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.
Is the speed of light different in a vacuum than when it is not in a vacuum? Or is that a silly thing to ask?
Could you recommend books or websites where I could learn about this? Thanks.
And I used to believe in Santa Claus. The gifts under the tree and candy in my stocking were pretty good evidence of his existence, right?
That means you'll need greater quantities of cheese each time around, right? Slower speed = longer waves?
Very good Fester. You're actually using your brain for something other than a bookmark.
Unfortunately, there's no evidence for Santa. The gifts and candy can be explained without invoking the Jolly Old Elf.
Likewise, the velocity of light has every appearance of remaining constant back to the first fraction of a second of this universe.
Reality has a nasty habit of interrupting daydreams no matter how pleasant.
If you want to believe in a daydream, go ahead; But don't insist that the observed world accommodate your imagination.
by Theodosius Dobzhansky:
As recently as 1966, sheik Abd el Aziz bin Baz asked the king of Saudi Arabia to suppress a heresy that was spreading in his land. Wrote the sheik:
"The Holy Koran, the Prophet’s teachings, the majority of Islamic scientists, and the actual facts all prove that the sun is running in its orbit . . . and that the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for his mankind. . . . Anyone who professed otherwise would utter a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran, and the Prophet."
The good sheik evidently holds the Copernican theory to be a "mere theory," not a "fact." In this he is technically correct.
...
[still a good read, 33 years after it was written]
...
You said: It doesn't say in the Bible that the sun orbits the earth. The Church had adopted the popular "enlightened" position on that issue.
Evidently the Koran says so, and since it also says it was dictated to the "prophet" in order to correct the errors that have crept into the other Abrahamic faiths...
Seriously, both the Pope and Luther condemned heliocentrism. One could say that the Earth's motion wasn't proved until Foucault's pendulum.
"Keeping non-science out of science classroom is part of a war against traditional values and parental rights?"
"Keeping non-science out of science classroom is part of a war against traditional values and parental rights?"
No it is the advocacy of compartmentalism...keeping religion in one place, science in another place, sexual morality in another place...all depends on the situation...yup we teach our children to be the ultimate in compartmentalized people with no solid core of ethics and morality....(say... right after that master of compartmentalized personalities....old Bilious Nero Caligula Clintonius himself!)
Evolutionists would have the maiden Reason wear a "blue dress" stained with the semen of Bias!
Not silly at all. Indeed the speed of light varies in different mediums with different densities. Why we see a pencil appear to bend when lowered into a glass of water.
When we talk about “c” (speed of light), we are referring to the speed of light in a vacuum.
See:
http://library.thinkquest.org/27066/lightrays/nlrefraction.html
And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)
And finally:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html
He was standing on the street corner not far from my home not long ago. I even have a photograph to prove it. So much for your touted assertion of "no evidence."
The speed of light has not been precisely measured in a vacuum for a long enough time, or from enough perspectives, to confidently assert that it has always been absolutely constant. A review of the figures given for the speed of light since attempts at precise measurement have been undertaken does not reveal the same figure each time - possibly due to the tools used, possibly not. How long has science been able to declare the speed of light in a vacuum with any precision?
Furthermore, the limits of human observation are such that we cannot confidently assert there is "nothing faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum."
Either way, the consistencies demonstrated by the speed of light pose an argument in favor of intelligent design, not against. Interesting that certain biblical texts speak of the Creator in terms of Light.
You're claiming that sexual selection is a sort of ID?!
Isn't part of intelligence planning and then doing things to make the plan come true? (Not true of intelligence meaning simply understanding something, but implicit in the intelligence of ID)
A peahen preferring showy tail feathers is just that, an instinctual preference; there's nothing akin to planning, there's no attempt to make the peacocks prettier, no design.
Glad my magnetron is not in a vacuum. More chocolate!
I think we have a winner for the "Your Brain on Creationism" part of PatrickHenry's List-O-Links.
Please explain. IE, give examples of Dawkins' wielding power over anything.
AFAIK, RD is a professor who has written several popular books. He has also done original research in ethology, memetics, sociobiology, etc.
Don't confuse the fact that he's in the public's face a lot with influence in scientific circles.
Nah, it's a setup. He's trying to make it into the list.
The fine structure constant could also be evidence of intelligent design. I still have doubts about the methods and assumptions used in arriving at a 7 billion year old universe. Can you name any assumptions used in arriving at this figure, or is it so plain as to be a "given?" I tend to count the direct observation of humans as more reliable than indirect observation. I am also a firm believer in the fallibility of human reason.
"I still have doubts about the methods and assumptions used in arriving at a 7 billion year old universe."
So do I. The best estimate today is about 15 billion years.
Not exactly. It is buried in algorithmic information theory and directly related to a very important but esoteric measure called predictive error complexity. The best (and only) explanatory book on that mathematics that I am aware of is Marcus Hutter's. While I find it to be an easy read, you will need to be thoroughly familiar with information and computational theory, at least of the level of Li and Vitanyi, or you will not be able to make heads or tails of it. You can find some related stuff on the web (e.g. AIXI models) that will point you in the right direction and will be no worse than the book in terms of ease of readability. The construction has been described by some as the result of taking Bayes' theorem to its logical mathematical extreme.
It is deeply elegant and remarkably simple in construction, and one of the neatest developments in math in a long time, but it also requires grokking computational and information theory at a pretty deep level to understand its significance and the number of facets it has.
To be brutally honest, from a standing start it would probably take two years of serious study to grok it. It is not that it is so difficult, but that very few people have the mathematics foundation to make grokking it easy. Really bright people with a solid theoretical background can usually wrap their head around the basic theory in a matter of months.
You take everything to be evidence of intelligent design. It sure must make your arguments easy, when one takes everything as evidence of the conclusion to be axiomatic.
Clearly you are not married or you would know that nothing is EVER evidence of your conclusion, the axiom of the married man.
I'm glad we have folks like you around here. Keeps me humble.
I do not. It just so happens that the universe has not produced very much in the way of unorganized matter that does not behave according to predictable laws. Of course, if it is a scientific fact that an intelligent designer made everything that is available for science to observe, then it stands to reason that it could all demonstrate some manner and degree of intelligent design.
Groucho: "Why, a FIVE-YEAR-OLD could understand these figures!"
[Aside to Zeppo:] "Run out and get me a five-year-old! I can't make heads or tails of this."
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