Posted on 01/17/2006 11:24:31 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A rural school district agreed to stop teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution as part of a court settlement filed Tuesday, a legal group said.
Frazier Mountain High School will stop teaching a philosophy class discussing the theory of "intelligent design" this week and won't teach it in the future, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Officials at the El Tejon Unified School District were not immediately available for comment.
A federal judge in Fresno had been scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday afternoon on whether to halt the class midway through the monthlong winter term.
A group of parents sued the district last week, saying it violated the constitutional separation of church and state by offering "Philosophy of Design," a course taught by a minister's wife that advanced the theory that life is so complex it must have been created by God.
"The course was designed to advance religious theories on the origins of life, including creationism and its offshoot, 'intelligent design,'" said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
In a landmark lawsuit, Americans United for Separation of Church and State had successfully blocked Dover, Pa., schools last month from teaching intelligent design in science courses. [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al..]
El Tejon school officials had claimed the subject was proper for a philosophy class.
The high school in the Tehachapi Mountains about 75 miles north of Los Angeles draws 500 students from a dozen small communities.
Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who was teaching "Philosophy of Design," defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise.
"I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach," she wrote.
Similar battles are being fought in Georgia and Kansas. Critics of "intelligent design" say it is biblical creationism in disguise, but defenders argue it is based on science and doesn't require adherence to any religious belief.
The hysteria continues....
Have you given up trying to defend this as a "philosophy" class?
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Then God is a liar for leaving us all that evidence for evolution.
Hint: the "evidence for evolution" is not just what they presented to you in high school science class, or the strawman evolution presented by the current IDers. The real evidence for evolution is massive, with cross references from many disciplines, and some of the most compelling evidence in the microbiology field (DNA) that we've only just discovered. All of it basically verifies what science has been teaching about evolution for 150+ years.
So, as I said, either God is a liar in the evidence he left us in His creation. Or, God is a liar in the Bible. Or (horrors) you just aren't interpreting the Bible correctly (lookup the Catholic church's interpretations of the Bible vs. evolution - they have no problem with it).
I will never give up. And I see much more hysteria coming from those who refuse to let evolution have any competition than I see coming from the other side.
Presume: Take to be the case or to be true; accept without verification or proof.
"To which "God", out of the thousands of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history do you refer, and why does it require "a lot of faith" to lack belief in that particular deity when it's fair to say that followers of every religion other than the one of that deity also "lack belief" in it?"
I am referring to an intelligence that created the universe and man. I am not referring to pagan Gods, manicheanism, or even pantheism.
It takes great faith to believe that life occurred simply by chance, and that the complexity of life and the universe in general, is not indicative of an intelligent creator.
It may not be in the end, but it takes great faith to believe that.
Remember, Athiests are not simply waiting for the evidence of God to come in....they have already made their finding in the negative. They have great faith.
So according to your definition theism = religion and therefor (a)theism by definition doesn't violate the establishment clause.
How convenient!
Ban everyone else's belief system while claiming yours exempt!
What evidence? - funny how few people were persuaded prior to 1800? God gives you the key to understanding His creation - but if ignore His revelation you will of course wallow in your own fallen thought.
Kind of like faith, huh?
That is kind of funny isn't it.
I think that our next "Your Brain on Creationism" quote is just waiting to happen here.
More like a passive, or lazy, faith.
I must have missed the time when opponents of evolution came up with any physical evidence to support their ideas, or were able to articulate a scientific theory, or do any of the things that would actually be "competition" for the sole scientific theory.
Evolution doesn't have any competition, except from those who want to re-define the word "science" to advance their political agenda.
What exactly do you mean by "political agenda"? Do you think the evolutionists have a political agenda?
You are an atheist???
Yes, it is creation not a random happening - what evidence by the way is being ignored? A pig tooth or moths glued on a tree trunk or fully formed fossils?
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