Intelligent Design struck down

[IanHarrop 42]

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http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/12/20/intelligentdesign-051220.html

I have renewed faith in the judicial system.....

TK

Thank God!

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[billvon 2,998]

>Many noteable scientists who are NOT part of the "religious right"
>want this taught in biological curricula.

Nope. ID is a tool of religious groups to bring God back to schools. Indeed, the intellectual leaders of this movement - Behe, Dembiski, Wells - make no bones about their associations with creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute. (Which, BTW, claimed to be a scientific organization until some internal documents were leaked to the press.)

>And there are parts of darwin's theories that are also not testable.

Darwin has one, very simple and testable, theory - that natural selection and random mutation allow gradual change of an organism into one more suited for its environment. That has been tested hundreds of times, both intentionally and unintentionally. (Google MRSA and VRE for some unintentional evolutionary results.)

You are referring, I believe, to the idea that you can't conceive how evolution created (for example) eyes. To you, that's a gap that can't be explained by evolution. But that is a gap in your understanding, not an inherent problem in evolution.

One of Darwin's most famous quotes is "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case." Since he said that, scientists have been looking for a case that would invalidate his theory. To date they have found none.

BTW This is one reason we don't have wheels for legs; they can't be evolved via successive slight modifications. Legs can, however, evolve gradually from fins - so legs it is.

>Many members of the scientific community hold ID as more plausible
>than strict darwinism.

Of course. Behe, Dembiski and Wells, primarily. Being a creationist does not in any way mean you are stupid; it just means that you feel you have a duty to belief over science. And that's why creationists are not taken seriously as scientists. (Would you believe a fervent communist if he claimed that capitalism was flawed, and he could prove that communism was better?)

[markd_nscr986 0]

Most of those that support"Intelligent Design"would feel right at home in a theocracy

Marc SCR 6046 SCS 3004

[shropshire 0]

So, Dover, PA has been told by some minister (I've just heard on the news) that it better not bank on Gods help if it were to suffer some natural catastophy.... Gosh I bet they're scared now

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[narcimund 0]

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Most of those that support"Intelligent Design"would feel right at home in a theocracy

Only if it happened to be THEIR theocracy. They'd be shit out of luck if it were one of the 10,000,000 other religions at the helm.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[micro 0]

still haven't read Icons of Evolution have you.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[rushmc 23]

Just another case where the courts make the decision, not the people.
the town voted out the school board that put this in place so, why didn't the new school board fix it?

I am not saying which side I support, just pointing out another case any court should not have taken up to begin with.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[tkhayes 348]

For all we know the process to change it may have taken too long - or for whatever reason, may have already been underway when the 'new school board' was put in place.

I do not think the reasons it was in court were invalid at all, even though I doubt I know why it went to court instead of just being reversewd by the school board.

The judicial system, as fucked up as all the lawsuits are, is SPECIFICALLY there to rule on cases such as this, since apparently (in this case) if you leave it up to intelligent, elected and appointed officials to decide, they can and do lead the world the wrong way.

TK

[billvon 2,998]

>Just another case where the courts make the decision, not the people.

That's the way it should be. If denying blacks the right to marry whites is unconstitutional, then it is ruled unconstitutional - even if most of the US is against it. That's why we have three branches of government and only two are elected.

[tkhayes 348]

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Many noteable scientists who are NOT part of the "religious right" want this taught in biological curricula.

I expect I can find scientists that believe the world is flat too. And there are doctors that do not believe that smoking is dangerous, and for that matter, masons that think that one bag of Quikrete is enough to hold a post in the ground.

but the majority of scientists BY FAR and the science community AS A WHOLE, do not support intelligent design and do support the very probable likelihood, based on scientific FACTS, that the world was NOT created in an instant (or 7 days), but has been here for billions of years, and life evolved over that time.

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And there are parts of darwin's theories that are also not testable. Many members of the scientific community hold ID as more plausible than strict darwinism.

and far too many people seem to reduce the scientific side of the arguement to pure darminism versus ID, which is bull. Darwin had a theory, yes. Today we have hundreds of thousands of FACTS that support those 'theories'.

Rocks are old - we know that (older than 5000 years)
Dinosaurs existed, we know that.
It appears from lots of study of lifeforms, that many Similarities exist from species to species that represent mutations from one to the other.
we see mutations in bacteria every day. Did some higher life form intervene here to create this for us? You must be kidding.

That would also mean they are still here creating those new mutations every day. But that is not possible since most Christian religions teach us that God created the Earth and Man, and then left us to do with it as we see fit (Total dominion over all the world)

Look at a seedless orange or the Bird Flu and tell me that evolution does not exist as a FACT.

To offer 'intelligent design' or any other form of creationism-based thought is complete rubbish, turning an ignorant and blind eye to the reality that exists in front of us.

TK

[tkhayes 348]

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To the best of our knowledge, there aren't other rocky planets out there capable of complex life. We're hindered by resolution and by the fact that distance equals time, but all we've seen are gaseous planets. But even without seeing the planet on the visual spectrum, we should have gotten some radio waves by now. While Earth took 5B years to start sending waves out, what are the odds no other planet evolved to that point 10,000 years ago?

If Earth was created by a God, what are the odds that there's only one of them, located right here, while the rest of the galaxy is godless? Seems pretty far fetched to me. Or this god is one lazy son of a bitch. Gave a half assed effort on Mars and then retired.

As for the odds of Earth happening naturally, so what if they're small. If it didn't happen, we wouldn't be here to have this discussion. (duh) What are the odds of last week's powerball being last week's numbers? 1.

I always summed it up pretty simply -

We (the human race) believe the universe is pretty infinite. At least as close to infinity that we can grasp. That means pretty much infinite possibilities, and infinite random combinations of atoms, molecules and one of those combinations started life on Earth.

I believe there are thousands of other lifeforms out there, they are simply way too far away or way too complex for us to even realize that they are there.

we are such a small blip on the timeline that it does not surprise me one bit that we have not, and quite possibly will not ever discover any other forms of life out there.

I think religion was invented to explain the unexplainable - it started with thunder. We are smarter than that nowadays. Our science cannot and will not ever explain everything - but no way did some 'God' create it all.

TK

[tkhayes 348]

Go Bill
Go Bill
Go Bill!

[TheAnvil 0]

Heard this. I don't think Intelligent Design belongs in the scientific classroom. Perhaps a one sentence mention in passing at most. Now pointing out flaws in Darwin's theory would belong in a classroom.

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[rushmc 23]

If we were talking about a true constitutional issue, I would agree with you

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[nerdgirl 0]

I "believe" in evolution like I "believe" in other scientific theories, such as gravity; electromagnetism; "germ theory," i.e., bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases (not "bad spirits," the evil witch down the lane, etc.); atomic theory; (mathematical) group theory; clonal selection theory (immunity) ...

Marg

[kallend 2,027]

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If we were talking about a true constitutional issue, I would agree with you

What part of

Judge John Jones wrote in a 139-page ruling that the school board policy violates the U.S. Constitution, and should be struck down "to preserve the separation of church and state."

Don't you understand?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Nightingale 0]

One of the main purposes of the federal court system is to uphold the constitution and to hear cases brought under the constitution. A large part of upholding the constitution involves hearing challenges to laws, policies, and regulations that may be counter to the constitution, determining whether or not that is true, and invalidating the items at issue that actually are unconstitutional, sometimes in spite of what the majority wants.

The court functions in a way that is meant to interpret and clarify the constitution. It's a very broad document, and the meaning of what's written is not always clear. The job of the courts in this situation is to take the constitution and apply it to the issues in front of them. As an example, the constutition forbids "cruel and unusual punishment" but doesn't actually define what is considered cruel, and what is considered unusual. Punishment isn't supposed to be a cakewalk, it's supposed to be a punishment, and it's the job of the courts to determine where to draw the line between appropriate punishment and "cruel" punishment. And, even if the punishment is clearly cruel, is it "unusual"? What does "unusual" really mean? Unusual in what community? The local neighborhood? The state? The nation? The world? The constitution doesn't say. It's the court's job to figure out what was actually intended by the words "cruel and unusual."

The system was designed this way on purpose. When people create policies that are counter to the constitution, if a case is brought to the courts, the court can rule that the policy is unconstitutional. The courts aren't removing power from the people; they are exercising a power that was granted to the judicial branch in the constitution. The people do not have the power to create public laws, policies and regulations that are counter to the constitution. Sometimes they do it anyway, and when challenged, if the system is functioning properly, those laws are struck down. The power of the people in situations like this is not to make policies counter to the constitution under the claim of "majority rules." The power of the people is to vote for representatives who will AMEND the constitution in a way which would make the policies desired by the people constitutional.

[micro 0]

TK, have you polled most scientists? doubtful. instead, it's sometimes hard for the many of them who have serious misgivings about darwinism to find a voice b/c of the stranglehold that the anti-ID/atheistic community has had in the scientific community.

Did you watch the 17-part PBS series Evolution? In that series, spokespersons asserted that "all scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution" as does "virtually every reputable scientist in the world."

What you may NOT have seen is the dissenting letter, a two-page advertisement in the October 1, 2001 edition of The Weekly Standard that stated, in part...

"... we are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and random selection to account for the complexity of life... Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

who penned/signed this letter? oh, only the third most cited chemist in the world, Henry F. Schaefer, who was a Nobel nominee; James Tour of Rice University's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; Fred Figworth, professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale Graduate School, as well as about 100 other biologists, chemists, zoologists, physicists, anthropologists, molecular and cellular biologists, bioengineers, organic chemists, geologists, and astrophysicists.

Also among them was the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry and scientists at the Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton, the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institute, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

Their degrees were from [sarcasm] backwoods, fundamentalist, narrow minded institutions like Yale, MIT, Tulane, Rice, Emory, George Mason, UofC, Cambridge, Stanford, Cornell, Rutgers, Princeton, Purdue, Duke, Michigan, Syracuse, Temple, Berkeley. [/sarcasm]

And, before you spout out like you do, you should know that I'm not anti-evolution. Like others in the scientific community, I don't just throw my hands up when there aren't answers to hard questions and say, "well fuck, it must be God." I fully admit that some degree, some form of evolution exists. That much is inescapable.

However, far too many scientists take the "facts" of evolution and leap to invalid conclusions not warranted by the existing data. It has become a religion in itself, whose followers adhere to it sometimes even more vehemently and "irrationally" than "back-woods fundamentalists" whose only intention is to force-feed creationism down everyone's throat.

uh-huh.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[AlexCrowley 0]

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[micro 0]

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WTF?

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[Amazon 7]

I have some very deeply held beliefs.. but when I look at sedimentary strata that are hundreds of millions of years old and some layers have really kewl looking critters that look like little aliens insofar as just how different they are from life today I know the dogma just does not work to explain what I am seeing.
IT just took way too much time for all of that to be laid down...in organized layers which can be dated in relation to other layers.
Then I read the Bible... and get the whole six day thing and think.. interesting way for a group of barely literate sheperds in the middle east to try and explain something they could not even come close to comprehend. The whole begatting and chronology of Genesis just does not jibe with the evidence all around us of how creative god truly has been.

Somehow I do not think the shepherds who produced the prophets of the Bible... comprehended true time as god knows it. I just cant believe LITERALY what is put forth in the Bible. Its a complete lack of understanding of time and is a sad attempt to understand time as GOD knows it. I do believe GOD created everything but as God has given us free will so did GOD give and life the time to transform into what it is today.
AS a scientist I want evolution taught in biology and science classes.
As a religious person I want religious doctrine and dogma taught in religion class just as I got it in Catholic and Lutheran Parochial school when I was growing up.
To force ANY religion on others contravenes GOD's decision to give man free will.

Intelligent design/ creationism needs to be taught in the proper place and it is NOT in science classes

[kallend 2,027]

So do you think William Buckingham should be indicted for perjury?

In his deposition earlier this year, Buckingham said he did not know the source of the $850 donation to buy 60 copies of the book Of Pandas and People - an intelligent-design textbook Dover students were referred to as part of the curriculum policy change.

As a witness at the trial he was presented with a copy of his canceled check for $850.

Very Christian, I'm sure.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,027]

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TK, have you polled most scientists? doubtful. instead, it's sometimes hard for the many of them who have serious misgivings about darwinism to find a voice b/c of the stranglehold that the anti-ID/atheistic community has had in the scientific community.

Did you watch the 17-part PBS series Evolution? In that series, spokespersons asserted that "all scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution" as does "virtually every reputable scientist in the world."

What you may NOT have seen is the dissenting letter, a two-page advertisement in the October 1, 2001 edition of The Weekly Standard that stated, in part...

.

Of course, they did not have access to this:

www.embl.org/aboutus/news/press/2004/press28oct04.html

which puts one ID myth to bed.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[micro 0]

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So do you think William Buckingham should be indicted for perjury?

In his deposition earlier this year, Buckingham said he did not know the source of the $850 donation to buy 60 copies of the book Of Pandas and People - an intelligent-design textbook Dover students were referred to as part of the curriculum policy change.

As a witness at the trial he was presented with a copy of his canceled check for $850.

Very Christian, I'm sure.

you don't shake me w/ the hypocrite card john. of course you aren't responding to my post AT ALL, but rather changing the topic.

if he lied under oath, perjury. just like your good friend slick willie.

I miss Lee.
And JP.
And Chris. And...

[kallend 2,027]

Quote

Quote

So do you think William Buckingham should be indicted for perjury?

In his deposition earlier this year, Buckingham said he did not know the source of the $850 donation to buy 60 copies of the book Of Pandas and People - an intelligent-design textbook Dover students were referred to as part of the curriculum policy change.

As a witness at the trial he was presented with a copy of his canceled check for $850.

Very Christian, I'm sure.

you don't shake me w/ the hypocrite card john. of course you aren't responding to my post AT ALL, but rather changing the topic.

if he lied under oath, perjury. just like your good friend slick willie.

Just curious, can you point to a single post where I express admiration for Bill Clinton?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.