State science standards in election spotlight (ID/Creation Kansans need to vote!)

The Wichita Eagle ^ | August 1, 2008 | LORI YOUNT

[GodGunsGuts]

With five seats on the State Board of Education up for grabs this year, education advocates say how children learn about evolution hangs in the balance -- and who voters choose could affect Kansas' national reputation.

A frequent flip-flop between moderate and conservative majorities on the 10-member board has resulted in the state changing its science standards four times in the past eight years.

Conservatives have pushed for standards casting doubt on evolution, and moderates have said intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom.

In 2007, a new 6-4 moderate majority removed standards that called evolution into question.

This year, none of the three moderates whose seats are up for election are running again. Only one of the two conservative incumbents is running for re-election...

[GodGunsGuts]

==You don’t believe in the Constitutional principle of equal protection under the law?

Yes, I do.

==How exactly do you feel that some are receiving MORE 1st Amendment protection than others?

The majority of Americans consider themselves religious. If you remove the First Amendment, then there is no longer any separation between church and state. If that happens, religion can no longer be barred from public schools, government institutions, etc. Do you get the picture? Libs like Dagny should rethink their position before calling for an abolition of the First Amendment.

[GodGunsGuts]

==Greenland entered the discussion when someone else injected those buried P-38’s into the discussion, since that’s where they were buried. The original point was with regard the the Antarctic ice cores.

You were perfectly happy debating the Greenland ice cores until you realized that it contradicts Darwinian assumptions/supportive of YEC catastrophism. Now that you have been forced to concede that the Greenland ice core data does not support Darwinism, would you like to move on to Antarctica?

[allmendream]

So you feel that keeping the majority religion out of public schools is granting MORE protection to those not of the majority religion than is granted to those OF the majority religion? I don't see it. The Amendment is absolute and not on a sliding scale of majority religious belief and divergence from that belief.

How does your view of some getting MORE Constitutional protection square with the Constitutional principle of equal protection under the law? What remedy to you propose?

[GodGunsGuts]

I’m not proposing a remedy. I’m just letting Dagny know that he should think before proposing the abolition of the First Amendment.

What’s your interest in this? Do you agree with Dagny?

[js1138]

I think we left the constitution behind a while back. I’m just amused at all the mental masturbation going on over the possibility of creating a theocracy.

I’m actually eager to see some state like Kansas or Louisiana try. Every time these cases get to court the rulings favor science. And if the states are stupid enough to appeal, the rulings will be national in scope.

[Dagny&Hank]

You really don't know what the First Amendment says, or what the founders writings about it tell us.

As to being conservative, I'm about 9 on a scale of 0 to 10. I'm just not willing to believe in all the stuff which a bunch of humans wrote in some books which they then tell us is the word of their God or Gods. Angel Gabriel spoke to Mohammed -- yeah right. God spoke to Moses -- yeah right. Where is there evidence besides the cooked books?

[allmendream]

My interest in this? I swore an oath to Protect and Defend the U.S. Constitution. So no, I do not for a second believe the First Amendment should be abolished. I enjoy the right to free exercise of religion it allows, I enjoy a free press, the right to petition for redress of grievances, the right to peaceably assemble, and the fact that no particular creed or religious doctrine is promulgated under state authority.

I was just wondering how you figured it granted MORE rights to some than to others. You still have not provided an explanation.

[GodGunsGuts]

==The Amendment is absolute and not on a sliding scale of majority religious belief and divergence from that belief.

It is not absolute, and it has indeed been turned into a sliding scale, as its meaning has been changed since the founding.

[allmendream]

Constitutionally that is the correct direction. Our founders wanted the government involved in the promotion of Science by granting of exclusive rights. Our founders implicitly stated that religion was to be kept separate from the functions of government.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

The general consensus is that the majority of people want creation and ID taught in schools in addition to evolution.

May be, but there's no clear consensus that they want them taught as alternative scientific theories, as the excerpt I quoted pointed out. I certainly don't have any objection to teaching about creation and ID in a comparative religion or political science class.

Read again where the poll results were from, not just who published them in an article.

I did. That's how I noticed the Zogby poll was commissioned by the Discovery Institute. DI wrote the questions, and they were misleading.

[allmendream]

What parts of the Amendment do you feel are not absolute?

Freedom of speech?

Freedom of the press?

Free exercise of religion and non establishment of a state religion?

Freedom to peaceably assemble?

Freedom to petition for a redress of grievances?

What qualifications do you feel were put upon these ABSOLUTE rights, granted to us by our Creator and enshrined by our founders in recognition of Natural Law?

[js1138]

I know it’s fashionable on this site to fantasize about what the constitution “really” means, but precedents are the facts on the ground, and no court is going to overturn the Lemon Test. Since the Dover trial the anti-science movement has gone berserk. They have abandoned all pretense of not being motivated by religion.

I have pages of links to forums run by Dembski and friends in which they openly discuss the religious motivations behind their movement. There is no one left to testify as an expert witness for ID.

Behe was the only expert witness and he humiliated the movement. He testified again in California, and the judge, remarked that his testimony helped the opposition.

Guys like Running wolf can wag their penises in public and claim that evolution isn’t science, but I would love to see someone say that under oath in a courtroom. Priceless.

[GodGunsGuts]

Well for one, the modern reading of free exercise/establishment clause of the First Amendment does not comport with the original intent of the founders.

[GodGunsGuts]

What’s the matter Allmendream, is this debate too hard for you too?

[js1138]

Hey. You should be rallying the troops for the next court case.

[Coyoteman]

You were perfectly happy debating the Greenland ice cores until you realized that it contradicts Darwinian assumptions/supportive of YEC catastrophism. Now that you have been forced to concede that the Greenland ice core data does not support Darwinism, would you like to move on to Antarctica?

Creationist Claim CD410:

Ice cores are claimed to have as many as 135,000 annual layers. Yet airplanes of the Lost Squadron were buried under 263 feet of ice in forty-eight years, or about 5.5 feet per year. This contradicts the presumption that the wafer-thin layers in the ice cores could be annual layers.

Source:

Vardiman, Larry. 1992. Ice cores and the age of the earth. Impact 226 (Apr.). http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=355

Response:

1. Ice layers are counted by different methods (mainly, visible layers of hoar frost, visible dust layers, and layers of differing electrical conductivity) which have nothing to do with thickness. These methods corroborate each other and match with other independently determined dates (Seely 2003).
   
   
2. The airplanes landed near the shore of Greenland, where snow accumulation is rapid, at about 2 m per year. Allowing for some compaction due to the weight of the snow, that accounts for the depth of snow under which they are buried. The planes are also on an active glacier and have moved about 2 km since landing. Ice core dating takes place on stable ice fields, not active glaciers. The interior of Greenland, where ice cores were taken, receives much less snow. In Antarctica, where ice cores dating back more than 100,000 years have been collected, the rate of snow accumulation is much less still.
   
   
3. A report of "many hundreds" of layers in the ice above the Lost Squadron may also be explained by the airplanes' location on Greenland. That location is relatively warm because it is low and more southerly; its surface gets repeatedly melted during the summer, creating multiple melt layers per year. At the site of the GISP2 ice core, melting occurs only about once every couple centuries. Melt layers are easily distinguished in ice cores. The more than 100,000 layers in ice cores are definitely not melt layers (Seely 2003).

Follow the link for references.

[allmendream]

Saying so doesn't make it so; do you think Jefferson or Madison would embrace the establishment of Christianity as the official religion that should be taught at public schools?

How is the reading of the First in any way a departure from Madison's intent.

Madison's summary of the First Amendment:

Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731).

“The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State” Madison (Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819).

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov’t in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history” Madison (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820).

“Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together” Madison (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822).

“I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others.” Madison (Letter Rev. Jasper Adams, Spring 1832).

“To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself” Madison (Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811).

[GodGunsGuts]

You must be busy dusting off all your books written by the ACLU. If you ever get around to responding, I’ll be happy to reengage.

[allmendream]

ACLU? I guess ad homonym is what passes for reasoned debate in the benighted backwaters you frequent (where dinosaurs walked with man, and Science is just a big conspiracy).

I happened to be reading James Madison.... maybe you just consider him an ACLU liberal as well.... after all his reading (and writing)of the 1st Amendment is exactly as I understand it to be meant.

[allmendream]

There never was a credible expert witness for the Incompetent Design hypothesis. They were cdesign proponentists one and all, liars and charlatans or those who simply wished to profit off the credulous while promoting a theory that the Universe was so incompetently designed that the designer needs to run around patching up his shoddy work (which is blasphemous in my mind).