Posted on 01/04/2006 12:55:35 PM PST by A. Pole
Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years—not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade—haven’t driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity.
Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones’ anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools’ Darwinian monopoly.
Jones’ contempt for the “breathtaking inanity” of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism’s “gaps/problems” is unlikely to intimidate the millions who find evolution only partly persuasive—at best.
Millions? Scores of millions might be more like it. A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God. A Kansas newspaper poll last summer found 55 percent support for exposing public-school students to critiques of Darwinism.
This accounts for the widespread desire that children be able to factor in some alternatives to the notion that “natural selection” has brought us, humanly speaking, where we are. Well, maybe it has. But what if it hasn’t? The science classroom can’t take cognizance of such a possibility? Under the Jones ruling, it can’t. Jones discerns a plot to establish a religious view of the question, though the religion he worries about exists only in the possibility that God, per Genesis 1, might intrude celestially into the discussion. (Intelligent-designers, for the record, say the power of a Creator God is just one of various possible counter-explanations.)
Not that Darwinism, as Jones acknowledges, is perfect. Still, “the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent scientific propositions.”
Ah. We see now: Federal judges are the final word on good science. Who gave them the power to exclude even whispers of divinity from the classroom? Supposedly, the First Amendment to the Constitution: the odd part here being the assumption that the “free speech” amendment shuts down discussion of alternatives to an establishment-approved concept of Truth.
With energy and undisguised contempt for the critics of Darwinism, Jones thrusts out the back door of his courthouse the very possibility that any sustained critique of Darwinism should be admitted to public classrooms.
However, the writ of almighty federal judges runs only so far, as witness their ongoing failure to convince Americans that the Constitution requires almost unobstructed access to abortion. Pro-life voters and activists, who number in the millions, clearly aren’t buying it. We’re to suppose efforts to smother intelligent design will bear larger, lusher fruit?
The meeting place of faith and reason is proverbially darkish and unstable—a place to which the discussants bring sometimes violently different assumptions about truth and where to find it. Yet, the recent remarks of the philosopher-theologian Michael Novak make great sense: “I don’t understand why in the public schools we cannot have a day or two of discussion about the relative roles of science and religion.” A discussion isn’t a sermon or an altar call, is it?
Equally to the point, what does secular intolerance achieve in terms of revitalizing public schools, rendering them intellectually catalytic? As many religious folk see it, witch-hunts for Christian influences are an engrained part of present public-school curricula. Is this where they want the kids? Might private schools—not necessarily religious ones—offer a better alternative? Might home schooling?
Alienating bright, energized, intellectually alert customers is normally accounted bad business, but that’s the direction in which Darwinian dogmatists point. Thanks to them and other such foes of free speech in the science classroom—federal judges included—we seem likely to hear less and less about survival of the fittest and more and more about survival of the least curious, the least motivated, the most gullible.
When I read the title, I wasn't sure if it was Scientologists, Moonies, or Flat-Earth theorists who were complaining that their views weren't being taught in science classrooms. Once I started reading the article, I found out that it's much worse. :)
Whenever the subject of ID vs Darwinism comes up its always a laugher for me to see how sensitive and defensive Darwinists are over the precious theory. You would think it was religion to them......
And sometimes the Darwinists are down right mean...ouch...
You debate them at your own peril...the insults and sarcasm are thick enough to cut with a knife...still its fun anyway..:)
Interestingly, Lysenko (or rather, Lamark)may have somewhat more validity than once thought. One of the hot topics in molecular and cancer genetics is non-Mendelian inheritance, in particular, epigenetic inheritance that allows for acquired patterns of expression to be passed from generation to generation.
"Science by itself amoral - it can find ways to cure diseases and the way to poison people."
Organized religion (not 'God', per se) is also amoral. It has found ways to provide aid to people in need and has found ways (and reasons) to kill those which it deems to be witches/unbelievers/infidels,etc.
Howdy, Electric Strawberry, I wore the patch in Vietnam 1967-68
However, my purpose in responding to your comment is to agree with it.
Evolution is based on science--testable and retestable propositions.
ID and Creationism, etc, etc, are based on faith, which cannot be tested or proved, no matter how much their backers raise objections.
The point is that SCIENCE and FAITH are like two ships passing in the night--they may see each other, but they can never come alongside each other or come into congruence.
I have been recently drummed out of my Sunday School class for expresssing such sentiments.
Oh well, such is life amid extreme religionists.
ID and Creationism is the depths of ignorance and if it becomes widespread enough, it will mark the begining of the end of America as this land slips into the 3rd world.
Nothing like a little hysteria to show one's true colors. LOL
Nothing, as far as the court is concerned. Of course, his ideas are discredited and would not be suitable for a biology class, and any school board that adds it to the science curriculum should face a furious constituency. (History would be another matter.) But as I said, his theories are perfectly legal to teach.
Are the courts going to ban all theories which do not fit in the present canon of what students might be exposed to?
Uh...did you actually read the judge's ruling? What language or logic did you find in it that would ban the teaching of Lysenkoism?
From what I have read from various sources is that this decision is saying is that a teacher cannot even mention the fact that there are theories other than evolution.
The only thing the school board was allowing was for teachers to make a brief statement that not everyone agrees with evolution, there are opposing theories, and students should make up their own minds. There wasn't even anything being taught about any other theory. Just that brief statement.
For evols to get so bent out of shape over something like that shows they are more interested in brainwashing students than in educating them.
The problem with ID is that it posits something (super-natural intelligence that guides evolution) that is not scientifically testable. That very fact alone means that it is not a valid scientific theory. Therefore, it is not valid to teach ID in the science classrooms of public schools.
Simple logic is all that is required to reach this conclusion, but unfortunately "activist judges" are required to stop those who would turn science into public-opinion polls.
Does the Theory of Evolution have problems? Of course it does. So do our theories dealing with particle physics, for example, but you don't hear activists trying to push non-scientific alternatives. But the so-called "Science Establishment" can and does modify those theories as better explanations come about. ID is not one of those better explanations.
Reading the court transcripts is an excercise of perseverance, but I was struck by how comically Michael Behe (a leading proponent for ID) evaded stating the mechanism behind ID after having been caught to have said, "Intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on the proposed mechanism of how complex biological structures arose."
(www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/trans/2005_1018_day11_pm.pdf page 63ff)
For proof of this argument, I highly recommend reading in today's WSJ the review of Christine Rosen's book "My Fundamentalist Education". This woman was taught that the world was created in 6 24 hour days, and that all the dinosaurs drowned in the Great Flood. Yet, she survived, and wrote a book about it.
Add to it inter species genetic exchange and cooperation? Or reverse writing of information INTO DNA?
But such new (or old) ideas might be illegal in American classrooms! What would happen with blind randomness and Dickensian XIX century struggle for survival?
Maybe teaching about the genes should be made illegal? Genes were introduced AFTER Darwin by a ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK!
"Organized religion (not 'God', per se) is also amoral. It has found ways to provide aid to people in need and has found ways (and reasons) to kill those which it deems to be witches/unbelievers/infidels,etc."
Ahh, but when said organized religion killed those witches, unbelievers, infidels, etc, it was done in the name of God (and thus though to be the moral thing to do). This is not amoral but rather immoral.
Science, on the other hand, is truly amoral because morality is irrelevant to it (though not irrelevant to its practitioners).
I'm a Christian, but I was heartily in favor of taking prayer and Bible study out of public school. Most kids made a mockery out of these things. Practice religion in your home, at your place of worship, and how you relate to other people.
Are you saying that if in some remote corner of Alabama the local school board lets creationism to be taught in school this small puncture will explode the balloon of American greatness?
I think that Celebration of Diversity and homosexual training does more harm. And the way to the 3rd world is through the open borders.
Could you mention in the science classroom that it is wrong to steal? "It is not a valid scientific theory"!
A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God.Now there's a way to do science: poll the general public.
By that measure, we should be teaching flying saucers in modern history class.
The difference being that I'm talking about something with a basis in science while you are not.
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