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Could Jones' Ruling Effect Evolution Education?
Capitol Hill Journal ^ | Jan. 9, 2006 | Jim Bendewald

Posted on 01/09/2006 12:02:22 PM PST by WatchYourself

Not every evolutionist is ecstatic about the decision Judge John Jones made on December 20, 2005. In a startling article published January 5, 2006, Lloyd Eby, a philosophy professor from George Washington University, stated that the judge overstepped his bounds when he defined "science" in his 139 page ruling.

As a result of Jones' statements Eby wrote, "I predict that sometime in the future -- say a hundred years hence -- this case and Judge's Jones opinion in it will turn out to be seen as having been like the Catholic Church's case against Galileo. Except that this time the winning and losing sides will have switched; the proponents of evolution and scientific naturalism will by then have lost the war against religion and ID, even though they won the Dover battle." Possibly the prediction could come true much sooner than Eby thinks.

The overstepping slip by the judge amplifies one of the major arguments creationists have voiced against evolution from the beginning of this debate -- evolution is not science! While evolutionists prefer an obscure definition of science, Judge Jones has now put it into law. This is very exciting for critics of evolution because Jones has made "science" definitive. The ramifications in the future court cases could overturn evolution education in public schools, which is exactly what Eby has predicted and is exactly the opposite of what Jones intended.

(Excerpt) Read more at capitolhilljournal.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevo; crevolist; evolution
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To: Right Wing Professor
If you're teaching evolution to schoolkids, you focus on creatures they know.

Which of course entails even more subjectivity. As it stands, it is not worms or whales that write textbook evolution and attempt to document it as a progression from the simple to the more complex, sort of like this . . .

Now, maybe you don't believe evolution has anything to do with arguments from the simple to the more complex. Perhaps you should give certain members of your choir a talking to.

61 posted on 01/09/2006 9:00:42 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Coyoteman

I wouldn't go so far as to state that scientists in general have an agenda. I respect science and respect most scientists.

However, the minority of scientists who have an agenda do push things to the left. And funding and tenure issues no doubt play a part. That's why Christian objections to science are forcefully slapped down while environmentalist, feminist, or egalitarian objections are met with silence and sometimes capitulation.

A scientist at war with the local NOW chapter might indeed lose funding or tenure. Warring with Christians would produce an opposite result.

Remember Gould & Lewontin's war against Wilson? And the widespread silence in the scientific community over the Harvard president's gender remarks a few months ago? And does anyone seriously believe that homosexuality was reclassed as normal by the APA because of evidence and not ideological pressure?


62 posted on 01/09/2006 9:02:22 PM PST by puroresu (Conservatism is an observation; Liberalism is an ideology)
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To: webstersII
Really? I just assumed that you were a college professor. Every professor I've ever known (yes, I've known quite a few) "did" funding and tenure.

People who have a vested interest can't be objective. I'm sure you've seen that to be true in other people. And, yes, I agree with you that the Creationists on this thread are not objective, because they have alot at stake. But then, neither are the evolutionists, either.

Thank you for that. I have taught college classes, but only on a very intermittent basis.

I'm an archaeologist, I work for a living.

As far as scientists towing the line? Many of them don't have the sense to play politics and tow the line. They live for their research, and that's about all they do.

I knew an old archaeologist once. When asked, "What will you do when you can't do research any more," he said, "I will die." And he did.

Don't characterize scientists by the example of those who get their faces in the media all the time. Many of those who make the real discoveries you will never hear of.

63 posted on 01/09/2006 9:08:43 PM PST by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Coyoteman
Indeed, you quoted the second sentence accurately, but I did not write it in a manner that serves my position. It is alarming I did not catch the sweeping implications. Here is a better way to word the second sentence, albeit longer:
I will question the veracity of geology, radiometric dating, and any part of modern science that might support an old Earth and will continue to do so until I am convinced these methods are scientifically accurate.

I deleted the reference to evolution because I accept the fact of evolution on a limited scale. Certain critters were obviously designed to evolve within limits.

64 posted on 01/09/2006 9:12:37 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Coyoteman

Everyone posting on this subject has a dog in this fight, so no one here would be considered very objective. As you said of most scientists, "They live for their research, and that's about all they do." As I said, they want to keep their research dollars going, so it is difficult for them to be objective in that situation.

Well, it's late and I've got to take my non-objective self off to bed now.


65 posted on 01/09/2006 9:17:17 PM PST by webstersII
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To: webstersII
I was not surprised to read that at the end of the article:

"Jim Bendewald, MDiv., is a staff writer for New Media Alliance and co-author of the book, Evolution Shot Full of Holes. He also developed the CD-ROM, Evidence the Bible Is True. See more evidence at:
http://CreationEvidence.blogspot.com
http://www.EvidencePress.com."

after reading this passage:
"Evolution is principally metaphysics based on many unprovable assumptions. There is no empirical evidence for macro-evolution, and the evidence that some call micro-evolution is simple adaptation. The extrapolation of evidence from adaptation to macro-evolution is not empirical science. Uniformitarian geology and interpreting the fossil record in favor of evolution is based upon the unprovable assumption that evolution is true. The Big Bang is also based on the assumption that evolution is true. There is much better evidence to suggest that the universe has a center and an edge which is contrary to the Big Bang Theory. See the DVD Starlight and Time for an understandable explanation for these cosmological issues."


All he is saying is:
"Hey YECs, everything you believe in is here!
Be good YECs and buy my books and the DVD of my friend!"
66 posted on 01/10/2006 2:17:34 AM PST by MHalblaub (Tell me in four more years (No, I did not vote for Kerry))
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To: Fester Chugabrew
Now, maybe you don't believe evolution has anything to do with arguments from the simple to the more complex. Perhaps you should give certain members of your choir a talking to.

So your argument is that a horse (Tertiary) is more complex than a shark (Devonian)? Based on what?

67 posted on 01/10/2006 5:17:38 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: puroresu
Remember Gould & Lewontin's war against Wilson?

Wilson won.

And the widespread silence in the scientific community over the Harvard president's gender remarks a few months ago?

Steven Pinker, widely reviled by even the more reasonable of IDers on this site, spoke up forcefully for Summers, as did many other scientists.

Back in the 80's and 90's, scientists like Paul Gross fought a successful war against feminists trying to intrude their ideology into science. It was that war that turned me into a conservative, as I appreciated the threat to science from the far left. The threat is now on the other side. It is fundamentalists who are trying to force their ideology into science, often using the same tools the leftists use. SSDD. (Same stuff, different doer)

68 posted on 01/10/2006 5:25:43 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: webstersII

"The Myth of Objectivity is a very interesting subject on which to speculate"

Imagine the howls of protest I got when I asserted that while Reason is a great tool, that it becomes falsity to suggest that one can make a decision based on Reason. The maiden Reason simply says "P or Q, but betwixt them; I don't think I ever knew"


69 posted on 01/10/2006 5:49:56 AM PST by mdmathis6 (Proof against evolution:"Man is the only creature that blushes, or needs to" M.Twain)
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To: wfallen

The theory of evolution deals with everything that has happened SINCE the beginning of life. It doesn't deal with the creation of life in the first place.


70 posted on 01/10/2006 6:07:13 AM PST by LiveBait
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To: Right Wing Professor; All

What has damaged the Public school system more in the past
40 years....some creationists or the socialist ideology of the left?

What crazy anti-religious weed have you been smoking?

Feminism has inserted itself into our school systems and the education, science departments get cut in favor of greenist enviromentalist ideology. Instead of wholesome basic education, our public school students contend with multiculturism. Traditional western history is out in favor of revisionist anti-American one world government civics. In some schools, science may be taught by the gym teacher.

So are you saying religious folk caused all this? Religious Christian folk aren't plying the pro-homosexual education and culture in our schools. They aren't demanding that Muslim education be foisted on our students as it is in California...just demanding an equal voice The anti-religious have done their jobs well in much of our nation's public schools, pockets of resistance such as Kansas or Dover notwithstanding. You have your secular school systems already...now our nation will very soon live with the results of that culture.

So I demand an answer from all of you Evo folks...has Christianity ruined the public schools over the past 40 years?...has its absence ruined the schools? I dare anyone say that it is Christians that are really a threat to the public school systems and keep a straight face....in light of the ineffectiveness of the dumbed down school systems we now see!

Can the highly exalted science Elite reform the schools?....good luck getting that one past the NEA and the unions!(though science folk and religious folk could band together to get the job done)


71 posted on 01/10/2006 6:10:45 AM PST by mdmathis6 (Proof against evolution:"Man is the only creature that blushes, or needs to" M.Twain)
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To: Right Wing Professor
Back in the 80's and 90's, scientists like Paul Gross fought a successful war against feminists trying to intrude their ideology into science.

Successful? How can you say that considering the public policies instituted after claims to scientific research-- i.e. The Violence Against Woman Act, affirmative action for woman applicants to engineering schools, Ritalin prescriptions for rowdy young boys etc.

Summers certainly got slapped down.

Feminism is dying because what it advocated has been instituted and the average person can see that it is disasterous -- with no help whatsover from academia.

72 posted on 01/10/2006 6:38:53 AM PST by Tribune7
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To: mdmathis6

Great points!!


73 posted on 01/10/2006 6:39:27 AM PST by Tribune7
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To: Tribune7
Successful? How can you say that considering the public policies instituted after claims to scientific research-- i.e. The Violence Against Woman Act,

...whose renewal Bush signed yesterday? It wasn't a result of scientific research.

affirmative action for woman applicants to engineering schools,

...wasn't a result of scientific research (scientific research says you should expect there to be more male engineers). And it's too bad Bush didn't make a principled decision to fight AA. He betrayed those of us in academia who've been fighting it for years. People like Daly and Wilson, like Kimura, like Pinker have been fighting feminists for years on sex differences. Daly and Wilson, and Pinker, have also both been reviled by creationists beause they're evolutionary psychologists. You're on the side of feminism, guy, not science.

Ritalin prescriptions for rowdy young boys etc.

...again, research would suggest that young boys tend to be rowdier, and schools should accommodate that. The policy is counter to science, not bolstered by science.

74 posted on 01/10/2006 6:52:05 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: mdmathis6

That's a good one!


75 posted on 01/10/2006 6:54:24 AM PST by webstersII
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To: mdmathis6
What has damaged the Public school system more in the past 40 years....some creationists or the socialist ideology of the left?

You appear to think two wrongs make a right. That multiculturalists have attacked education does not make it right for you to do so. Particularly when you enlist postmodernists to fight for you, as Thomas More enlisted Steve Fuller in Dover.

In fact, creationists haven't fought the cult of diversity; they've bought into it, trying to use the language of multiculturalism to claim their ideology should be taught also.

So I demand an answer from all of you Evo folks...has Christianity ruined the public schools over the past 40 years?...has its absence ruined the schools?

Pretty much neither. Christianity has been on the sidelines. Public schools aren't ruined, BTW; my kids have gotten a good education from them. But maybe if conservatives spent more time fighting for high standards and less time trying to sneak religion in through the back door, they could be stronger still.

76 posted on 01/10/2006 6:58:42 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: JustRight
Unless this case is appealed, it is not a precedent outside Pennsylvania.

And just where is your law degree from?

It's a precedent everywhere. It's only binding precedent in that particular district in PA, but it is quite pursuasive in any jurisdiction. It is an efficient compendium of the current law and of the background of intelligent design. There isn't a judge in the country that would not have to at least analyze and deal with Dover in an intelligent design case. It would be hard for a judge to come up with a legally sound reason to ignore Dover.

77 posted on 01/10/2006 7:03:10 AM PST by jude24 ("Thy law is written on the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not." - St. Augustine)
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To: Right Wing Professor
So your argument is that a horse (Tertiary) is more complex than a shark (Devonian)?

Based primarily on the extremes in the diagram, showing smaller organisms at bottom, and larger at top. The argument is not only one of complexity but also of timing in history. A good many adherents to the theory of evolution posit that aquatic life preceded life on land, hence the shark is placed beneath the horse in the diagram above.

The only argument I am making is that this diagram presents evolution as a progression from smaller to greater, older to newer. The fossil record is hardly so neat as this diagram would lead one to believe. The general forms of these creatures are present to this day and living contemporaneously. The subjectivity represented in this diagram is enormous, but less so if one is predisposed to define evolution as a progression from the simple to the more complex, which is how evolution is usually understood.

78 posted on 01/10/2006 7:33:12 AM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Fester Chugabrew
The only argument I am making is that this diagram presents evolution as a progression from smaller to greater, older to newer

It presents it as a progression from older to newer, certainly. That's a progression called time. It certainly does not present it as a progression from smaller to greater.

The fossil record is hardly so neat as this diagram would lead one to believe.

I don't think it's intended to represent the complexity of the fossil record. I think it's intended to show representative creatures from each geological era.

79 posted on 01/10/2006 7:48:05 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor

I always thought the trilobite was smaller than the horse. Not so?


80 posted on 01/10/2006 8:12:10 AM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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