Posted on 11/03/2005 11:39:36 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Not long into his cross-examination Wednesday, Dover schools Asst. Supt. Michael Baksa talked about a seminar he had attended about creationism in public schools.
The typically calm and confident administrator started his testimony with shaky hands and a weak voice as he explained to plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Rothschild that Supt. Richard Nilsen sent him to the Messiah College seminar on March 26, 2003.
Baksa had returned to the stand in a federal civil suit over Dover Area School District’s decision to include a mention of intelligent design in ninth-grade biology class. It was Baksa’s third appearance on the stand after being bumped by out-of-town witnesses for the defense.
Knowledge of the seminar wasn’t new. But the plaintiffs’ attorneys used it and other testimony from Baksa and school board President Sheila Harkins, who also testified Wednesday, to try to tie together events leading up to the science curriculum change and show that religion played a role in the board’s decision.
A policy that had a religious purpose would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Baksa testified that hours after attending the conference, he went to a Dover board retreat. According to previous testimony, board member Alan Bonsell said at the retreat that creationism should balance the teaching of evolution. Earlier in the trial, board members, former board members and Nilsen testified about notes made during board retreats in 2002 and 2003 at which Bonsell mentioned creationism and prayer in school.
After the retreat, Baksa said, he told Bertha Spahr, head of the science department, that Bonsell wanted to give another theory equal time to evolution in science class.
Baksa received a memo dated April 1, 2003, from then-Principal Trudy Peterman that said a board member wanted to give creationism equal time with evolution.
“My first reaction is, ‘She got it wrong,’” Baksa said, referring to Peterman’s use of the term creationism. But he didn’t approach either Spahr or Peterman to correct the information, he said.
A little more than a year after Peterman’s memo, controversy erupted during June 2004 board meetings when board members, and one board member’s wife, made religious comments while talking about buying new biology books.
During Wednesday’s questioning, Baksa corroborated some news coverage by saying he heard former board member Bill Buckingham talk about creationism, saying that “liberals in black robes” were taking away Christians’ rights and that the ninth-grade biology book was “laced with Darwinism.”
Baksa said Buckingham said something about a man dying on the cross 2,000 years ago but didn’t remember if the comment was made in 2003 during talks about “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or in 2004 during discussion on the curriculum change.
He also said Buckingham made a comment about the country not being founded on Muslim beliefs but said he didn’t know when that was said.
Earlier Wednesday, Harkins testified she didn’t remember Bonsell talking about creationism or prayer during retreats. She said she heard Buckingham mention liberal judges but didn’t know whether his mention of a man dying 2,000 years ago on the cross came at a 2004 board meeting or in earlier discussions about the pledge.
She also said people in the audience were talking about creationism at the June meetings, while then-board member Jeff Brown talked about intelligent design.
“My recollection is it seems to me I was thinking Jeff was the first one to bring up mentioning intelligent design in the conversation,” she said. “I was thinking Alan, Noel (Wenrich) and Bill got in on the conversation.”
Baksa and Harkins both testified that, at those June meetings, they didn’t know what intelligent design meant.
In August 2004, before the October vote on the intelligent design statement, Baksa and others received e-mail from Stock and Leader lawyer Steve Russell. The district had asked him for advice about the pro-intelligent design textbook “Of Pandas and People.”
“Today I talked to Richard Thompson. . . . they refer to the creationism issue as ‘intelligent design,’” Russell wrote, referring to Dover’s lawyer from the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan.
After court, Thompson maintained that creationism and intelligent design were separate.
Russell’s concern, according to the e-mail, was about various talk for putting religion back into the schools.
Baksa said in court Wednesday that he considered Russell’s words as advising caution in using “Pandas.”
In the summer of 2004, the board decided not to spend taxpayer money on “Pandas” as a companion text. Baksa testified that Nilsen asked him to research how much 50 copies of “Pandas” would cost so the board could then give the information to donors.
Later that year, Alan Bonsell’s father, Donald, and members of former board member Buckingham’s church anonymously gave 60 copies of the book to the district.
Outside court, Thompson said the events simply coincided.
“I don’t think they’re connected,” he said. “I think it’s just happenstance. At that point, I don’t think they were connected. The only reason that’s brought up is because of the case that exists today.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys declined to comment Wednesday.
That's what happens when you refuse to look at the data, man.
And about 40% of the population think that Bush lied about WMD but Bill Clinton didn't. Popular opinion is meaningless when people can be led around so easily by charismatic people speaking from podiums and televisions.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture (search), made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo (search) was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' (search) discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
snip
"We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link," he said.
"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said.
snip
Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate raging in the United States over evolution and "intelligent design."
Intelligent design's supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis."
"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. "(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."
LOL! Indeed.
And they'd still be liberals if they could figure out how to meld "The State" with "God". Thus they aim at a Theocracy.
The info I placed in this post might interest you (or might not). In any case, evolution is certainly not the only place where scientific literacy is lacking. Most of it seems to center around ignorance, not fanaticism. We must remember that only the most determined of creationists actually post anything about their opinions. I really don't think most people care, which is a scary thing in and of itself.
When the South Park folks eventually get around to making fun of the IDers, they'll have all their dialogue cut out (no pun intended) for them.
Politically, I think the ones that "really believe" are the scariest.
For example, everybody and their brother knew that Bill Clinton would sell his mother for a vote. Everything he did was calculated politically. John Kerry was cut fom the same cloth although trickier to pin down. But the most scary was Al Gore (Thank God we managed to dodge that bullet, barely) - he really believed his blather. He scared(s) the hell out of me.
When people don't know and don't seem to care it's generally because they don't feel threatened (again, politically). If this transfers to Crevo issues, I'm not sure.
Keep in mind, most people don't care about creationists.
They are regarded as the kook fringe.
most people in America cannot accurately and distinctly define:
evidence, fact, observation, record, repeatable, accurate, precise, experiment, variable, science, know, think, feel, notion, guess, hypothesis, theory, falsification criterion, prediction, predictive value, et cetera ad nauseam.
in fine: Most Americans lack the basic understanding of science required to differentiate between a valid theory and a mystic dogma dressed up in a cheap lab coat.
Everyone knows the definition of a theory. It's an assumption based on guesswork and presumed conjecture.
sadly, your quip is a fairly accurate summation of the popular understanding of that word.
And I remember a man called Anthony Flew who said something once.
I might worship it if I could figure out what the heck it's supposed to mean.
I know the definition of "etc ad nauseum:" literally, it's "and so on till I get ill."
What would there basis be for appeal?
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think the perjurors are dumb enough to present their perjury to review by a higher court. But I could be wrong.
I think the DASD wants to go home and forget this ever happened.
"That's a popular way of avoiding the extremely difficult and embarrassing task of having to explain the origin of matter or life. However, the non-existence of God requires a non-theistic explanation of the origin of matter and the origin of life. Or do you want to give God a foot in the door? Your buddies say you can't.
You are making a number of incorrect assumptions. One is that biological evolution, which is what we here have restricted ourselves to, can address abiogenesis, or cosmology. Biological evolution is restricted to living organisms on which natural evolution can operate. Abiogenesis (which is more an hypothesis than a theory at this point) and cosmology do not present any organisms for the mechanisms of biological evolution to operate on. The second erroneous assumption you make is that biological evolution is an attempt at proving the non-existence of God. Science can not address anything that does not present physically testable data. God is untestable. Therefore science can not and does not address God or his existence. Many creationist leaders have attempted to lump every science that uses the term 'evolution' together, despite the fact that the word is used differently by the non-biological sciences. It has been done simply to give creationism a handle with which to manipulate the minds of the faithful.
Based on that, I cannot see why anyone should pay any attention to creationism in the first place, since it is not arguing against anything real.
"But Mineral, you just disqualified yourself from criticizing creationism because you have demonstrated that you don't understand it. You said:
The 'un-real' that MM is talking about is the strawman version of evolution that the creationists here, and at a number of other forums I participate in, faithfully regurgitate. The creationist strawman is not in any sense real.
If those arguing the issue do not understand the theory in the first place, then whatever their argument is has no relevance.
"Have you not just discarded your own credibility?
Here you are making an erroneous assumption that we 'evos' are arguing against God and religion. This is not true, we are arguing against the misconceived, mutilated and ubiquitous misrepresentation of not only evolution but science in general. We do not need to know anything about creationism because we are attacking their arguments, arguments that we have thrust upon us every day. How could we not be experts in those arguments?
100
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.