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 would be even better if it were true####
Or if the earth centered universe hadn't been a scientific theory for so long.
From your lips to God's ear, Alamo-Girl!
"It seems that those most eager to postulate a designer would have trouble operating a can opener."
Well, I don't think I'd go that far. However, it would be an interesting exercise to supply a can and one of those wonderful G.I.-issue can openers to a mixed group of Freepers. Discovering who could figure out how to use one would be informative of something, although I'm not sure exactly what.
"How can you prove that?"
I cannot prove that, because I'm not an expert on the mechanics and mathematics of gravitation. I do know it to be true, however, and have seen the explanation of why it is true.
But I thought nothing in science was ever "proved".
"But I thought nothing in science was ever "proved"."
You thought incorrectly.
But they would be wrong. Fossil evidence is only one of several separate lines of inquiry that contributes to the validity of the theory. If it was the only one, evolutionary theory would be somewhat of a (possibly unwarranted, though still convincing) extrapolation. However, morphological homology, biogeography, observed modification/speciation, and genetic sequencing also contribute to the pool of evidence (especially the last of these). Evolution is the simplest and only testable, unfalsified explanation that consistently unifies what we observe in all five of these data realms.
Are there any specific, testable physical predictions (or retrodictions, as you please) that intelligent design theory makes? Is there any test (other than our own credulity) that can differentiate between a mechanism that is intelligently designed versus one that evolved naturally (though we just don't know how yet)? If not, isn't it better to relegate such phenomena to the area of 'things we just don't know yet', and (out of honest necessity, at least at the present day) leave the existence of the 'Designer' to our personal faith?
You got somthin' against geology, astronomy (age of the earth & sun), physics (radiometric dating), and continental drift?
Of course you're right about this, highball. But that is not what the language of the second clause envisions. It means non-coercive exercise, exercise respectful of other religious faiths, and of people who hold to no religious tradition, without the government endorsing one faith as against all the others (that's what the establishment clause means).
Precisely. But that's simply not what we have in this case.
In this case, we have a school board who wanted to use the power of their office to enshrine their own faith in science classes to the exclusion of all others. Then they lied about it under oath, and they lied about the money trail.
It is not "non-coercive exercise" if the teachers are forced to endorse it to their students. It is not "respectful of other religious faiths" if their faith is the only one given such endorsement.
I have never once argued for the elimination of faith from all public life. But what these wackos did was flagrantly un-Constitutional (or they wouldn't have tried so desperately to hide it), and now the poor people of their district are stuck with massive legal bills resulting from such "breathtaking inanity".
So are you saying there are laws of science that have been proved? Many on here tell me there are no laws - only theories. I thought gravity was a law but was informed it is still only a theory.
"So are you saying there are laws of science that have been proved? Many on here tell me there are no laws - only theories. I thought gravity was a law but was informed it is still only a theory."
LOL. Thought so.
So are you saying there are laws of science that have been proved?
He didn't say that. You're trying to take his statement about one particular situation - whether or not an object that leaves Earth's gravitational field will not "come down", in the vernacular, unless it encounters another object with a gravitational field - and twist it.
Many on here tell me there are no laws - only theories. I thought gravity was a law but was informed it is still only a theory.
That is correct. I hope this finally clears up the confusion on your part.
If you wish to pretend to be deliberately dense, you certainly may.
Free country.
And if you can't answer simple questions, no problem. Free country.
I was speaking strictly of biological evolution (evolution proper, not the all-inclusive creationist definition of evolution that includes all science opposed to a superliteral reading of the English translation of the Bible).
I try to limit my responses to posts the have factual errors, blatant misunderstandings, out of context quotes and the like.
Claiming gravity is a more established fact than evolution without understanding gravity is one of those priceless cases.
Defining gravity as "what goes up must come down" is equivalent to saying the sun revolves around the earth because it appears to, or saying the earth is flat because you live in Kansas.
People knew that things fall down before newton. What Newton did was extrapolate what was known about falling objects to explain how the moon and planets stay up. Simplified, of course.
The leap of understanding from falling down to orbiting heavenly bodies is no greater leap of imagination than discovering that the fossil record and the geological strata tell a real history.
It is foolish to deny either. Some folks just haven't noticed yet.
I Carried my Army can open opener for years, until it would no longer snap shut (kind of dangerous in the pocket that way). I used to horrify my wife by using it in the kitchen.
Your questions aren't "simple" - you blend several concepts and conversations together (deliberately?).
But if you're really interested, we can discuss it.
Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"
There are such things as facts. They can be proven. "This dinosaur bone is x number of years old," for example. That's a fact.
Theories, however, cannot be proven. They can only be disproven. That in no way reflects upon a theory - Germ Theory cannot be proven, nor can Gravitational Theory cannot be proven.
In fact, falsifiability (predicting a possible circumstance under which a theory may be disproven) is an important part of what makes a theory a theory. The ToE can be falsified - simply finding a 2M year-old homo sapiens fossil would do the trick nicely. ID cannot be falsified - what possible piece of evidence could be uncovered to refute ID?
Theories require evidence to support them. The fossil record is a fact, and it provides a wealth of evidence to support the Theory of Evolution.
Evolution is both a fact (we observe it happening in populations) and a Theory (describing such changes over periods of time).
The Theory of Evolution is to date the only Theory proposed that fits the evidence. It makes predictions about future discoveries, and as those discoveries are continually made the theory becomes ever stronger. That theory is never "proven," however, because we've established that theories are never proven. Facts supporting the theory, though, can be. And are.
Is that clearer now?
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