JUdge Rules Against Pennsylvania Biology Curriculum

#1

Hot off the presses from Insightbb.com:

Judge Rules Against Pa. Biology Curriculum
Dec 20, 06:30 PM EST
By MARTHA RAFFAELE - Associated Press Writer

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district Tuesday from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

Jones decried the "breathtaking inanity" of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.

A six-week trial over the issue yielded "overwhelming evidence" establishing that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago.

The school system said it will probably not appeal the ruling, because several members who backed intelligent design were ousted in November's elections and replaced with a new slate opposed to the policy.

During the trial, the board argued that it was trying improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection.

The policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade lessons on evolution. The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps." It referred students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People."

But the judge said: "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

Eric Rothschild, an attorney for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling "a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district."

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which represented the school district and describes its mission as defending the religious freedom of Christians, said the ruling appeared to be "an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."

It was the latest chapter in a debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the Scopes trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law against teaching evolution.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over whether a suburban Atlanta school district had the right to put stickers on biology textbooks describing evolution as a theory, not fact. A federal judge last January ordered the stickers removed.

In November, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question.

President Bush also weighed in on the issue of intelligent design recently, saying schools should present the concept when teaching about the origins of life.

In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments "may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science." Among other things, the judge said intelligent design "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation"; it relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments; and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community."

"The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources," he wrote.

The judge also said: "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

Former school board member William Buckingham, who advanced the policy, said from his new home in Mount Airy, N.C., that he still feels the board did the right thing.

"I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state," he said. "We didn't lose; we were robbed."

The controversy divided Dover and surrounding Dover Township, a rural area of nearly 20,000 residents about 20 miles south of Harrisburg. It galvanized voters in the Nov. 8 school board election to oust several members who supported the policy.

The new school board president, Bernadette Reinking, said the board intends to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum and place it in an elective social studies class. "As far as I can tell you, there is no intent to appeal," she said.

---

On the Net:

Dover Area School District: http://www.dover.k12.pa.us

National Center for Science Education: http://www.ncseweb.org

Thomas More Law Center: http://www.thomasmore.org

#2

My thing is, do you necessarily have to be religious in order to believe in creationism..? To believe we are of intelligent desgin is an advocation of religion somehow..? If so, what sect..? I don't understand why people feel that not acknowleding a higher power is somehow better than insisting there is...

#3

It's another stupid attempt by the religious conservatives to further their agenda by rewriting history so that it fits their views of how you should live your life.

When my father heard about it, he said that back when he was growing up in the 1930's and 40's, the Supreme Court said that it is up to the individual and not the state or government to decide if you should belive in evolution or creationism.

#4

So if it's up to the individual, why don't you teach both sides so that they can make up their mind themselves. Why have the government or state say you can't learn about creationism.

This is a bunch of bullshit

Bot · #5

This doesn't bother me one bit. I hated high school because it was fucked up!

You had to have 4 religion credits (Grd 9, 10, 11, 12), but only 2 science credits, and 2 or 3 math credits. How the fuck does that make sense? That's what I hated about going to Catholic schools; they placed religion above everything.

Sorry, but knowing when, where, why and how Jesus died is not going to help a doctor, engineer, mechanic etc.

Creationism is just another religious class that we don't really need. High schools need to start focusing on trades, especially since there is a major shortage of trades workers in Canada.

#6

Intelligent design should be addressed, in a seperate class that should be mandatory.

Intelligent design is based on a view over 7,500 years old, and furthermore, is the heart of American Ideaology. It has never been disproven, is reinforced by every avenue of observation, and that view has informed much of the Western and Eastern Worlds for more than 70 centuries.

Saying a child should not learn intelligent design is like saying they should not learn the philosophy of Decartes.

His seminal statement "Cognito et Sum" (That I think, I am) is a manifestation of the entire basis of the distinction between Perception and Observation and informed Francis Bacon's natural philosophical analysis that inspired the Scientific Method.

One of the most prominent concepts of Intelligent Design has been expressed as Deus ex machina (God From Machine), and describes a fortuitous person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty. While in story telling this seems like cheating, in life, this type of figure might be welcome and heroic. This present the nature of hidden cause, which is the basis for the entire research of Sir Isaac Newton, and the mathematics of Voltaire... To say nothing of Einstein.

It is also crucial to the understanding of Literature, architecture, sculpture, anatomy, mathematics, chemistry, media and social studies, and judicial civic studies... as it has influenced every factor of our lives sine the point systematic observation of the motion of the sun and the seasons became the means by which we catagorize and reference the experiences of our life. TIME, if not our own Psyche, is the greatest evidence of Intelligent Design. The very idea that there exists the possibility for a standardized pattern of Intelligence, the notion of education, is an extension of Intelligent Design.

For example, The notion of Deus ex machina is applied to a revelation within a story experienced by a character, narrator, etc, which involves the individual realizing that the complicated, sometimes perilous or mundane and perhaps seemingly unrelated sequence of events leading up to this point in the story are joined together by some profound concept. It is this "peer interaction" that is the reason kids should be classed, to evolve in their human interactions and reflect on their humanity to resolve their moral fiber. This is also the basis of profound theater and music theory, and is crucial to understanding Shakespeare, which is required reading, and also Dante, which should be. Thus the unexpected and timely intervention is aimed at the meaning of the story rather than a physical event in the plot. This is exactly the way a therapist deveolps the psychological profile of the patient, through his interviews.

Without that element the Jewish "Mezel Mazloth," the Chinese "Tao Tai Chi", the English Primum Mobile, the South American Pachamam inan, the Hawaiian Kumulipo, the Roman Vniversum Scientia, the Macedodian Agathopathos, the Egyptian Tuat Ma'at, all of which indicate the INTELLIGENT DESIGN, the motive for our understanding of our existence loses all emphasis and passion, which defines the HUMAN element of the body of knowledge we call Science, or Scientia,.. i.e. "Intelligence".

Without this understanding a child, will NEVER be able to apply what he learns to his life outside of his fucking job, and will only be happy when his therapist introduces him to the notions.

..that makes school a utilitarian training camp to bring forth workers. Congratulations, the reality of national socialism is upon us in the courts, as it odorns them all with an armband of denial of essential tenets that define how humans have come to qualify and quantify their existence.

Don't get me wrong, an equal emphasis on educated skepticism is easily achievable, and highly recommended, and just as pertinent.

AMERICAN HISTORY *IS DEFINED AND BASED* ON TRUTHS INDICATED BY AN INTELLIGENT DESIGN:

The Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

vertical,
raum

#7

I can certainly agree with that...Why learn all the rest of the bs schools chunk your way, and not about human fundamentals..? I tell you what, I'll home school my kid before I let him attend a school where learning is forbidden...

Bot · #8

I have a question, is Religion mandatory in the States?

#9

Not in public schools. Now in religion-based schools I imagine it is.

#10

Karl Mobius's model of ecology is the most likely model for living existence, but it is reserved for graduates...
for some reason.

Basically, it models Bioeconosis (Living World Spirit - Absolute total of life) as the inhabitator of Biotope (Living Form - Sum total of organic matter).

This is the total basis of modern ecology.