondered how people who claim to have such strong religious convictions could lie, thus violating prohibitions in the book that they proclaim as their source of truth and standard for living.
Culture has long passed by advocates of intelligent design, school prayer and numerous other beliefs and practices that were once tolerated, even promoted, in public education. People who think that they can reclaim the past have been watching too many repeats of Leave it to Beaver on cable television. Those days are not coming back anytime soon, if at all.
Culture, including the culture of education, now opposes what it once promoted or at least tolerated. The secular left, which resists censorship in all its forms when it comes to sex, library books and assigned materials that teach the ''evils'' of capitalism and ''evil America,'' is happy to censor any belief that can be tagged ``religious.''
Jones' ruling will be appealed and after it is eventually and predictably upheld by a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees (Jones was named to the federal bench by President Bush, who has advocated the teaching of creation), those who have tried to make the state do its job for them will have yet another opportunity to wise up.
This leads to the second reason for welcoming Jones' ruling. It should awaken religious conservatives to the futility of trying to make a secular state reflect their beliefs. Too many people have wasted too much time and money since the 1960s, when prayer and Bible reading were outlawed in public schools, trying to get these and a lot of other things restored. The modern secular state should not be expected to teach Genesis 1, or any other book of the Bible, or any other religious text.
That the state once did such things, or at least did not undermine what parents taught their children, is irrelevant. The culture in which we now live no longer reflects the beliefs of our grandparents' generation.
For better, or for worse (and a strong case can be made that things are much worse), people who cling to the beliefs of previous generations have been given another chance to do what they should have been doing all along.
Religious parents should exercise the opportunity that has always been theirs. They should remove their children from state schools with their ''instruction manuals'' for turning them into secular liberals and place them in private schools -- or home school them -- where they will be taught the truth, according to their parents' beliefs. Too many parents who would never send their children to a church on Sunday that taught doctrines they believed to be wrong have had no problem placing them in state schools five days a week where they are taught conflicting doctrines and ideas.
Private schools or home schooling costs extra money (another reason to favor school choice) and extra time, but what is a child worth? Surely, a child is more valuable than material possessions.
Our children are our letters to the future. It's up to parents to decide whether they want to send them ''first class'' or ``postage due.''
Rulings such as this should persuade parents who've been waffling to take their kids and join the growing exodus from state schools into educational environments more conducive to their beliefs.
I don't think running away from society helps kids. Eventually they have to face reality, if only on these forums.
Look at how surprised some FReepers are to find conservatives who accept mainstream science.
Sorry, you missed the humor. That was a political jab on how much society has morphed into relativism, not on biological diversity.
Altho - this is humor in case you miss it too - the amount of tattooing and piercings among the very young might make my case.
The fossil record is now supplemented by DNA evidence -- the same kind of inference used in courtrooms to demonstrate identity or relationship.
I agree there. All the fossil record can do is contribute evidence to the theory of common descent - and this it does - there is clear progression in vertebrate forms in successively dated strata, for example. One can't prove that transitionals are "direct" ascendents of their successive forms without DNA, but they can, in many cases, show a clear relation by morphological similarities.
Fossil evidence is not the only line of evidence used to support evolution, though. There is also:
1) Morphological continuity
2) Biogeographical distribution
3) Genetic analysis
4) Observed instances of evolutionary dimorphism & speciation
Inquiries along all these lines have lent support to the same scientific conclusion. This spells out, in the end, a strong scientific theory. To consider an "alternative" to evolution, one has to provide an explanation that uniquely accounts for all this information, not just a single piece. Granted, the theory isn't complete (scientific theories seldom, if ever, are), but this lack of completeness does not translate to complete uncertainty. Evolution remains the only coherent & successful scientific explanation of biological origins.
Why did Gould have to resort to "punctuated equilibrium" to explain the lack of fossil evidence for transition at the species level ?
Whether punctuated equilibrium is a real phenomenon or an apparent illusion caused by the inherent paucity of the fossil record is a genuine scientific debate, last I heard. Note that it is a debate over the specific details of evolution, not whether or not it occurred. Doubt over whether evolution occurs at a steady pace or in irregular cyclical "spurts" doesn't cast doubt on the general coherence of the theory, only some of its specific details. The specific details of every scientific theory are under constant refinement and improvement, without exception. The continual refinement of theories is not a weakness, but rather the primary strength and power of the scientific method. Such refinements can't just be stabs in the air though; they have to take into account all existing data.
Without seeing those things, it would be hard to say whether or not the judge is biased. Most creationists have religious and secular reasons for wanting both sides to be presented.
...and they would present the secular reasons to the court, because the religious reasons are irrelevant to the court. I can certainly see a biased judge considering that a 'lie' if he had an agenda. But we all know judges never have personal agendas, don't we....
That's not my objection. What I find offensive about the ID gang (and not ID itself, as a matter of faith) is that they're fraudulently pushing it as science -- which it manifestly is not.
Exactly. The school board in the Dover case knew it wasn't science, which is why they had to hide their true intentions (and the money trail).
I also would like to give Cal Thomas kudos for admitting that the school board lied, and that the lies are unacceptable - something very few creationists on these threads are willing to do. I might not agree with everything he has to say, but at least he's intellectually consistent.
You have had the opportunity to see these things. I have seen you posting on these threads the last few months. The perjury at the trial was widely discussed. It is discussed in the Judge's decision.
I disagree with your opinion of evolutionists. As for creationists, I thought the question was of intelligent design rather than divine design.
As to using scientific methods, I am a professional scientist with a doctorate in Physics, Quantum Electronics to be more precise, and I am published.
Science and the scientific method is not about dogma or faith it's about objective truth. It is not democratic either. A poll of "scientists" may produce a majority opinion but is no more worthy than a political poll, which is what it usually is anyway.
Life on this planet could either have begun spontaneously or by design (divine intervention not required) -- the logic is overwhelming. The question is which is the most likely given the current evidence -- including evidence of single celled bacteria, with DNA, only a few hundred millions years older than the planet's coalesence while it was still mostly molten and had a CO2/Methane atmosphere. Shoving the question off-planet, as there is a modern trend to do, merely avoids the issue and replaces science with dogma -- as of course using divine creation as the answer does too.
The problem is that there is no possible evidence that is inconsistent with divine intervention, and it is impossible to do science when every possible causal chain is equivalent.
Please explain how teaching the possibility of ID could bring about any negative effects, let alone your apocalyptic (sorry for the biblical reference) assertion.
Since gravity isn't completely understood by science, anything that is taught about it might be wrong. You best get busy removing it from the text books. Lest evil be perpetrated upon the land.
Also, since you are so certain that science has all the answers, you may want to add a chapter to the text books before the one on unintelligent design. It should explain where all the matter in the universe came from and when. Any scientific explanation will do.
Personally I'd rather see an abolition of the Dept of Education across the board. THEN an abolition of Government Run schools.
Make them all private and let the market decide where our money is spent and what the quality of teachers there are that teach.
Teaching ID in the schools is akin to teaching girls that babies are brought by a stork. If stork birth were included in school health classes would there be outrage?
Actually this is a lousy analogy. One can prove over and over that babies are born instead of being brought by storks just by spending a weekend in a birthing room at a hospital. One cannot prove that ID is wrong. There is no birthing room. No proof that it is wrong.
Well, first off, creation or I.D. should never be taught in science. The data provided by these people does not provide the basis to create a proper scientific theory that can be tested over and over. Usually it provides data that can be disproven.
Do you have proof that macroevolution occurred?
In the origin of species debate, not only do the evolutionist deny the holes in their explanation, they deny the right to question these gaps. The intelligent designers fail in many ways, but are not so dogmatic about criticism, although they do not like being asked to explain who designed the intelligence in the first place -- any all the philosophical flaws that flow from that question.
most intellegent statement on the thread.
Nonsense. Evolutionists are always questioning their theories. ID simply isn't a scientific claim; why compound the imperfection of the Theory of Evolution with the horse manure that is ID?
Why is evolution a scientific claim?
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