Posted on 01/03/2006 12:12:37 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Also today, Dover's board might revoke the controversial intelligent design decision.
Now that the issue of teaching "intelligent design" in Dover schools appears to be played out, the doings of the Dover Area School Board might hold little interest for the rest of the world.
But the people who happen to live in that district find them to be of great consequence. Or so board member James Cashman is finding in his final days of campaigning before Tuesday's special election, during which he will try to retain his seat on the board.
Even though the issue that put the Dover Area School District in the international spotlight is off the table, Cashman found that most of the people who are eligible to vote in the election still intend to vote. And it pleases him to see that they're interested enough in their community to do so, he said.
"People want some finality to this," Cashman said.
Cashman will be running against challenger Bryan Rehm, who originally appeared to have won on Nov. 8. But a judge subsequently ruled that a malfunctioning election machine in one location obliges the school district to do the election over in that particular voting precinct.
Only people who voted at the Friendship Community Church in Dover Township in November are eligible to vote there today.
Rehm didn't return phone calls for comment.
But Bernadette Reinking, the new school board president, said she did some campaigning with Rehm recently. The people who voted originally told her that they intend to do so again, she said. And they don't seem to be interested in talking about issues, she said. Reinking said it's because they already voted once, already know where the candidates stand and already have their minds made up.
Like Cashman, she said she was pleased to see how serious they are about civic participation.
Another event significant to the district is likely to take place today, Reinking said. Although she hadn't yet seen a copy of the school board meeting's agenda, she said that she and her fellow members might officially vote to remove the mention of intelligent design from the school district's science curriculum.
Intelligent design is the idea that life is too complex for random evolution and must have a creator. Supporters of the idea, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, insist that it's a legitimate scientific theory.
Opponents argue that it's a pseudo-science designed solely to get around a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that biblical creationism can't be taught in public schools.
In October 2004, the Dover Area School District became the first in the country to include intelligent design in science class. Board members voted to require ninth-grade biology students to hear a four-paragraph statement about intelligent design.
That decision led 11 district parents to file a lawsuit trying to get the mention of intelligent design removed from the science classroom. U.S. Middle District Court Judge John E. Jones III issued a ruling earlier this month siding with the plaintiffs. [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al..]
While the district was awaiting Jones' decision, the school board election took place at the beginning of November, pitting eight incumbents against a group of eight candidates opposed to the mention of intelligent design in science class.
At first, every challenger appeared to have won. But Cashman filed a complaint about a voting machine that tallied between 96 to 121 votes for all of the other candidates but registered only one vote for him.
If he does end up winning, Cashman said, he's looking forward to doing what he had in mind when he originally ran for school board - looking out for students. And though they might be of no interest to news consumers in other states and countries, Cashman said, the district has plenty of other issues to face besides intelligent design. Among them are scholastic scores and improving the curriculum for younger grades.
And though he would share the duties with former opponents, he said, he is certain they would be able to work together.
"I believe deep down inside, we all have the interest and goal to benefit the kids," he said.
Regardless of the turnout of today's election, Reinking said, new board members have their work cut out for them. It's unusual for a board to have so many new members starting at the same time, she said.
"We can get to all those things that school boards usually do," she said.
It seems that Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist used the actual Constitution, not the "living" version used by Judge Jones. I'm very hopeful that Roberts and Alito are in the Scalia mold.
He does seem to like citing dissenting legal opinions as though they carried any legal weight.
So evolution would occur exactly the same way whether or not God exists?
I'm trying to enlighten you on conservative constitutional interpretation. You may be enlightened or you can choose to stay on the bus with the liberals on the court. Nobody claimed it had the "force of law". You just made that up now, didn't ya?
"Seeding from another planet is a possibility. It is also possible that the other planet developed through purely materialistic evolution thus it would be ID without any God or creator or "space alien". There is no requirement for ID to name a creator because their may be no creator. There is proof our planet is seeded with meteors so the concept of a life form being injected into our system is a real possibility."
Do you not see that this begs the question? There cannot be ID without the I. A process of Abiogenesis and subsequent Evolution has no I. To be ID there has to be an INTELLIGENT DESIGNER. Any other naturally produced intelligent being cannot be the designer, because of the trail of "who designed that designer"? The only possibility is a supernatural all powerful being - God. None other makes any sense.
If I'm missing something, enlighten me.
This is an interesting thread but I must point out that you are on pretty thin reasoning and historical ice if you are skating with Ginsburg, Souter, and the other SCOTUS Liberals.
Dissents do carry weight. Infinitely more weight than your legal opinions. But what I'm trying to do is introduce you guys to conservative constitutional interpretation. It's a damn tough job but somebody has to give it a shot!
Well, we all know the true legal heavyweights are Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, Ginzburg, Souter, Breyer, etc.
It's best to leave Con Law to those geniuses rather than trusting "outside the mainstream" types such as Rehnquist and Scalia.
But it certainly can be mentioned and discussed as a possibility in the scientific community and presumably in the science class without instigating the deafening cry of, "It is not science" and/or "It does not meet the criteria for a theory".
While both of these allegations may be true...Dr. Crick, a Noble Prize winner, had no problem putting the "theory" out there in spite of the lack of scientific evidence.
Was he anti-scientific in doing so?
Is Crick's Directed Panspermia harmful to scientific discovery and advancement?
LOL, same pond, H2O surface temp about 33F.
Soon ceet will be granted becuase the 6th and 11th circuits will be in tension. Alito, will by then, be on the court. You should start writing Kennedy now to keep going left and hoping that Ginsburg and JP Stevens maintain their health otherwise Dubya gets another nomination and constitutional law may once again become constitutional law.
Jeepers, b_sharp, what is your definition of “useful?” Certain natural processes, such as DNA instructing the manufacture of proteins, are obviously intelligent processes. Intelligent processes per se are inexplicable on the basis of material and efficient causes alone. It is the formal and the final causes that bespeak of intelligence. It appears Neo-Darwinism prefers not to deal with this problem.
Just to be clear about what we’re speaking of here, may I put the four causes thusly, and very crudely:
Material cause is the “stuff” that “new stuff” is made of.
Efficient cause is the energy it takes to initiate and execute the physical manifestation of “new stuff,” utilizing “stuff.”
Formal cause is the plan or blueprint for our “new stuff” project.
Final cause is the purpose or goal for which the “new stuff” project was undertaken in the first place: its “reason.”
Now perhaps you will object that formal and final causes are not of interest to science. Okay, I can live with that. But that doesn’t give you a license to say that formal and final causes are irrelevant to the truth of reality. Or even that they do not exist — which is the position of the scientific materialist, a/k/a the metaphysical naturalist.
Yet the scientist who says such a thing is sawing off the very branch on which he himself sits.
FWIW.
Happy New Year, b_sharp!
That's a nice protected position to be in. Science can neither prove nor disprove God, nor His relationship to the events we see in the universe, so we're to assume God's irrelevant and the events we observe have nothing to do with God.
Surely you can see that people of faith find that anything but neutral.
Is science so fragile that it can't function if someone even so much as suggests that one possibility is that God designed things?
What's your opinion on SETI?
Evolution teaches that man is the result of time plus chance, that man is the center of nature. That is explicitly religious in my view.
The "wall" metaphor in Everson was gleaned from a letter written by a sitting Presiedent to a Danbury Baptist Minister.
If President Bush writes a letter to a Danbury Baptist Minister telling him the "wall" has been torn down and the a majority on the court cites to that, will that IYHO's carry the weight of precedent and carry the day?
Your view is misinformed. Fortunately, it isn't held by actual biologists.
The possibilities for the designer, in the view of intelligent design, are virtually infinite because no creator is named. I am not expert, but as I understand it ID makes the assertion (correctlyin my view) that evolution does not explain how life began and does not answer all the question inherent in the fossil record, etc. While this is true, it is very, very long way from Genesis 1 and 2. Thus ID is not a Christian statement.
Evolution is not only science but also philosophy, and you cannot escape a religious viewpoint there, even if the religious viewpoint is atheism. Atheism is not neutrality. Evolutionists make a religious statement when they discard special creation.
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