Posted on 10/07/2005 4:59:16 AM PDT by shuckmaster
How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide
HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears.
In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now the gag is on the other mouth. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public-school science classes was an unconstitutional blurring of church and state. But those who think Darwinism unGodly have fought back.
Last year, the school board in Dover, a small rural school district near Harrisburg, mandated a brief disclaimer before pupils are taught about evolution. They are to be told that “The theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” And that if they wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent design”, they should consult a book called “Of Pandas and People” in the school library.
Eleven parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, two lobby groups, are suing to have the disclaimer dropped. Intelligent design, they say, is merely a clever repackaging of creationism, and as such belongs in a sermon, not a science class.
The school board's defence is that intelligent design is science, not religion. It is a new theory, which holds that present-day organisms are too complex to have evolved by the accumulation of random mutations, and must have been shaped by some intelligent entity. Unlike old-style creationism, it does not explicitly mention God. It also accepts that the earth is billions of years old and uses more sophisticated arguments to poke holes in Darwinism.
Almost all biologists, however, think it is bunk. Kenneth Miller, the author of a popular biology textbook and the plaintiffs' first witness, said that, to his knowledge, every major American scientific organisation with a view on the subject supported the theory of evolution and dismissed the notion of intelligent design. As for “Of Pandas and People”, he pronounced that the book was “inaccurate and downright false in every section”.
The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.
Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Intelligent designers deny that this is why they attack it, but this week the court was told by one critic that the authors of “Of Pandas and People” had culled explicitly creationist language from early drafts after the Supreme Court barred creationism from science classes.
In the Dover case, intelligent design appears to have found unusually clueless champions. If the plaintiffs' testimony is accurate, members of the school board made no effort until recently to hide their religious agenda. For years, they expressed pious horror at the idea of apes evolving into men and tried to make science teachers teach old-fashioned creationism. (The board members in question deny, or claim not to remember, having made remarks along these lines at public meetings.)
Intelligent design's more sophisticated proponents, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, are too polite to say they hate to see their ideas championed by such clods. They should not be surprised, however. America's schools are far more democratic than those in most other countries. School districts are tiny—there are 501 in Pennsylvania alone—and school boards are directly elected. In a country where 65% of people think that creationism and evolution should be taught side by side, some boards inevitably agree, and seize upon intelligent design as the closest approximation they think they can get away with. But they may not be able to get away with it for long. If the case is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, intelligent design could be labelled religious and barred from biology classes nationwide.
That's right. That's why I was given Titus 3, Titus 3:9 in particular, "But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless."
Taxes' sees slavery as something that amounts to essentially nothing, a foolish controversy. Tyrants with such a sense of justice are incapable of knowing God, because it's not God they're after. It's the power of God they are after, the power to coerce others to conform to their will, for their own glory.
Taxes' crowd will tell you what to think. No one is allowed to think on their own, unless they come up with the same nonsense. That their claims are nonsense, that's evident. The only way to support nonsense is with the tools of the con, deception, namecalling and condemnation. Muhammed's con used violence and tossed in the promise of virgins for effect.
Oops, bad post, it looks as if I am ROFLing about the holocaust. I was actually ROFLing Gumlegs "Everyone can hope to be a slave" post.
Agnus and her sister Doris Dei.
Me, I'm hoping to be Cameron Diaz's slave once the literal theocrats get into power, or maybe Nicole Kidman's. But I bet they'd only want me to carry their luggage and hoover the bedroom. Shucks.
It is a curious form of slavery when you are completely free to leave to somewhere else where your taxes will not be used in that way. A very curious form of slavery... Oh yes, I get it, it isn't slavery at all, you are just talking your usual nonsense.
Complete failure to confront literalist pro-slaver noted.
Indeed. I feel justified in drawing my own conclusions from the deafening sound of chirping crickets on the creationist side.
That would invoke the categorical imperative.
That would invoke the categorical imperative.
So much for an "inalienable right" to liberty, huh?
Hmmm... You care to rephrase that with a little bit less bigoted hatred toward Christianity? I do not know how studying fossils allowed you to come to these conclusions -I think you take much dramatic license with this "science"?
Another opportunity to draw your own conclusions placemarker.
I can imagine how you would interpret Bennett's comments on abortion. Same way you interpret mine and the same way you interpret the Bible.
Please tell me what the difference would be between government sanctioned abortion and government sanctioned slavery?
No group. Every person.
No difference between the holocaust, killing fields of Cambodia and Stalin. All were inspired by the devil. All are equally evil and all perpetrated by evil men. God does not say that only good governments will be instituted. How can they be when all people are sinful?
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