With a vote last month, the school board in rural south-central Pennsylvania community is believed to have become the first in the nation to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design,” which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by an unspecified higher power.
Critics call the change in the ninth-grade biology curriculum a veiled attempt to require public schoolchildren to learn creationism, a biblical-based view that credits the origin of species to God. Schools typically teach evolution, the theory that Earth is billions of years old and that life forms developed over millions of years.
The state American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) chapter is reviewing the Dover Area School District case. Its Georgia counterpart, meanwhile, is fighting a suburban Atlanta district’s decision to include a warning sticker in biology textbooks that says evolution is “a theory, not a fact.”
“What Dover has done goes much further than what’s happened in Georgia,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU. “As far as we can tell, Dover is the first school district that has actually mandated intelligent design.”
… a rising crest of stupidity crashing into our nation…
Next on the to do list: Gravity is just in your mind.
Those of you who have never lived here may think “Civilization at both ends and Alabama in the middle” is just an expression. Nope. Creationism, record burning, protests against Harry Potter (as demonic) - yup, welcome to Pennsyltucky.
I went out to Joshua Tree this weekend, and on the way up, a little ways past Riverside, I turned on the radio to look for NPR. Didn’t find it, but I did find a call-in Christian radio show, from which I learned several new things.
Evolution has been thoroughly debunked. Three guys have written books proving that, and they aren’t necessarily Christians (actual wording, I kid you not) just good scientists.
It’s time we moved to evidence-based eductaion instead of teaching the evolution myth (yup, still not kidding)
The fact that DNA is a 3 out of 4 error correction code absolutely proves there had to be a designer.
A man after raking his yard put seven leaves back in a straight line. His wife upon coming home asks why he did it. This proves that because people are more complicated than leaf patterns, they must have been designed.
That was the end of the segment and they moved on to a discussion of the bit where the Ark of the Covenant tips and someone saves it from crashing and is blasted with fire for his trouble.
The two men whose show it was were talking about how right the other was and how silly people who clung to the evolution idea were. I was a bit scared, actually.
I understood most of the arguments they were making, but couldn’t make sense of the one where the DNA repair rate of 3/4 is proof that evolution doesn’t happen. I could use help on that one.
There really isn’t a lot you can do about people deceiving themselves, though. It obviously meets some emotional needs that are more important to them than the truth.
PA is behind the times. Arkansas took a run at a law that incorporated creationism in textbooks in the early 80s during the term of a Republican govenor who beat Clinton in 1980. It went to the U.S. Supreme Court before it was overturned.
Except it is a theory and it is taught as irrefutable law, and that’s hypocritical by the scientific standards for which the labels of theory and law are applied.
It’s a theory, yes. As is Newton’s theory of gravity, etc. Being a theory doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty much a lock to be true. (Scientists argue about the details of evolution just as physicists argue over the details of physics – it doesn’t mean they don’t think evolution took place.)
I don’t know what you mean by “it’s taught as irrefutable law” – certainly, it’s taught as something that seems to have happened. The evidence is overwhelming. This is no different from the way we teach chemistry (which is “just a theory”) – do you think that’s wrong too?
I don’t think you understand “the scientific standards for which the labels of theory and law are applied”. There are no laws as distinct from theories. “Law” just means it seems pretty likely to be true.
If most of the people trying to batter down the gates of the scientific method actually HAD studied it first, or knew the differences between theories, hypotheses, and laws, 80% of these “YOU SHOULDN’T BE TEACHING IT LIKE THAT” arguments would vanish overnight. I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Do you?
Why would they learn it, when its the way of the enemy and their self-righteousness disallows its value?
Its very much a matter of Science vs. Christianity in their minds, and Science should BOW BEFORE Christianity and God. Faith defeats the Scientific Method, in their ideal world.
So if evolution isn’t true because it can’t be 100% proved at the current time does that make it ok for me to ignore the entire christian dogma because none of it is proveable in any meaningful sense?
If they want to teach creationism, intelligent design and evolution as three of the major theories regarding life on this planet, then I dont really have any objection. Look at the “facts” and make your own mind up.
But if creationism is true, then surely you have to repeal any law against “organic” drugs such as cannabis. A law against cannabis, must be a law against the works of God, who made cannabis after all?
