Posted on 11/13/2007 1:40:53 PM PST by yoe
A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday.
"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release.
The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day," airing on most network affiliates Tuesday night. The film is about a trial concerning intelligent design that took place in Dover, Pa., in 2005.
The guide claims to provide teachers with "easily digestible information to guide and support you in facing challenges to evolution."
In the booklet, teachers are instructed to use such discussion questions as: "Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?" The answer to that query is provided as: "Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false."
"This statement is simplistic and not neutral among different religions, and in that sense arguably inconsistent with Supreme Court teachings concerning neutrality," said attorney Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the institute.
"The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that the government must maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion,'" said Randal Wenger, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed amicus briefs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School District case.
"Because the briefing packet only promotes religious viewpoints that are friendly towards evolution, this is not neutral, and PBS is encouraging teachers to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," Wenger added.
In its news release, the Discovery Institute indicates that it has enlisted more than a dozen attorneys and legal scholars, including Wenger, to review the PBS teaching guide with an eye to its constitutionality.
"The PBS materials, in suggesting that students need not be concerned that evolution violates their religion, ironically equip public school teachers to violate our current conception of the First Amendment by explicitly teaching students concerning matters of religious belief," Wenger said.
"The irony is that discussing intelligent design would not teach any student about any religious belief - the PBS materials, on the other hand, will," he said.
Luskin noted that the teaching guide also presents false information about the theory of intelligent design.
"The teaching guide is also riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory," the attorney added.
As a result, the institute is providing its own guide for educators, "The Theory of Intelligent Design," which will help teachers better understand the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
Cybercast News Service previously reported that in December 2004, parents in Dover filed the first-ever challenge to intelligent design being taught in public schools, claiming it violated their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.
Just over a year later, U.S. District Judge John Jones III ruled that the school system may not include intelligent design in its science curriculum because intelligent design is not a scientific concept.
Telephone calls and e-mails seeking a response from the Public Broadcasting System were not returned by press time. However, on the PBS Web site, the program is described as capturing "the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pa., in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools."
"Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants - including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers and town officials - 'Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial' follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District," the site states.
"In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent," the Web site says.
"The teachers refused to comply," it adds.
"'Judgment Day' captures on film a landmark court case with a powerful scientific message at its core," said Paula Apsell, NOVA's senior executive producer. "Evolution is one of the most essential, yet - for many people - least understood of all scientific theories, the foundation of biological science."
"We felt it was important for NOVA to do this program to heighten the public understanding of what constitutes science and what does not and, therefore, what is acceptable for inclusion in the science curriculum in our public schools," Apsell said.
Nevertheless, Discovery Institute attorney Casey Luskin disagreed that the program is just about science.
"PBS gives a false definition of intelligent design that is a complete straw man argument," Luskin said. "Scientists who support intelligent design seek evidence of design in nature, and argue that such evidence points to intelligent design, based on our historical knowledge of cause and effect."
"So intelligent design theory is not an argument based on what we don't know, but rather an argument about what we do know," he said.
Ahh, no. Those are nice independent species. Pretty big gap from 1.6 million years ago to homo erectus not to have found any in between. I guess they all died in one spot and we haven’t found it yet.
>>All the lawyers, teachers and others who embrace Darwinism and evolution in their dying moments will see one of God’s creations for themselves. It is hell.<<
You know, when God acts, it is often within natural mechanisms. He doesn’t create each new tree there is a mechanism by which they propagate and grow.
I have a hard time believe God would send people to Hell for observing the evidence that life started on Earth billions of years ago and developed.
And even if he is sending people to Hell for that, its not nice to happy about it.
And every time a new human ancestor is discovered, the gaps get smaller. Is that what you believe, a God of the gaps?
My God is a little bigger than that, but then I accept evolution.
>>All the fossil we have found and I still can’t find that darn missing link one for any transitional species type.<<
How many fossil species have you studied?
Do you know what the word "blasphemy" means?
Just wondering...
When and how did the Federal Government or the SuprremeCSourt get the power to decide how the states should run their schools? I don’t see it in the Constitution.
That's a pretty pathetic question. Do you always go after those you feel are your inferiors because they are easy prey. Why didn't you respond to my post?
If PBS was no longer Federally Funded it would revert to "dead air"!
How about allowing the scientific evidence that is unfriendly toward evolution? In fact how about allowing the evidence to be examined.
All this driving along life’s road arguing about what we see in the cosmic rear-view mirror is going to seem pretty danged foolish when we run smack into the future we never saw coming.
Perhaps this point is just so obvious that it’s never been considered, but there is no tangible difference between Creationist matter (whether old or young Earth), Evolutionist matter, and I.D. matter. The preception of difference lives only in the grey matter of the various minds holding to the various views, and that is precisely what is the matter. The abject failure to allow that the matter one holds in one’s hand remains as it is without regard to the cosmology subscribed to by the attached brain; the rabid insistence that scientists are wholly calssifiable by cosmology; that scientists who like THIS cosmology are “good”, but those who like THAT cosmology are “bad”; is the nasty, rancid core of the whole crevo debacle.
So much time, money, and energy wasted going around, and around, plotting and planning character assassinations, destroying people’s careers, mounting endless ad hominem attacks, ...
...all of science itself is wholly debased by the collective behavior.
On ALL sides.
ALL need to go to separate corners and wear the pointy hats until they can commit to speaking and acting as functional adults, instead of adult-aged toddlers.
Oh, and in case the inherent point was missed, SHUT UP until then.
Because your post said exactly what my post said.
Spinoza's beliefs are a bit complicated, but he was essentially an atheist who believed that nature had an abstract spiritual essence. That pretty closely reflects Einstein's views. Spinoza, FYI, was excommunicated by the Jewish community for his atheistic beliefs.
Such as?
In fact how about allowing the evidence to be examined.
Submit scientific evidence "unfriendly toward evolution" to a peer-reviewed scientific journal and it will be examined. You're free to do so at any time.
Correct. And Einstein believed in neither. "My position concerning God," he said, "is that of an agnostic."
I suggest you go do a little research about different religions before you start disputing them.
And I'd suggest you know perhaps a little less about this topic than you think.
I happen to believe in God; my faith in God isn't shaken because I recognize that Einstein wasn't a believer. There are things that I believe in that Einstein didn't, with quantum theory somewhat near the top of the list; there are also things that Einstein believed in (like socialism) that I have little use for.
Why don't you present it for us?
Then, maybe you can tell us about the scientific evidence that supports intelligent design?
Already been done, and still being done.
I’ve been challenged here locally by several anti-religious twits on the subject of Intelligent Design. I always point out to them the reason I believe there is intelligence behind the design is that no matter how many times you drop a Home Depot store from a mile in the air it will never land as a fully functional home. It will always end up as a pile of rubble because there is no intelligence guiding how the pieces land.
Usually shuts ‘em up.
But its ok to dress kids up with rags on their heads and discuss sharia law for a whole week.
Closer to correct...he was a gnostic. Spinozism is the pantheistic philosophical system of Baruch Spinoza which defines God as a singular self-subsistent substance, and both matter and thought as attributes of such. Spinoza claimed that the third kind of knowledge, intuition, is the highest kind attainable. This is in keeping with the thinking of the illuminate....which believes the upper level of human intelligence is essentially fluent with God and the Universe.
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