Posted on 02/15/2006 12:53:18 AM PST by jennyp
COLUMBUS - The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state's science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design.
The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.
The 2002 science standards say students should be able to ``describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.'' It includes a disclaimer that the standards do not require the teaching of intelligent design.
The vote is the latest setback for the intelligent design movement, which holds that life is so complex, it must have been created by a higher authority.
In December, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes. The judge said that intelligent design is religion masquerading as science and that teaching it alongside evolution violates the separation of church and state.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Board of Education directed a committee to study whether a replacement lesson is needed for the deleted material.
The vote was a reversal of a 9-8 decision a month ago to keep the lesson plan. But three board members who voted in January to keep the plan were absent Tuesday. Supporters of the plan pledged to force a new vote to return the material soon.
``We'll do this forever, I guess,'' said board member Michael Cochran, a Columbus lawyer and supporter of the lesson plan.
Board member Martha Wise, who pushed to eliminate the material, said the board took the correct action to avoid problems, including a possible lawsuit.
``It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about science,'' said Wise, an elected board member representing northern Ohio.
In approving Wise's motion, the board rejected a competing plan to request a legal opinion from the attorney general on the constitutionality of the science standards.
The state's science lesson plan, approved in 2004, is optional for schools to use in teaching the state's science standards, which are the basis for Ohio's graduation test. Although schools are not required to teach the standards, districts that do not follow the standards put students at risk of not passing that part of the Ohio graduation test.
The Pennsylvania court decision against teaching intelligent design does not apply in Ohio, but critics of state standards say it invites a similar challenge.
Wise said other events since the ruling made removing the standards even more important. Earlier this month, for example, Gov. Bob Taft recommended a legal review of the standards.
In addition, members of a committee that advised state education officials on Ohio's science curriculum said the standards improperly single out the theory of evolution and could lead to the teaching of religion.
Board member Deborah Owens Fink, who voted against eliminating the lesson plan, said it is unfair to deny students the chance to use logic to question a scientific theory. She said scientists who oppose the material are worried that their views won't be supported.
``We respect diversity of opinion in every other arena,'' said Owens Fink, an elected board member from Akron.
99.9% of persons with an IQ over 50, when shown a pinata of a horse and also a big pile of papers emptied from a wastebasket, would understand when someone asked them the following question - "Which of these two items did someone most likely intentionally form in the shape that they are presently in?", would not get confused like you, and answer "Well both, since the paper was manufactured in each". No, they would understand that the question and comparison was between the final form of the two items.
This is a complete no brainer. People don't eat, rest, exercise properly, abuse the creation, and then blame the designer for faulty design. How stupid is that?
Yes, Dover PA is the intellectual leading edge of out nation! Hooray for that wonderful decision! Our nation's most eilte town!
Yeah...you're still not getting the point, but then again, I suppose that's probably deliberate on your part. You have a nice day.
The same is true of the human spinal column; it is not fully adapted for upright stance, but can no longer support our frames in a horizontal stance. It is literally a structure in transition. It is because of this "neither-here-nor-there" situation that back problems are so prevalent.
Shall we discuss the human knee, or the eye, or any of the other ad hoc features of human anatomy?
And if it is, by what criteria are you determining what was designed and what was not designed?
No, it's just the opposite. I single exception does not counter a general rule.
The Professor's World: "It's not insane to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun because I did it once and am still alive".
The PURPOSE of life is not the perfection of the world where that perfection is according the current views of atlaw. So it most certainly seems. And that's my explanation.
Would that include people who can't even spell "intelligent"? :)
No, let's discuss how the appendix or tonsils or other FORMERLY 'useless' organs were used as BOGUS examples, out of complete ignorance, same as you have done above. Let's discuss that.
Ok. You absolve the designer of blame for our Rube Goldberg digestive tracts because people don't care for them properly.
What about the balance of my list?
Non-sequiter. I did not mention the tonsils or appendix, nor did I say anything about any part of the anatomy being useless. I was talking "engineering problems." Now, instead of going off on a tangent, would you care to address the issues already presented, or do you want to stick with irrelevancies?
The dispute is not over whether some things have the appearance of design. I think the vast majority of people can agree on that. The question is: can design come about without a designer? Darwin says yes, proposes a mechanism and a large number people following after him produce evidence which they believe supports that conclusion. The ID people say no, and attempt to refute that evidence. The problem for the ID people is that you can't prove a negative, which is why scientists generally want nothing to do with their theory.
You're talking to the wrong guy.
I'm not the one who described the design of our world as one intrinsically demonstrating "PURPOSE, HARMONY, BEAUTY, INTELLIGENCE" and "absolute miraculous, unbelievable accomplishment of mechanical, mental, and organic chemical processes."
Do you mean the backs of overweight Americans who don't exercise, eat crap, and have back trouble by the time they're 45, or the backs of older Okinawans who do tough manual labor well 100?
What purpose does the appendix serve?
He was right, you are wrong. Pretty simple eh?
As pointed out earlier, the human back is pooorly engineered.
It's not irrelevant. I provided great examples of IGNORANT MEN, claiming how those items were "engineering problems", i.e. no purpose, and that was not the case at all. There may be some very specific and valid reasons why the things you mentioned were designed the way they are.
Well, gosh, that sounds just like certain creationists. There are no transitional fossils doncha know and speciation has never been observed and if you accept evolution you must reject God blah blah blah.
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