ATTN: All you fans of Intelligent Design

[Oh, Gee!!]

Here's why religion shouldn't be discussed in science class:

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20051117%2F1210445998.htm

Saudi Teacher Sentenced to 750 Lashes

By TAREK AL-ISSAWI

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - A Saudi high-school chemistry teacher accused of discussing religion with his students has been sentenced to 750 lashes and 40 months in prison for blasphemy, officials said Thursday.

The court ruling was condemned by human rights activists, who said Mohammed Salamah al-Harbi was being imprisoned for having an ``open discussion'' with students.

Al-Harbi was convicted of questioning and ridiculing Islam, discussing the Bible and defending Jews, judicial officials said Thursday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Prosecutors acted after a complaint by students and al-Harbi's fellow teachers, officials said. The court in the northern province of al-Qassim heard the case Saturday in a six-hour trial.

Al-Harbi was in prison Thursday, but the Saudi newspaper Al-Madinah reported him as saying he would appeal the verdict.

``There are charges that the judge read which are unknown to me, such as defending Jews and the Bible, ridiculing Islam and witchcraft. It's strange that the judge ruled so quickly and wanted to end the case so fast,'' al-Harbi was quoted as saying.

His lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, refused to talk to The Associated Press because of the sensitivity of the case, but he was quoted as telling Al-Madinah the judge refused his request to postpone the trial to allow time for a proper defense.

``The judge's refusal to read a statement by witnesses is a violation of the defendant's rights,'' al-Lahem was quoted as saying in Sunday's edition.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said al-Harbi had been ``talking to his pupils about his views on a number of current topics, such as Christianity, Judaism and the causes of terrorism.''

``The Saudi government is imprisoning schoolteachers for having open discussions with their students,'' said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East director said in a statement Thursday. ``As long as schoolteachers face persecution for doing their job, Saudi children will lose out.''

Al-Harbi's sentence likely will be seen as a setback to Saudi moves to reform its education system. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the government altered the school curriculum to remove passages from textbooks that were offensive to Christians and Jews in an attempt to encourage moderation and tolerance.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in those attacks were Saudis. Local intellectuals and newspaper columnists said the strict Islamic tenets followed in schools and mosques could have played a role in fostering Islamic militancy.

11/17/05 12:09

[JoeChalupa]

I kind of figured there'd be some back lash regarding intelligent design.

[Mr. Ash]

I kind of figured there'd be some back lash regarding intelligent design.
bah dum psssh!

[Oh, Gee!!]

Take my wife, please!

[jochhejaam]

...has been sentenced to 750 lashes and 40 months in prison Are the lashes to be administered consecutively or are they spaced out over the 40 months?

If they administered that beating over the period an hour that would be a lash every 5 seconds...for an hour...Islam...the religion of Peace and Love :vomit.

[SpursWoman]

That's pretty horrendous. :depressed

[gtownspur]

why how insightful of a statement that was. After all, if we manage to fix our education system that would then justify america's right to drag gays to the back of pickups. Your a moron.

[Guru of Nothing]

why how insightful of a statement that was. After all, if we manage to fix our education system that would then justify america's right to drag gays to the back of pickups. Your a moron.

Excuse me, but I think your subconscious is showing.

[gtownspur]

Take the whole sentence in context. But ofcourse, your just the Guru of Nothing. I shouldn't expect a bright response.

[Guru of Nothing]

Take the whole sentence in context. But ofcourse, your just the Guru of Nothing. I shouldn't expect a bright response.

Psst.

By definition, the context of your sentence and your subconscious are mutually exclusive.

Sigh!

So long and thanks for the irony, moron.

[exstatic]

Take the whole sentence in context. But ofcourse, your just the Guru of Nothing. I shouldn't expect a bright response.
How can you say he's taking you out of context? He quote your whole fucking post. :lol:rollin

[RandomGuy]

Phony Theory, False Conflict
'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23

Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.

Newton's religion was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and a member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.


Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation -- understanding the workings of the universe -- as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.

Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.

Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" -- today's tarted-up version of creationism -- on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?

He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too

[exstatic]

http://djmansion.250free.com/guiness.JPG
Brilliant!

[gtownspur]

How can you say he's taking you out of context? He quote your whole fucking post. :lol:rollin


Your just plain dumb as nuts. If that's the case, he can post a statement saying the sky is blue, and then interpret it as the sky is green.

Your ignorance is a bottomless pit of a Scott Peterson's anus serving in a correctional facility.

[exstatic]

Your just plain dumb as nuts. If that's the case, he can post a statement saying the sky is blue, and then interpret it as the sky is green.

And that STILL wouldn't be taking something out of context. This is probably a waste of time, but taking something out of context would be if he stripped a tiny snippet or phrase from your post (it's context) and then posted it to make it seem like you said a completley different thing. Here's an example.


Tonia is a terrific cook, but when she hasn't had enough sleep, Tonia might as well throw a microwave dinner on the table as turn on the stove.


Tonia might as well throw a microwave dinner on the table as turn on the stove.

Get it, sport? You actually said that Tonia was a good cook, but the lifted quote makes it appear that you are insulting her cooking. Now do you understand why if GoN quotes your entire post, he can't be taking you out of context?


Your ignorance is a bottomless pit of a Scott Peterson's anus serving in a correctional facility.

I'd say that pretty much described your understanding of the structure and grammar of the English language.

[MaNuMaNiAc]

^^http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif gtown OWNED! http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif