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.
The theory of how it happened may not be random, but why it happened certainly is. And besides, the theory that life somehow began from a primordial soup is most certainly random, without purpose or explanation. This in and of itself does not make it wrong (though I believe that it is wrong), just describing what it is.
Well, I gotta go for now. Duty calls. I appreciate your willingness to discuss this topic without getting angry. I'm sure we'll debate again.
There is no objective measure for "natural" and "supernatural" either. Be that as it may, the common definitions of "design" and "purpose" make the connection with intelligence to be a reasonable one. Not an irrefutable one, to be sure, but it is not a wild stretch by any means.
IMHO, we need to lay aside all of our presuppositions and look at the intelligent design hypothesis on its merits.
An "intelligent cause" could be either a phenomenon (such as an emergent property of self-organizing complexity or fractal intelligence) or an agent (such as God, collective consciousness, aliens, Gaia, etc...)
Something as simple as animals choosing their mates could be established as the "intelligent cause" for "certain features".
IOW, it doesn't matter whether the "intelligent cause" was a phenomenon or an agent. And it doesn't cover "all features" - i.e. the hypothesis is not a theory of origins, just like the theory of evolution is not a theory of origins.
ID *is* PC.
ID requires us to redefine words. It elevates feelings to the level of facts.
It's every bit as dangerous as the original.
You're quite welcome, js1138!
"I still believe that the ID movement is more about backdooring a way into the Creation story versus an alternative scientifically based hypothisis. It was a Trojan Horse from all things people of faith."
That is your opinion - and sadly, there are quite a few who truly believe that evolution is the main power play for atheism as an ideology - along with all its political agenda.
It's more than an opinion - it's the admitted purpose of both the Discovery Insitute, the main proponent of ID, and the school board in this case.
Conversely, I challenge you to find any scientific organizations promoting the ToE that have atheism as a stated goal.
Actually, motive is rather central. If the First Amendment were only about free speech, then the ID folks would have a free hand in government schools -- and so would everything else. But there is also the establishment clause. Free speech doesn't allow government agents to violate the establishment clause. That's why it's a necessary condition of state action that it must have a secular purpose.
OH NO!!!!!
It's happening in my very household. When I went to the grocery store the other day my 13 y/o daughter asked "Dad, can I come along?"
And we TALKED! About stuff that MATTERS!!! And she contributed mightily to the discussion.
Where did I go wrong?
Sure they can. They can take what they studied in science, compare it to what they have studied in church or discussed with their parents, and make up their own mind.
Knowledge and information are funny that way, learn it here, apply it there.
You wrote:
#####Group differences are a mainstay of junk science. I seldom see them discussed except by people who have a vested interest in being in the superior or privileged group.#####
Then you wrote:
#####I would like to start a discussion on the rather obvious IQ difference between people who accept evolution and those who don't.#####
I'll assume you were joking!
It would be too objectionable for scientific organizations to have this as a stated goal. Better to have it as an unstated principle and then have it established by law as the only principle suited to scientific discussion.
Moreover, whatever "ruler" you might wish to use, all that can result is yet another description of "it" - a quantization of a continuum of such measurements - and does not tell us what "it" is until we actually and directly experience "it".
Or to put it another way, one can describe an animal until he is blue in the face - develop vast piles of data comparing the animal to all kinds of other things - and still not know what the animal "is".
In which case, as Exhibit #1 - I offer to you Richard Dawkins.
You are obviously on the right side of the curve.
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