One of the many important issues on ballots around the nation yesterday, was the election of school board members in Dover, Pennsylvania. For those not keeping track, this is the sight of the Dover Trial on Intelligent Design – for a couple of discussions and summaries see here, here, and here. The case is Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District and is the first legal test for intelligent design. In 2004, the Dover PA school board included the teaching of ID in its Biology curriculum, where every student had to read a prepared statement about ID before learning about evolution. Some parents were not happy with this and sued. The issue of the suit is whether the policy of incorporating intelligent design into the curriculum was motivated by religious or educational principles, hence violating the separation of church versus state. It is the first court test of the validity of teaching ID in the public school system. Closing arguments have just recently been presented in the trial and the judge’s ruling is due in early January.
The community in Dover PA, however, did not wait for the judges to rule. 8 of the 9 school board memers were on the ballot for re-election yesterday, and ALL 8 LOST. WooHoo! The majority in Dover PA has spoken, and this majority wants science in their children’s classrooms. I certainly hope Kansas school board members are listening.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Yay!
I wonder if the right will now start belly-aching about “activist voters.”
November 10th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
It was a worryingly close vote; although getting rid of incumbents is always an uphill battle.
Best bet is that the total loss though ends it as a political issue, if it galvanises the losers then this will have to be refought.
Lawsuit should help a bit, I am figuring that the (old) School Board will lose.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
[...] TV-evangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson has warned the good residents of Dover PA (background post) not to be surprised if disaster strikes. Here’s the quote : If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. [...]
November 12th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
There is some bad news from Kansas:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13148268.htm
November 16th, 2005 at 1:59 am
My observation as a public school science teacher is that the discussion of religion in science class is a very inappropriate activity.
Having said this, I quickly add that physics is referred to as natural philosophy for well founded reasons, and concept is the legitimate beginning of the empirical process.
I also remind everyone of the existence of high complexity and intelligence in the biological world and the presence of stored information at even the inorganic level of cosmic structure…the work of Fred Hoyle.
Finally we should remember the implications of photonic entanglement and the connection between the experiment and the observer as identified in many 20th century experiments.
Best Wishes in your endeavors!
November 26th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
Yesterday (11/25), ID vs Evolution came across the airwaves on PBS McNeil-Lehrer reports & CNN:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/25/pzn.01.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html
[ Real Audio here: http://audio.pbs.org:8080/ramgen/newshour/expansion/2005/11/25/20051125_evolution28.rm?altplay=20051125_evolution28.rm ]
The CNN piece used some video clips & had comments by some noted scientists:
The new Darwin exhibit includes video testimonials from some of America’s top scientists.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN MILLER, BROWN UNIVERSITY: … that, without evolution to tie it together, biology is little more than stamp collecting.
FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: Without the framework of evolution to understand what we look at every day, it would make no sense.
COLLINS/CNN: We’re focusing tonight on the controversy raging right now in America’s public schools over teaching evolution.
One example of how much support Darwin’s theory has came last week, when the Vatican’s chief astronomer said intelligent design does not belong in science classrooms. Until recently, scientists might have thought the debate ended years ago. But more and more backers of intelligent design are publicly challenging Darwin’s theory, despite more than a century of scientific scrutiny.
…
NILES ELDREDGE, CURATOR, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY DARWIN EXHIBIT: And there is no way to test notions of the supernatural. And, so, it’s just not even appropriate to even try to do that
JACK [ of "B.C. Tours", where B.C. = Biblically Correct ]: Because evolution is not good science. It’s a pseudoscience, but it does one thing well. It gets rid of the need for God.
[ !!!??? ]
GALLAGHER: By this point, Richard Stuckey is fed up. He’s too polite to interrupt the tour, but he can’t hide his dismay.
STUCKEY [ VICE PRESIDENT, MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE ]: I was offended in a sense that he was talking to very young children, and saying to the young children something that is absolutely false.
GALLAGHER: He takes us behind the scenes, to the big bone room where Charles Darwin keeps watch over dinosaur fossils, millions of years old.
STUCKEY: These are authentic bones. They still have some of the original organic material preserving them. This isn’t art, this is real. This is authentic stuff.
GALLAGHER: But in this debate, one man’s fact is another man’s fraud.
[ Arguing with Creationists reminds me of this quote:
"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." -- Euripides ]
JACK: It comes down to a question of, whom are you going to trust on this issue? It’s what it really is. Is it going to be man’s word or God’s word? That’s what you’ve got to ask. Whom are you going to trust?
GALLAGHER/CNN: At the end of the day, that’s the fundamental question. How ordinary people view the universe in which they were born.
….
COLLINS/CNN: But what about intelligent design? I mean, is it possible that there could be parts of intelligent design that work for scientists, too?
SCOTT [ Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education ]: Not so far. Thus far, as you’ve heard, intelligent design, in its purest form, is supposedly a way of detecting things that have been constructed by an intelligence. But it really misses the point, even taken in that very minimalist framework. Of course, we all think that it’s a way of trying to sneak God into the curriculum…
COLLINS: All right, I want to get to this poll. Eugenie, 53 percent of Americans believe that God created human beings. Tell me exactly what the dangers are of bringing intelligent design into our children’s schools?
SCOTT: For one thing, because intelligent design is not considered part of science — it is fundamentally a religious view that is masquerading as science — students will get a very distorted view of what science actually is. Secondly, because intelligent design presents evolution as a theory in crisis, that scientists are arguing about, students will get a very distorted view of what — of the strength of the science of evolution within the scientific community.
I think that that is hurting us in terms of overall scientific literacy, and it’s hurting the students who are taught this distorted science.
..
MEYER [ The Discovery Institute, pro ID ]: Obviously people who hold a religious belief will associate the idea of intelligent design with God, and God is certainly a candidate explanation for the source of the information. I personally am a religious believer, and believe that God is the designer.
SCOTT: Right. Well, it’s either God or someone with the same skill set. I mean, if this isn’t smuggling God into the classroom, I don’t know what is.
———-
A couple of scientists I know (U of Arizona alumni, geologist & astronomer) have both told me “We’re in the Dark Ages”
June 6th, 2006 at 11:31 am
great minds think alike http://www.86theincumbent.com