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.
No he's a physics major but he would be doing fine as a bio major.
My point was that there are so many things wrong with the public schools that a child is better off in a school with far fewer problem areas (and I consider creationism a problem). It's easier to fix that one thing than to try to fix a myriad of things.
We homeschoooled when and where it was not even legal to do so.
It's great for smart parents who are good educators and who have the finacial status for one to stay home.
That's maybe 2% of the population. At best.
I'm willing to pay for everyone's kids to get a crack at better opportunities than their parents and to keeeep the US a first world country.
I'd like to find a voucher system that would work but haven't seen one yet.
What do you mean by "only a theory?" Can you tell me what would be better than a theory; that is, what evolution would need to achieve to be worth teaching in science?
I can understand how an unknown word should be pronounced from what I learned many, many years ago. I love to read and always have. I do not know why they changed the way language was taught since it was so easy to learn how a word should sound. Just like New Math. Whatever happened to that?
I seriously expect in the next fifty years, for there to be a culture gap between the haves and have-nots. It won't be because of inherited wealth.
It will be because Christians will teach their children at home and in private schools, and the masses of have-nots will be taught political correctness at the expense of Reading Writing and Mathematics in the public schools.
I can live with the fact that my grandchildren will rule over the masses because of the education I give them.
It's amazing how well people used to read. Just look at a McGuffy reader for the 8th grade, this would be college level today. Not to mention popular literature, Ben Hur was perhaps the top selling novel of the 19th century. How far we have fallen.
As for math, we never had a problem with that (thank God!) but as you point out if there is a wacky public school experiment (New Math) the schools feel uninhibited in testing them on their captive audience.
Not completely, but the Dept of Education needs to go first, along with these stupid mandates from DC such as No Child Left Behind.
We can deal with the rest at other points of opportunity. The state and local levels will be much harder to clean up, admittedly.
You are singing my tune! I hate the leviathan that Federal education mandates have created.
They may, only because the public schools have dumbed down so badly, not because home schools are so great.
Another prediction: Your grandchildren will accept evolution as the fact it is.
I've seen the church I grew up in go from accepting science, teaching explicitly that science and Genesis do not conflict if you interpret it correctly, to now being a backward anti-science congregation. That will reverse, and trends often do, when it becomes obvious that teaching anti-science does a church more harm than good.
The ID wave has come, and gone. The "scientists" that testified in favor of ID at Dover were forced to admit that evolution occurs. The term "Intelligent Evolution" is now being circulated. When the Discovery Institute guys made the media rounds on Fox News last week, it was an obvious last ditch effort to get donations from the true believers. It's their last stand.
Just as it is with leftist ideology, that becomes more shrill as it goes down like the Wicked Witch of the West splashed with water, the ID promoters are giving it one last desperate shot.
But they've already failed miserably.
I happen to believe exactly 180 opposite from you on the subject of evolution vs ID, but we are in perfect agreement on the subject of government education. Hopefully, these silly debates over science will evolve into a useful discussion about government intrusion into areas where it has no business. I can't say I'm happy about the judge's decision, only that I wish he would have gone farther and abolished the entire public school system and altogether and mandated vouchers.
I mean, if we're going to give legislative and executive powers to the judiciary, let's at least hope for some good results.
I remember reading something in senior English class in old English. I think it was Chaucer. I was one of a very few who could understand what the author was saying in that language. I do not know if I could do as well today but it was interesting. The others could read it but it did not make sense to them. I was in a book store about 2 or 3 months ago. I saw the edition of the Dick and Jane elementary school readers. I bought one. It is amazing how easy it was to read that book way back then. Thought I would keep it for old time's sake.
"No, it is the content and quality of their publications, as you know, that is the real measure of success"
Only if success is measured by your implied metric. No one bothers to count the number of papers published by the greats of science, they only measure the quality of their work. One published paper containing a new seminal truth is worth much more that a lifetime of pot boilers, regardless of how often reviewd by collegial peers.
I doubt that any paper on "intelligent design" as an explanation for life on this planet is publishable by the establishment.
"What specific question(s) do you feel are being denied the right of being brought to fruition, and what accessible means do you propose to test such questions?"
The production of Amino acids in a non-reducing atmosphere.
The evolution of DNA to complex form without evidence of intermediate forms.
The rapid (300m year) evolution of aerobic bacteria.
The CT boundary discontinuity of evolutionary pathways.
I doubt that they will be Evos. You may not know it yet, but parents know nothing, but Opas know EVERYTHING.
I happen to have a fairly strong education in science, as a whole, not deep into much, but I have a very broad understanding of many sciences.
I don't get all uptight by the attacks from evos. I believe the BIble is GOd's WOrd and is absolutely the truth. I also believe that no matter how vehemently lies attack the truth, the truth will always have the final victory.
For example, no matter that the entire human race thought the world was flat, it is still spherical.
No matter how much the Aristotle theory that everything consisted of four elements was accepted, we now see there are many more.
I am not seating in the least over the truth and what will be the outcome. I am only concerned that my descendants will ignore the truth which will make the further descendants unaware of the truth at all. SO long as I am alive, I can be sure they will at least know of the truth. And if I am healthy, I expect to be around to the fifth generation.
Piltdown Man was a fraud BECAUSE it did not fit into the evolutionary theory? I don't think you mean to suggest that if Piltdown Man had fit into the evolutionary theory, it would have been accepted despite the fact that the teeth were filed and skull artificially altered.
err, that should say, "I am not SWEATING"
The endogenous retroviral evidence has matched the predictions of common descent.
How about something larger than a virus. Viruses have some very unusual ways of behavior more mechainistic than biological. Viral reproduction is markedly different from other biological entities.
Todays DNA testing supports the fact that all living things on earth are descended from a common ancestor.
How?
"See the link in my post #167 for more information on this."
Thats good info. Either way, we both know that this did not happen in six literal days.
Evidently you haven't understood what an endogenous retrovirus is, and therefore you cannot yet understand why they support the theory of evolution. The endogenous retroviral evidence that supports common descent has absolutely nothing to do with viral reproduction. I suggest that you read the relevant articles on Ichneumon's homepage (look for the word retrovirus).
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