Posted on 11/13/2007 1:40:53 PM PST by yoe
A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday.
"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release.
The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day," airing on most network affiliates Tuesday night. The film is about a trial concerning intelligent design that took place in Dover, Pa., in 2005.
The guide claims to provide teachers with "easily digestible information to guide and support you in facing challenges to evolution."
In the booklet, teachers are instructed to use such discussion questions as: "Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?" The answer to that query is provided as: "Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false."
"This statement is simplistic and not neutral among different religions, and in that sense arguably inconsistent with Supreme Court teachings concerning neutrality," said attorney Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the institute.
"The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that the government must maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion,'" said Randal Wenger, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed amicus briefs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School District case.
"Because the briefing packet only promotes religious viewpoints that are friendly towards evolution, this is not neutral, and PBS is encouraging teachers to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," Wenger added.
In its news release, the Discovery Institute indicates that it has enlisted more than a dozen attorneys and legal scholars, including Wenger, to review the PBS teaching guide with an eye to its constitutionality.
"The PBS materials, in suggesting that students need not be concerned that evolution violates their religion, ironically equip public school teachers to violate our current conception of the First Amendment by explicitly teaching students concerning matters of religious belief," Wenger said.
"The irony is that discussing intelligent design would not teach any student about any religious belief - the PBS materials, on the other hand, will," he said.
Luskin noted that the teaching guide also presents false information about the theory of intelligent design.
"The teaching guide is also riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory," the attorney added.
As a result, the institute is providing its own guide for educators, "The Theory of Intelligent Design," which will help teachers better understand the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
Cybercast News Service previously reported that in December 2004, parents in Dover filed the first-ever challenge to intelligent design being taught in public schools, claiming it violated their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.
Just over a year later, U.S. District Judge John Jones III ruled that the school system may not include intelligent design in its science curriculum because intelligent design is not a scientific concept.
Telephone calls and e-mails seeking a response from the Public Broadcasting System were not returned by press time. However, on the PBS Web site, the program is described as capturing "the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pa., in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools."
"Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants - including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers and town officials - 'Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial' follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District," the site states.
"In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent," the Web site says.
"The teachers refused to comply," it adds.
"'Judgment Day' captures on film a landmark court case with a powerful scientific message at its core," said Paula Apsell, NOVA's senior executive producer. "Evolution is one of the most essential, yet - for many people - least understood of all scientific theories, the foundation of biological science."
"We felt it was important for NOVA to do this program to heighten the public understanding of what constitutes science and what does not and, therefore, what is acceptable for inclusion in the science curriculum in our public schools," Apsell said.
Nevertheless, Discovery Institute attorney Casey Luskin disagreed that the program is just about science.
"PBS gives a false definition of intelligent design that is a complete straw man argument," Luskin said. "Scientists who support intelligent design seek evidence of design in nature, and argue that such evidence points to intelligent design, based on our historical knowledge of cause and effect."
"So intelligent design theory is not an argument based on what we don't know, but rather an argument about what we do know," he said.
That was the phrase I used. What I got was a blog (wasatchfront.blogspot), a Library of Congress website, several religious websites and a religious blog. I didn’t go further because you referenced the first site as being the operative one. None were very relevant to the accusation of js that boop’s quotation is a fabrication. Given what is to be found in Farrand’s Records I cannot imagine what js is citing to support his accusation. I must not be getting the same results you are.
”Franklin was a Deist, but not of the hands-off clockmaker God type of Deist. He did believe in providence.”
And with that you have defined away the most essential characteristic of Deists; that God does not seek to intervene in the affairs of men or in the operation of the universe.
Concerning the agreement among on the founders with reference to Christian principles, perhaps the Lurkers would benefit from a repeat of the excerpt you already provided at post 179?
"The general Principles, on which the Fathers atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite.... And what were these general Principles? I answer [John Adams wrote]-- the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and those principles of Liberty, as unalterable as human nature and the terrestrial, mundane system" (Letter of Adams to Jefferson, June 28, 1813).
That is one of the essential understandings of the American founding and of the Constitution. Another is "Render under Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's." Both are profound, explicitly Christian understandings.
These are the central ideas of the purpose and limits of a government of "We the People" as set forth in the Preamble of the Constitution.
This "We the People" is under God directly, not "under" any other ruler. Man is endowed with his natural human rights (preeminently life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) directly by God. States can confer no rights; only God can. Men are governed by -- or perhaps I should better say men are accountable to -- not the state, but God alone, Who is the supreme Judge of all men.
Thus it follows the state ought to be severely limited in its power and reach, and subject to, not the so-called General Will such as any politically-motivated philosopher might come up with, but the Will of the People themselves. It is the People who are sovereign in our system of government, not the government. Government functionaries, appointees, elected officers, etc., are agents of their principal (the American People), and not the other way around.
At least that was the Framers' idea of the system they wrought in establishing the constitution and sending it out for ratification by the several state conventions. The people gave their assent to this form of limited government, and were supposed to be vigilent in overseeing its operations, making such necessary adjustments to it as constitute their own happiness and satisfaction, through constitutional means -- and even extra-constitutional means, up to and including their sovereign right to abolish the government by any and all necessary means if it transgressed the just limits imposed on it by the People, as set forth in the Constitution. (The right of self-defense against an unjust government by arms if necessary arguably was the major rationale for the Second Amendment, and also agruably the reason why the progressive Left detests the RKBA and seeks to abolish it by judicial fiat....)
The philosophy of the American founding was truly the most radical revolution in political thought in the history of man. The fact that it was implemented, and has succeeded for over two centuries, shows that it can work. But it takes eternal vigilence on the part of citizens, and their direct responsibility -- not to the state, but to God -- to keep it alive in a flourishing state. On which human liberty ultimately depends.
And so that was the meaning of my observation that the next election will be all about what kind of an America do we want to live in. I'm thrilled to hear the Great El Rushbo has said likewise. That just makes me feel that my observation is on the right track. Unfortunately, the only talk radio I hear is during morning and evening drive time, and so I don't have a chance to listen to Rush's show. Which is most regrettable! For he is one of the most astute political analysts and thinkers of our time.
Benjamin Franklin was a regular and interested listener of evangelist George Whitefield, an early calvinistic Methodist.
If Franklin remained a deist, he was, like Jefferson, a Christian Deist.
The grace of God accepts men just as they are...even if it is on their death bed.
Anyhoot, in a recent message to YHAOS -- Reply #223 -- I elaborated the “principles of Christianity” part of Adams’ brief. I’d like to add some comments regarding the “principles of English and American Liberty” part as commonly understood by Americans in the mid-part of the 18th century, around the time of the first Great Awakening, to which Adams refers.
English and American liberty rest not only on Christian ideas, but also on the great Whig political tradition of Great Britain (which actually recapitulates key Christian ideas). The Whig philosopher John Locke was the major ideological driver of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which King James II was deposed, and William and Mary ascended to the British Crown. In the next year, William approved the English Bill of Rights. The American colonists were well aware of these developments.
Central to their awareness was the recognition that the Bill of Rights was established on natural law grounds. Christianity itself is a major proponent of natural law. So the Christian colonists could easily associate the ideas of Liberty with natural law.
The British Whig essayists John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters; or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and other Important Subjects (a collection of essays published in the London Journal commencing around 1720) were widely circulated in the Colonies and were hugely popular there. I have never been able to find a better explication of the natural law basis of Whig political philosophy than this excerpt from Cato’s Letters:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes….Can we say on this basis: Life, Liberty, and Property are divinely constituted natural (i.e., unalienable) human rights here (the latter of which TJ transcribed as “the pursuit of happiness”)?Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property….
Note that God is the ultimate guarantor of Life, Liberty, and Equity in this understanding, in addition to being the Creator of men who are born free.
This insight is based on even earlier understandings, such as we see in the statement of John Milton, the great English poet and essayist:
The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.I maintain that these understandings were of paramount importance to the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
But it’s one thing to declare the sovereignty of free natural-born human beings and to declare their God-given natural rights, and quite another to fit that into a political system. For if there is any “zero-sum game” in nature, it is political power: the more power the state has, the less the people have to direct their own affairs. Practically speaking, without the power, a free people can do nothing, or very little, by or for themselves. Thus they lose their God-given liberty. George Washington was acutely aware of this problem:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!Though Washington — a wise and prudent man — was certainly right about this, in the early 19th century, John C. Calhoun could still say the following with confidence:
…[A]ll powers granted by the Constitution, are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted [to the government] remains with them, and at their will; and that no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President or any department, or officer of the United States.And so here we are today, in the early 21st century. To the extent that Christian ideas and the ideas of natural law and natural liberty that informed our amazing system of government at its very root have been under full frontal attack for the past century, is it little wonder that we are increasingly losing our freedoms, our morale, our hope for a better tomorrow?
I’ll just leave it there for now.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ — and for your very kind words of encouragement.
This is the crux. If Man is endowed by his Creator with ‘unalienable’ rights, and the state has no part in determining the boundary of those rights, then many become frightened and angry, because they can gain no advantage; no power, no mastery over other men. They can ‘game’ the state (‘game the system), but they can’t ‘game’ God. Politicians particularly relish ‘gaming’ the system (see our current misanthropic crop), but, so too do celebrities and all that cortege of pretenders who swirl in orbit around the centers of power in DC, New York, Hollywood, etc. Gaming the system marks their highest aspiration, and success in ‘gaming’ evidences their greatest achievements. To confess sovereignty in all the people reduces them to a pedestrian status they fear greater than oblivion.
xzins observes in his msg 224 “If Franklin remained a deist, he was, like Jefferson, a Christian Deist.”
And that exactly fixes the problem critics face in attempting to deny a Christian influence on the making of America. To tailor the charge of deism to any of the Founding Fathers, the critics must redefine ‘deist’ to fit the changing characteristics of the different Founders. Franklin proclaimed “God governs in the affairs of men.” Not a belief usually attributable to Deists. Jefferson, on the other hand, swore fealty to Jesus Christ (“the pure gospel of Jesus Christ”). etc.
What is particularly distinguishing about the Founding Fathers is that they were already at the pinnacle of their society and yet chose to extend sovereignty to all the people, thereby surrendering much of the advantage they held in society. Does anyone know of any other class of men who have done such a thing in all of history? Yes, I know, their definition of ‘the people’ was considerably more narrow than what it became. Nevertheless it was their impetus that propelled us forward, step by step, as we progressed from their beginnings. Forward step by step, that is, until some thirty-five years ago when a majority of nine black-robed Justices chose to deny ‘personhood’ to unborn children, and thereby commenced the march backwards in the denial of sovereignty to the people.
Perhaps the founders intended the unborn to be counted as 3/5ths of a person.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
But unlike slavery, an aborted child does not have standing to sue for his right to life to test that law.
And now another class is at risk of being deemed expendable at the convenience of another - assisted suicide is the first step toward euthanasia.
Currently students are told they are ignorant and their religion is wrong because evolution is a fact.
There's no reason for science and religion to be at odds.
Have you worked out the details of your trip to DC to view the Franklin speech document?
As an interesting aside, I read not too long ago where Peta nutbars are suing the courts to grant standing to animals (starting with members of the Ape family and with family pets, I think), so they (the animals) can sue to secure their ‘rights’. It’s a sure shot that these same pathetic creatures would suffer an anal hemorrhage at the mere suggestion of legal standing for the unborn. Gives one a clear insight into the hierarchy of values held by these people.
Do you have any evidence for that js1138?
Is it likely the Founders would have regarded unborn children as slaves?
Just wondering....
It's positively "Darwinian," YHAOS -- in the "Social Darwinism" sense: It's okay to pick off the helpless...even though their right to life is absolute (i.e., unalienable) and constitutionally protected.
Thank you for your superb essay/post YHAOS!
I should think, my dear boop, that it is more likely that Liberals and Socialist/Marxists would regard the unborn as 3/5s of a person, or even less. Perhaps we ought include in that bunch those who are convinced that we humans, Founding Fathers and slaves alike as well as the rest of us, are nothing more than an unguided assemblage of chemicals and random discharges of weak electrical energy. Whoops! On second thought, that’s all pretty much the same bunch in any event. My bad.
Let’s note that friend A-G has previously defined another class of the helpless; the aged and other victims of euthanasia. They are all in the same leaking lifeboat.
Some adults were regarded as less than human. I honestly don't know about native Americans. Were they regarded as citizens, being born here? Enquiring minds want to know.
Looks that way, YHAOS. Christians are duty bound, it seems to me, to stand up for the human rights of these at-risk classes. Unborn children are helpless; the aged and sick and handicapped need champions to defend their God-given natural human rights, too. And there's no two ways about it.
You know very well they were not so regarded at the time. What does that have to do with the status of unborn children?
Incidentally, I read somewhere recently that in my home state (Massachusetts), back in the late colonial period attempts were made to enslave the native Indians. But the attempt had to be given up: The Native Americans were just too "shiftless" and undependable, and had the bad habit of always successfully escaping. If you could manage to recapture them, they'd just run away again at the first opportunity. IOW: You really couldn't enslave the native Americans. They simply refused to play along.
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