AP: Judge Bars 'Intelligent Design' From Pa. Classes

[boutons]

The Judge calls school board member liars.

As long as these assholes claim they have "found Christ", they use any tactic, and behaviour in their anti-human, anti-God jihad to further their ways. I expect suicide bombing is not beyond their imaginations. Religion has ALWAYS fostered extremism, murder, torture, war "in God's name". These people are ignorant sickos.

===========================


The New York Times
December 20, 2005

Judge Bars 'Intelligent Design' From Pa. Classes
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.

The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote.

The board's attorneys had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory that evolution develops through natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that the theory cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools. The judge agreed.

"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," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

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

Jones wrote that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, saying its advocates "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors."

But, he wrote, "our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

The controversy divided the community and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election.

Said the judge: "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."

The board members were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum.

Eric Rothschild, the lead 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 board, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

The dispute is the latest chapter in a long-running debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on a technicality, and the law was repealed in 1967.

Jones heard arguments in the fall during a six-week trial in which expert witnesses for each side debated intelligent design's scientific merits. Other witnesses, including current and former school board members, disagreed over whether creationism was discussed in board meetings months before the curriculum change was adopted.

The case is among at least a handful that have focused new attention on the teaching of evolution in the nation's schools.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over whether evolution disclaimer stickers placed in a school system's biology textbooks were unconstitutional. A federal judge in January ordered Cobb County school officials to immediately remove the stickers, which called evolution a theory, not a fact.

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

[Bandit2981]

religion is just as corrupt as politics...i prefer to be spiritual than religious

[RobinsontoDuncan]

I totally agree with the ruling, however i fail to see why the little sticker in the text book was so harmful, most science books clearly say evolution is a theory, and not directing students to a particular alternative that is of a religious nature... i fail to see the logic

[Duff McCartney]

Logic and religion do not mix.

[Oh, Gee!!]

look down three

[boutons]

The problem with the sticker was that the textbook is about science and the sticker was about non-science, the anti-science of the sticker is extremely clear. The whole point of the sticker was to throw doubt not only on evolution but on all of sciencitfic thought.

It's not the role of the SCIENCE textbook to say that there's all kinds of weird shit around that pretends to explain natural phenomena.

[boutons]

Here's an analysis of the ruling where the judge points out not points of law, but the faults in simple logic by the school board's defense, and its attack on evolution. These aren't fine points but will probably escape the ignorant red-staters who have "mushed their brains for Christ".

It looks like the case was handed to judge of outstanding reputation and excellence, who doing his bit to hold up a torch of human magnificence against the evil, anti-human, anti-divinity darkness being forced on America by the "fascist mush-brains for Christ".

===========================

washingtonpost.com
Defending Science by Defining It

By David Brown and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, December 21, 2005; A20

The opinion written by Judge John E. Jones III in the Dover evolution trial is a two-in-one document that offers both philosophical and practical arguments against "intelligent design" likely to be useful to far more than a school board in a small Pennsylvania town.

Jones gives a clear definition of science, and recounts how this vaunted mode of inquiry has evolved over the centuries. He describes how scientists go about the task of supporting or challenging ideas about the world of the senses -- all that can be observed and measured. And he reaches the unwavering conclusion that intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one.

His opinion is a passionate paean to science. But it is also a strategic defense of Darwinian theory.

When evolution's defenders find themselves tongue-tied and seemingly bested by neo-creationists -- when they believe they have the facts on their side but do not know where to find them -- this 139-page document may be the thing they turn to.

"That will be extremely useful not only in future cases but to the scientific community, to science teachers and others who are struggling against this tremendous pressure to bring religion into the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest general science organization in the country.

Halfway through his opinion, Jones asks "whether ID [intelligent design] is science." It is a question at the core of the case -- and he does not shy from it.

"While answering this . . . compels us to revisit evidence that is entirely complex, if not obtuse," he writes, "after a six-week trial that spanned 21 days . . . no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial area."

He makes plain his hope that many months of intellectual heavy lifting "may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us."

The ruling gives two arguments for why intelligent design is not science but is, in the judge's words, "an old religious argument for the existence of God."

The first is that intelligent design invokes "a supernatural designer," while science, by definition, deals only with natural phenomena.

Second, the court found that intelligent design suffers from blatant flaws in logic, one of the chief tools of science.



Since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, "science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena," Jones writes, noting that the scientific revolution was explicitly about the rejection of "revelation" in favor of empirical evidence.

Since then, he writes, "science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth."

As part of that fact-based approach, Jones emphasizes, science goes out of its way to avoid a search for "meaning" or "purpose."

By contrast, intelligent design's views on how the world got to be the way it is offer no testable facts, choosing instead to rely on authoritative statements. Adherents posit, for example, that animals were abruptly created (many in the same form in which they exist today) by a supernatural designer.

The court found that intelligent-design documents are quite open about the movement's goal of changing "the ground rules" of science to accommodate much more than natural phenomena -- a broadening so great, one witness for intelligent design testified, that science would embrace even astrology.


(ID/creationism is frontal attack intended to destroy science)

"Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community," Jones writes.

The judge also cites several ways in which he says proponents of intelligent design failed to think logically, each example offering a take-home lesson that could prove useful to people trying to rebut challenges to evolutionary theory.

First, Jones writes, people would be well advised to remember that an argument against one thing cannot necessarily be interpreted as an argument for something else. For example, the fact that the fossil record is incomplete is not evidence that human beings must have been created in their current form.

The world, in other words, is not a zero-sum, dichotomous one in which a vote against one candidate equals a vote for another.

"Just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow," the judge says.

Another logical failing cited by the court concerns one of intelligent design's central arguments: "irreducible complexity."

That argument states that some biological systems -- such as the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike appendage that offers some microbes a means of propelling themselves -- are made of components that, individually, do not have any purpose. Because there would be no evolutionary advantage for those individual parts, they must have arisen all at once -- and expressly for the purpose of serving in that complex organ.

But Jones notes that just because a complex organ cannot work today with one component removed, that does not mean the component did not evolve independently to serve a different purpose and later took on a new role when combined with other parts. The judge notes multiple examples involving the immune system, the blood clotting system, and even the bacterial flagellum itself, in which this appears to have been the case.


Irreducible complexity is in many ways a theological argument -- and a rather old one. A theologian testified at the trial that Thomas Aquinas argued in the 13th century that wherever there is complex design, there must be a designer, and that because nature is complex, it must also have a designer.

While many of the scientists who defended intelligent design in the Pennsylvania trial stopped short of saying that the idea requires belief in God, the defense's chief expert, biochemist Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, noted that intelligent design's plausibility depends on the extent to which a person believes in God.


"As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition's validity rests on belief in God . . . Professor Behe's assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view . . . ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition," Jones notes in his opinion.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Dos]

The problem with the sticker was that the textbook is about science and the sticker was about non-science, the anti-science of the sticker is extremely clear. The whole point of the sticker was to throw doubt not only on evolution but on all of sciencitfic thought.

It's not the role of the SCIENCE textbook to say that there's all kinds of weird shit around that pretends to explain natural phenomena.


that's a qoute for a lifetime.. lol... even evolutionist still have doubts....

[scott]

Here is a link to the full opinion.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/051220_kitzmiller_342.pdf

It's 139 pages, but it is worth the read. If you are short on time, I recommend the last 10 pages or so.

[boutons]

"even evolutionist still have doubts"

That's the nature of serious, honest intellectual enquiry, and of science.

otoh, the evangelicals/IDers/creationist have the hubris that their world view is the only true one, and is the best one, therefore, no need to think or reflect beyond their closed, fringe sytem (excluding and insulting their own intellects), and go around rubbing everybody's faces in it, even if that includes subverting the law of the land. These people are half-baked idiots intent on doing enormous harm.

Here's hoping this decision will pre-empt similar attacks on science and on schools, and be a precedent of excellent qualiy and clarity to be used against the ID/creationist idiots everywhere.

This judge was pitched a high and hard fast ball, and he hit it 500 ft out of the park.

[Phenomanul]

"even evolutionist still have doubts"

That's the nature of serious, honest intellectual enquiry, and of science.

otoh, the evangelicals/IDers/creationist have the hubris that their world view is the only true one, and is the best one, therefore, no need to think or reflect beyond their closed, fringe sytem (excluding and insulting their own intellects), and go around rubbing everybody's faces in it, even if that includes subverting the law of the land. These people are half-baked idiots intent on doing enormous harm.

Here's hoping this decision will pre-empt similar attacks on science and on schools, and be a precedent of excellent qualiy and clarity to be used against the ID/creationist idiots everywhere.

This judge was pitched a high and hard fast ball, and he hit it 500 ft out of the park.

Such hateful contempt Boutons :nope :nope

NO one points a gun to your head to tell you what to believe in... Fact of the matter is EVOLUTION is a theory... yet it's principles and concepts are always passed off as fact. The judge's wording actually shows he is confused by some of the arguments...

I said this on another thread and people skirted the question or just ignored it....

If EVOLUTION is a theory that describes how biological processes give way to speciation and the creation of more 'fit' species.... Why does this theory always skip chapter 1. How did the first organism arise?

AGAIN, you can't attempt to answer the question on the "Origin of Species" without addressing the origin of Life.

Your camp can offer no better explanation... and don't give me the "creation of amino acids = the creation of life" crap. I can buy amino acid supplements at any GMC store and the pills are not jumping beans on the verge of becoming living elements.... strange example, yes.... but the point is the same. A corpse has all the necessary biological elements to live.... but doesn't.

Anyways... MATH in my book is the language behind science.... the complexity of biological code defies the realm of our comprehension in that a simple gene requiring the exact positioning of 90 codons is not likely to occur on its own. MATH defies it... Imagine a normal sized gene with about 280 codons.... Yeah....

The jugde makes some valid points about the intent of this school board commitee... however he can't use that as a claim to suggest that because their motives were misaligned that their concepts are bogus religious dogma...

Anyways I'm not trying to change your viewpoint... just understand that there are people out there that have a completely different perspective based on their life's experience.... If you had grown up in my shoes you might view things a little different... and vice versa. The point being that intolerance goes both ways....

I'm off to lunch... adieu.

[boutons]

"Such hateful contempt Boutons"

absolutely. This ID/creationist bullshit has to be stopped from corrupting and benighting the schools, and from attacking and discrediting science. It was knocked to shit in the Scopes trial but the ignoramouses are brining it back. It'll be knocked to shit again.

"Fact of the matter is EVOLUTION is a theory"

drop the repetitious bullshit, we've heard a 100 times. There's no question that evolution is a theory. If you people had any appreciaton of and respect for science, you'd know a "theory" is in no way perjorative, excepts in the mouths of the ID/creationinsts/bible-thumpers.

"Why does this theory always skip chapter 1. How did the first organism arise?"

The initial processes of the first biological organisms arising from clay, chemicals, heat, pressure, in whatever soup, primitive RNA/DNA, eons ago, is still very poorly understood. ie, as is said, "absence of evidence" is not "evidence of absence" and is certainly not evidence of supernatural intervention.

"their concepts are bogus religious dogma"

Does he judge their religion? He says their beliefs about creation and biology are not science, and therfore cannot not be proposed as science in school curriculum.

Believe whatever you want, just don't go forcing your religion into secular school curriculum. If you want to brainwash your kids with creationist/ID BS, do it in you congregation, or in your religious schools. If your beliefs can't be squared with science, that really is your problem, and nobody else's.

[smeagol]

As I said elsewhere, ID and evolution do not contradict each other. They supplement each other.

boutons, I thought you said on another thread you were a Christian. I might be wrong, though.

[Mr. Defense]

Logic and religion do not mix.


VERY WISE WORDS!


I don't believe religion belongs in our schools.

However, I do believe our children belong in a Church of Christ. Anyone will do. :tu

[FromWayDowntown]

Believe whatever you want, just don't go forcing your religion into secular school curriculum. If you want to brainwash your kids with creationist/ID BS, do it in you congregation, or in your religious schools. If your beliefs can't be squared with science, that really is your problem, and nobody else's.

I'll piggyback on boutons on this point because I think it's exactly right. I think the issue at hand is less about the merits of ID versus evolution as explanations for the world around us and more about the desire to bring religious dogma into public schools. I wonder why there is such a desire -- why it is that churches and families aren't enough to inculcate those values and beliefs?

Churches and families are better equipped to present arguments concerning matters that have no scientific foundation whatsoever -- conclusions that, again, are truly articles of faith and little else.

[Oh, Gee!!]

But, FWD, many (school-aged children) slip through the cracks of uncaring or unknowing parents and family and are never taken to church and I see.....(public) school as a safety net for those that fall into this category.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!! :cry :cry :cry :cry :cry :cry

Those poor heathens

[RobinsontoDuncan]

I am a christian, however i too do not wish to see creationism taught in our science class rooms.

I dont see the problem with pointing out the obvious that evolution hasn't been proven, however to attempt to persuade students that evolution is implausible is stupid in my opinion.

The south is ruining our country.

[Manu'sMagicalLeftHand]

I just can't understand how we are still discussing this, this is 2005!

The separation of state, education and justice from Religion shouldn't even be discussed, unless someone has a fervent desire to go back into the Dark Ages. As others have said, Evolution is a scientific theory, if someone is opposed to it, I have no problems that kids learn other scientific theories, or discuss the flaws in evolution in a scientific debate.

However, a discussion about Intelligent Design is not scientific or strictly philosophical, it's theological or metaphysical. If parents want their kids to learn that, they should send him/her to a private religious school or to Church.

[Phenomanul]

"Such hateful contempt Boutons"

absolutely. This ID/creationist bullshit has to be stopped from corrupting and benighting the schools, and from attacking and discrediting science. It was knocked to shit in the Scopes trial but the ignoramouses are brining it back. It'll be knocked to shit again.

"Fact of the matter is EVOLUTION is a theory"

drop the repetitious bullshit, we've heard a 100 times. There's no question that evolution is a theory. If you people had any appreciaton of and respect for science, you'd know a "theory" is in no way perjorative, excepts in the mouths of the ID/creationinsts/bible-thumpers.

"Why does this theory always skip chapter 1. How did the first organism arise?"

The initial processes of the first biological organisms arising from clay, chemicals, heat, pressure, in whatever soup, primitive RNA/DNA, eons ago, is still very poorly understood. ie, as is said, "absence of evidence" is not "evidence of absence" and is certainly not evidence of supernatural intervention.

"their concepts are bogus religious dogma"

Does he judge their religion? He says their beliefs about creation and biology are not science, and therfore cannot not be proposed as science in school curriculum.

Believe whatever you want, just don't go forcing your religion into secular school curriculum. If you want to brainwash your kids with creationist/ID BS, do it in you congregation, or in your religious schools. If your beliefs can't be squared with science, that really is your problem, and nobody else's.

If you're hinging your successes on the bogus Scope's Trial, like many others ignorantly do, you do so at your own peril... I will point to the fact that this trial was held waaaaayyyy before the discovery of DNA, or even before anyone held a respectable understanding of the genetic code... Anyways the "Creationist" lawyer was Williams Jennings Bryan.... Yeah... his last patent was you know... that thing....oh wait.... no. his last research paper was written in.... crap!!! I can't find any scientific credential to this POLITICAL orator... He had no business in that courtroom to begin with and was thus wiped off the floor....

It seems like you are irritated by the fact that there are people out there with an understanding of the world well beyond your typical JOHN DOE and who actually believe in Intelligent Design... You can't understand how we can be scientifically driven and yet have a spiritual belief at the same time... You call it a "problem" I call it my blessing. I don't expect you to understand it... much less embrace it...

I can understand keeping the "creationist" viewpoint out of the classroom. What I don't understand is the hypocritical intolerance... you claim we judge you and yet you are the one judging us.... that is the "contempt" of which I spoke of that you so arrogantly gloated about.


"If your beliefs can't be squared with science, that really is your problem, and nobody else's"

You must first understand that there are things that can not be defined or constrained by science, and that seems to be your probem... :tu I will earnestly await the paper titled "We have created life..."

But before anyone can create 'it' there has to be a way of measuring life... can it be scientifically measured? Am I any more alive than the tree outside my office or how about the bacteria in my belly? Anyways... supernatural influences exist in this natural world... but you would literally need to have faith in order to believe in it. If it exists why would there be an issue with someone teaching or having a discussion about it? Oh.. that's right cause not everyone acknowledges that the influence exists.... Let the pupils make up their own mind....

SCIENCE (i.e. Math, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc....) is the language of GOD... be grateful you were given the understanding to comprehend it.

[Oh, Gee!!]

there are things that can not be defined or constrained by science
there exists supernatural influence in this natural world... but literally you need to have faith to believe in it.


exactly. Which is why ID is better suited for a religion or philosophy course. Why bring it into science class?

[Phenomanul]

exactly. Which is why ID is better suited for a religion or philosophy course. Why bring it into science class?


Because science is a process by which we seek to understand our world.... If the possibility of supernatural influence exists, it becomes fair game to discuss... i.e. what should be going on in schools...

[Extra Stout]

Because science is a process by which we seek to understand our world.... If the possibility of supernatural influence exists, it becomes fair game to discuss... i.e. what should be going on in schools...
Your definition of science is too broad. We increase our understanding of the world through all sorts of learning, of which science is just one type.

[Phenomanul]

Your definition of science is too broad. We increase our understanding of the world through all sorts of learning, of which science is just one type.


Much like our senses... I hear ya...

I'm just saying that the judge's definition of Science was too "constraining" and not flexible enough.

[Extra Stout]

Much like our senses... I hear ya...

I'm just saying that the judge's definition of Science was too "constraining" and not flexible enough.
One could address the "philosophy" of science in science class, I guess, since they usually talk about scientific ethics. Not everything has to be according to the rules of Sir Francis Bacon.

But ID folks need to stop pretending that they are playing by those rules.

[Phenomanul]

One could address the "philosophy" of science in science class, I guess, since they usually talk about scientific ethics. Not everything has to be according to the rules of Sir Francis Bacon.

But ID folks need to stop pretending that they are playing by those rules.


Were it a civil matter alone... those 'rules' would have some bearing... it's the ignorant masses who choose to make this an extremist conflict.

And yes... there are headcases on both sides.

[Manu'sMagicalLeftHand]

SCIENCE (i.e. Math, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc....) is the language of GOD... be grateful you were given the understanding to comprehend it.

That's a faithful belief, not a scientific fact presented with evidence. And no, a scientific theory is not a "belief", it's far from it. One requires facts, measures, field work, reasoning to be developed, the other only needs faith.

[Yonivore]

Read the article I linked here: http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31222