Intelligent design loses vote [Ohio]

AP via Akron Beacon-Journal ^ | 2/24/2006 | Carrie Spencer Ghose

[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.

[NapkinUser]

Is there a reason to argue with someone who posts FSM material?

[jennyp]

My own great grandfather survived those death camps, and he wasn't Jewish either.

I'm glad he survived, and I hope he was willing & able to pass on the account of his horrible ordeal. In fact I hope he wrote it all down.

But c'mon, you know full well the kind of sleazy evasion of well-known facts & obvious conclusions therefrom that holocaust deniers resort to in order to sustain their denial. Even the eyewitness reports are deflected by admitting that "some" Jews died in the camps because after all it was wartime, yadda yadda yadda.

[Zeroisanumber]

If you're interested in discussing the age of the Earth with a scientist, then you should ping coyoteman.

[peyton randolph]

Is there a reason to argue with someone who posts FSM material?

Funny you should say that. If you replace "FSM" with "ID," the point is made in spades. FSM is ID.

[jennyp]

...on to bed, where I'll dream pleasant dreams of sleazy IDers on the run ... being chased by giant meatballs. (Hey, it IS a dream... :-)

[peyton randolph]

Why don't you do as do Id'ers do, and apply scientific methodology to it?

I've yet to see scientific methods used to support ID. All arguments ultimately boil down to a creationist view based entirely on faith. Anything inconvenient with creationism is discarded. The best indictment of ID was the recent Dover decision. As noted by the judge, creationists were saying one thing to the press and saying the exact opposite under oath in the courtroom. Trying to back-door Christianity into science class through perjury is just plain wrong.

[liliesgrandpa]

It's time that parents pay for their own children's education.

If they want to send their children to a school that teaches that they are related to rats and skunks, fine.

And vouchers should be given to the poor.

I had to pay for my children to go to a Christian school, and I had to pay for all those atheist in the public school too, with my tax dollars.

[Rudder]

If you think restricting free thought is a good thing, I pity you. You will have no problem embracing Islam, it dictates thought as well.

Where have you been throughout this debate? This issue has nothing to do with "free thought," and if you had been paying attention, you'd know that. Now go back back and do your homework before spouting off like an ignorant fool.

[Nathan Zachary]

"Hey, you can look up the FACTS and determine that evolution happened too,"

What FACTS! All there is are theories, and many of them are under serious challenge by discoveries made in the various fields of SCIENCE. There is no EVIDENCE which proves evolution.
There is no fossil evidence to prove evolution.

[Nathan Zachary]

The only ignorant fool around here is you.

[sangrila]

"It's time that parents pay for their own children's education."


Are you the only person in the country who pays taxes? These people do pay for their own children's education.

[Navydog]

I didn't write this but it's one of the best arguements against evolution that I have ever read.

---

We EXIST (there are only a few strange people who deny this fact of the cosmos, believing that all this is merely a dream. Let's not awaken them!). A creation of infinite DESIGN, SYSTEMS, INTERDEPENDENT ORGANS AND INTERDEPENDENT ORGANISMS, PURPOSE, HARMONY, BEAUTY, INTELLIGENCE (the human mind for example), REPRODUCTION, etc., etc., etc., DEMANDS an intelligent, purposeful, living, all-powerful CREATOR!

No sane and rational person, finding a Rolex Watch on a desert dune, would ever suggest that that marvelous mechanism invented ITSELF, and created ITSELF, and assembled ITSELF, without the aid of any intelligence whatsoever. And yet, supposed, intelligent men speculate that the great time-peace of the universe invented, created, and assembled itself without the aid of any intelligent creator.

Even if we make that quantum leap in our minds from no matter, no harmony, no systems, no design, to perfect harmony and design without the aid of a creator, how do we account for the fact of LIFE? Life is as complicated as the universe itself. A single cell has more communication and reproductive power than all the machines and computers built by man in the history of the world. Yet we are told that it "built itself." It spontaneously generated itself from primortal sea slime by the mixing of chemical in the sea and a genius stroke of lightning to get it all started. Never mind where the sea came from, the chemicals, and the lightning.

Life DOES NOT SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE ITSELF! Life comes ONLY from pre-existing life, and life of the same KIND. These are facts of science, Tom. (By the way, lightning KILLS LIFE, it does not create life from dead chemicals). Just based on the Law of Probability (I said "law" and not theory), it would take longer to mix the chemicals at random to produce the long chains of amino acids, etc., needed for life, by at least a trillion times longer than scientists estimate the age of the universe. In other words, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN THAT WAY.

Would an intelligent Creator at some point in time communicate with His higher creatures? I think so. The Scriptures are unique in the world of literature and writing. There are for example, numerous laws of science presented in the Scriptures that scientists have only recently come to understand with his combined knowledge of thousands of years. Primitive writers could not have known many of the things attested to in the Scriptures.

There are hundreds of prophecies in the Scriptures that have been fulfilled in minute detail many years and even centuries AFTER the known date of the writings.

The Scriptures are a collection of SPIRITUAL writings. I had tried to many years to understand them with my unaided carnal mind. I could not, and yet now, I am having hundreds of things revealed to me that harmonize perfectly with the rest of Scripture that cannot possibly be understood by mere study and diligence. Of course, here is where I have an advantage over you: I believe and you don't. If one is too short to see over a high wall, it is only natural that he would ridicule what a taller person might describe to him on the other side. The problem of perception in this case is not with the taller person who can clearly see the other side, but rather with the short-sighted person who cannot see the over side.

Concerning the spiritual teachings of the Scriptures, let me just say, that there is more real and absolute knowledge in the Scriptures regarding what man is and how he thinks and functions in a half dozen verses than can be found in all the psychology and philosophy books in the world.

My God answers PRAYERS! But again, that's for me to know and you to find out.
I would love to write a fifty page paper on the human eye, for example. Then after blowing away every atheist and evolutionists with the facts regarding the human eye (or an animal eye), I would love to discuss the origin and probability of putting TWO EYES SIDE BY SIDE IN ORDER TO INDUCE AN ILLUSION IN THE BRAIN THE MAKES THINGS APPEAR THREE DIMENSIONAL THROUGH DEPTH PERCEPTION!!!

I would just love to sit on a panel with all the evolutionists and atheists of the world and have them explain to me the origin of such a thing as the allusion in the brain of depth perception through the spacing of two eyes without any intelligence whatsoever formulating such an absolute miraculous, unbelievable accomplishment of mechanical, mental, and organic chemical processes! And a thousand other such feats of intelligence only possible by the infinite mind of an all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful CREATOR!

Sorry I can write a book on some of these subjects, but it just isn't my priority at present.

May the God of Creation enlighten your heart and mind to His marvelous purpose in the lives of His humanity.

[AmericaUnited]

As always, groups like Communists, the Left, Liberals, ACLU anti-religion types, etc. are ALWAYS in favor of controlling and shutting up any other viewpoint. Because they are usually SCARED TO DEATH AND GREATLY FEAR other points of view. It comes from knowing deep down how naked and at risk their lame, failed ideas are.

[sangrila]

When are they going to vote on whether or not to teach gravity?

[AmericaUnited]

I would just love to sit on a panel with all the evolutionists and atheists of the world and have them explain to me the origin of such a thing as the allusion in the brain of depth perception through the spacing of two eyes without any intelligence whatsoever formulating such an absolute miraculous, unbelievable accomplishment of mechanical, mental, and organic chemical processes!

Trust me, you don't want to do this. Having to listen to the tortured, mind numbing, totally idiotic explanations would make you get physically ill. But then again, it could be very funny, watching them do it with a straight face and a smug look of 'superior' intelligence, not realizing how stupid they sound trying to defend a lie.

[KeepUSfree]

That "social skills" line is the biggest crock of crap I've EVER heard. It's being found that, home schoolers have BETTER social skills - because they learn to deal as adults much quicker and don't "learn" all of the "bad" social skills that are learned in public schools.

[KeepUSfree]

You, my friend, are extremely uninformed and ignorant and know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the subject of evolution. Go study the subject for a few months (without the blinders), then come back when you can display at least a granule of knowledge about what science is, what a theory is, what evolution is, how evolution works, and what the fossil record indicates.

Then, just for good measure, do alot of reading about "gravity" - another stupid theory that we can't TOTALLY figure out (why is there gravity?? is there a particle?, a beam?...nobody knows!!!). Damn, must not actually BE any gravity since we don't know EVERYTHING about it. (I think that gravity doesn't exist and that there are divinely created "gluons" in the earth that keep us from spinning off into space). I'm also VERY glad God designed these gluons and I think we should stop teaching about orbits and inversely proportional forces that, hey, we can't see or measure ... (because God made them that way - he's a sly old fox that God is - likes to mess with us). I mean. really, just look at it...we are spinning in circles at 92,000 MPH - thats fast. Try holding onto one of those playground spin-around-till-you-get-sick thingies that is going 92,000MPH - you couldn't do it...not enough muscle in 30 strong men to acieve this feat. Therefore, it is impossible that we can be stuck on this planet - due to the same 92,000 MPH rotational inertial forces that would throw us off into space. And, since we don't currently have the technology that would allow us reproduce this "gravity",I have naturally assumed that it MUST be a divine force(much like the finding of a watch on the beach)

Gluons my friend - thats the ticket. And, I think every high school in the US should teach about gluons in physics class. That's clearly where it belongs.

[peyton randolph]

It's being found that, home schoolers have BETTER social skills - because they learn to deal as adults much quicker and don't "learn" all of the "bad" social skills that are learned in public schools.

I guess it depends on how one defines 'social skills.' I've never met a person with a home school educational background who I'd ever consider hiring for any job dealing with the public.

[peyton randolph]

they are usually SCARED TO DEATH AND GREATLY FEAR other points of view.

Hmmm. Why won't ID proponents limit their faith-based belief to religion and philosophy classes where it belongs? Trying to force ID into the science classroom is like demanding a Spanish class teach Pig Latin as an alternative means of speaking the language.