Intelligent Design sue schools that teach Evolution

Politics International Politics
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[quote]School Board Sued on Mandate for Alternative to Evolution - The New York Times

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit yesterday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., against the school board of Dover, Pa., saying the board violated the religious rights of several parents and students by requiring the teaching of an alternative theory to evolution in public schools.[/quote]

I have been living in my sterile scientific academic world for too long. But how in God

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The real loonies are the Christians who want religion in public schools. They just don’t grasp how easily this could work agains them. What if the “alternative to evolution” turns out to be some occult cosmogenesis? (“Space, wrapped in its ever-invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities…”)

To this day, I regret not volunteering to lead the school prayer over the loudspeakers. I would have begun with “Almighty Satan…”

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i guess you haven’t hear yet about the judge who has the ten commandments embroidered on his robe. he wears it while hearing cases. the letters are large enough for anyone in the courtroom to discern.

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A google search turns up lots of great stuff on this topic:

God created the Grand Canyon
darwin.bc.asu.edu/blog/index.php?p=173

Battle for American Science
guardian.co.uk/life/feature/ … 55,00.html

cheers,
DB

“My dog, yes
My wife, maybe
My gun, NEVER!”

– bumper sticker seen in San Diego, CA

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I think it’s fascinating that the Republicans scream about their constitutional rights only when it comes to the “right to bear machine guns”. Talk about a one-note symphony.

However, when it comes to rampant abuses of traditional American civil rights under the guise of the “Patriot Act”, the indefinite detentions without access to lawyers for many who have no terrorist connections (completely aside from the indefinite detentions at Gitmo), the ramming of religion down the throats of schoolchildren in public schools, police harrassment of Americans wearing the “wrong” T-shirt in public, and the creation/maintenance of unchallengeable “no fly” lists that appear to be based upon nothing more than the Bush administration deciding they don’t like somebody.

When you get right down to it, people used to complain because the two major parties didn’t have terribly much to differentiate them. In retrospect, this was probably ideal – both parties more or less agreeing upon a common-sense middle ground that (of course) was only spiced up by the pork-barrelling common to all eras of US government.

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Argh, even the Grand Canyon is not safe from these loons… :help:

What next, the Statue of Liberty is the Virgin Mother Mary… :loco:

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the US supreme court ruled today 8-0 (rehnquist is out getting treatment) that police are no longer required to tell the arrested person what he is getting hauled in fer.

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swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurri … sclaimers/

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That’s what’s wrong with this board. There’s not any creationists. I’ve had some good debates on the board in Oklahoma.

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Oklahoma’s got it almost as bad as Texas and the rest of the South. We in Kansas (one state up from OK) have this going on right now, big time. Thing is, science education under these new conservatives is less about science and more about winning BOE (Board of Education) elections.

On the other hand, I heard on the radio that 45% - 45% - of all Americans believe the earth is no more than 10,000 years old.

It’s like we never went to the moon at all. The wackos who over the years have held that Armstrong’s landing was a fake have been vindicated. It’s enough to make one think that soon science journals will go away or become secret and mathematicians will be selling their theorems to the highest bidders once more.

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That’s because most of us have taken an airplane to Taiwan. Hence, we believe in science. Or least the evidence of science and Bernoulli’s Principle was demonstrated to us in such a fashion we dared not refute it, less plummet to the earth to meet our makers.

Why would people want to dispute a theory that has survived 100 years of academic rigors and scrutiny is beyond me?

When evolution is finally deemed irrelevant or incorrect, it will be cause it is not as convincing as another new theory that is forwarded among academics, not because it was not found in the Bible.

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My theory has always been that certain groups are so anti-education in the States because they need ignorant people to support them. Either by giving money or voting or both. Apparently it is working.

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No, the SCOTUS ruled 8-0 that if someone is arrested for crime ‘A’, e.g., driving while apparently intoxicated, and then charges for crime ‘A’ are dismissed, e.g., because it turned out the person was diabetic and had actually gone into insulin shock, then the person could still be tried and convicted for crime ‘B’, e.g., possessing child pornography which the officers found while searching the car for beer bottles, even though the person was not arrested for crime ‘B’ originally.

The fact that the ruling was 8-0 should tell you that it wasn’t some fucked up right-wing-wacko thing as you folks seem to want to tie it in to.

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Ah. That explains why the NEA is protecting incompetent teachers. Dumb students = future union members! Richard, I don’t know what we’d do here without your logical reasoning ability.

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Where are all the Trogs these days anyway? MaPoSquid is the only one holding up their end of the ‘debate.’

Maybe the Rapture got them and nobody’s noticed yet.

Imagine their surprise when they realize the hymnal covers lied about where they were really going.

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I think it’s a mistake to assume that the Intelligent Design movement is the same old, (clearly and obviously wrong) creationism we’re all familiar with. Don’t get me wrong: It’s creationism, alright, but the arguments they use are far more sophisticated, and they have been somewhat successful over the past six or seven years because they have identified all the legal loop holes that’s kept mainstream creationism out of public schools.

For example, Intelligent Design advocates claim that the identity of this “Designer” is a separate question from acknowledging that someone or something “designed” life. They argue that the “Designer” doesn’t necessarily have to be God or even a supernatural being. In other words, they only argue that life was designed, not who designed life. And the vast majority of Americans believe exactly this.

Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it’s silly. But it may just pass the acid test judges and school boards use to determine whether it’s a religious belief. That’s a rather spooky proposition, if you ask me.

Intelligent Design is so vaguely formulated, that you just might lose the argument that it’s creationism in the religious sense. Therefore, people need to make the additional argument that only scientifically valid theories belong in the classroom, that science isn’t decided by a process of democracy, and that Intelligent Design is a sterile hypothesis. So far, I haven’t heard that, though.

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I agree with your point, but I think “scientifically valid” as a filter doesn’t work.

I think a better argument may be that high-school and younger students should study science footed in primary research. Namely, the scientific method with results published in peer-reviewed journals. If ID or creationism can get peer-reviewed, then fine, let kids study it.

But I don’t think ID will stand up to the scientific method.

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I agree with your point, but I think “scientifically valid” as a filter doesn’t work.

I think a better argument may be that high-school and younger students should study science footed in primary research. Namely, the scientific method with results published in peer-reviewed journals. If ID or creationism can get peer-reviewed, then fine, let kids study it.

But I don’t think ID will stand up to the scientific method.[/quote]

Well yes of course… “scientifically valid” is just a short hand way of saying, “research footed in… the scientific method with results published in peer-review journals.”

But my way was shorter :laughing:

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Not only does the theory have to be published and stand up to peer-reviews. There has too be a large consensus in the field.

That is the reason why String Theory and Chaos Theory is not taught in highschool. These are very controversial theories in science.

To the best of my knowledge Intelligent Design is a political tool.

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[quote=“ac_dropout”]Not only does the theory have to be published and stand up to peer-reviews. There has too be a large consensus in the field.

That is the reason why String Theory and Chaos Theory is not taught in highschool. These are very controversial theories in science.

To the best of my knowledge Intelligent Design is a political tool.[/quote]

I agree, ac. I think, that another reason string and chaos theory aren’t taught at the high school levels is because they’re too complex to fit within a general-education framework. Evolution, on the other hand, isn’t.

But there are likely other reasons, too. Reasons that have less to do with science and more to do with political power. Try to think like an opportunistic red-state conservative for a sec.

AC says, “We can’t teach chaos theory in our schools because no large consensus exists about its validity. The same thing is true for ID. In fact, the consensus is far less for ID than for chaos or string theory. Our conclusion, therefore, should be that ID cannot be taught for the same reason we don’t teach our kids about chaos theory.”

Opportunistic conservative: "[url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/perkins/20041210-9999-lz1e10perkins.html]Now, I’m no holy roller. I do not expect everyone to share my religious faith. I respect the right of others not to believe in a supreme being.

But what offends me is the contempt that the atheist minority has for the overwhelming majority of us who do believe in God. What angers me is that the atheist minority is waging an unholy war against God, against religion, in communities throughout the once-fair land. [/url]*

In fact, here we have an atheist who would teach a theory about disorder, about chaos in the universe, before he would teach students about any intelligent design of our universe. Which is more important to our students’ educations, disorder or God’s order?

My conclusion, therefore, is that we must make a stand for God. God’s order must be preferred to disorder, and we shouldn’t teach our children about evolution for the same reason we don’t teach our kids about chaos theory."

Who do you think’s going to win that argument in red America, ac?

*–Language courtesy of a real-life, opportunistic conservative, Joseph Perkins.