“Dover, PA, Judge Says “No” to Intelligent Design in Science Classrooms

On December 20, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, III, ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design (ID) as an alternative to evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, science classrooms. The judge provided a stunningly clear and comprehensive legal analysis of the issue, confirming that ID is not science and has no place in public school science classrooms and indicating that he considers ID to be a “mere re-labeling of creationism.” Developed after six weeks of testimony from numerous experts, the lengthy (139-page) opinion went into great detail about the history of the intelligent design movement and the strategies used to challenge the teaching of evolution.

To read a statement from NSTA in response to the decision, go to http://www.nsta.org/pressroom&news_story_ID=51419. To read statements from other science and education organizations and for a comprehensive look at the media and public response to the Dover decision, visit the National Center for Science Education, http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/PA/316_praise_for_the_emkitzmiller_12_22_2005.asp.

NSTA will bring together key individuals from the Dover trial at the NSTA National Conference in Anaheim on April 6, 2005. During the panel “Kitzmiller v. Dover: The Trial of Intelligent Design,” science teachers, scientists, attorneys, and other experts involved in the case will recount the challenges, stakes, strategy, and outcome of this important trial. Look for more information about this session in a future issue of NSTA Express. (See below for more information about the Anaheim Conference).”

“So you guys think your big and bad with your whole 'Was the world created by someone bigger than us?', debate? The Italians are making you guys look pultry with this news story...

Did Jesus exist? Court to decide”

“pultry? poultry? paltry poultry?”

“Enrico Righi and Luigi Lefi??? come on.”

“FRESNO, California (AP) -- A rural high school teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution was sued Tuesday by a group of parents who said the class should be stopped because it violates the U.S. Constitution.

Frazier Mountain High in Lebec violated the separation of church and state while attempting to legitimize the theory of "intelligent design" by introducing it as a philosophy class, according to the federal lawsuit filed by parents of 13 students. The teacher is also a minister's wife.

"The course was designed to advance religious theories on the origins of life, including creationism and its offshoot, 'intelligent design,"' the lawsuit said. "Because the teacher has no scientific training, students are not provided with any critical analysis of this presentation."

The suit was filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which successfully blocked Dover, Pa., schools last month from using science courses to advance the theory that living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher being.

Similar battles are being fought in Georgia and Kansas over the controversial subject.

The suit filed on behalf of 11 parents against the El Tejon Unified School District names its superintendent, the course teacher and school board members as defendants.

Superintendent John Wight, who did not immediately return a phone call for comment, said last week that the class, "Philosophy of Design," was not being taught as science and was an opportunity for students to debate the controversial issue.

Defendant Kitty Jo Nelson, one of two school board trustees who opposed the class, said the costs of the lawsuit would ultimately deprive students. "I'm extremely disappointed and saddened," she said.

Fifteen students were enrolled in the class in Lebec, a town of 1,285 in the mountains between the agricultural Central Valley and Los Angeles, about 75 miles south.

The five-member school board was divided when it learned about the class last month and discovered three guest lecturers were scheduled in support of intelligent design but none for evolution.

The class is taught by social studies teacher Sharon Lemburg, whose husband is an Assembly of God pastor.

An initial course description sent to parents in December said it would examine "evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and Biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid."

The El Tejon district's Board of Trustees approved the course 3-2 with a revised syllabus in a Jan. 1 session, during which board members had to vote up or down on the entire winter session curriculum.

Classes started two days later with a class plan that relied solely on videos, not guest speakers.

The Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State said that with one exception the course "relies exclusively on videos that advocate religious perspectives and present religious theories as scientific ones."

The lawsuit filed on behalf of 11 parents seeks a temporary restraining order to halt the four-week class in its second week.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/01/11/evolution.debate.calif.ap/index.html”

“i wouldnt object to ID being mentioned in school, and presented objectively, but this is obviously propaganda. as long as it was made clear that it is not science. teach it in philosophy
last edited: 1/12/06 5:34:17 AM”

“I wonder if this is going to be the new strategy, now that ID has been irrefutably shown to be non-scientific religious crap.”

“It belongs in a comparative religion class and nowhere else.”

“The Vatican seems to agree with Nigal. Actuall, the Vatican and I might find some other classes it belongs in - but...

Vatican Newspaper Deals a Blow to 'Intelligent Design'
By NICOLE WINFIELD, AP

VATICAN CITY (Jan. 18) -- The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060119104109990013&_ccc=5&cid=842
last edited: 1/19/06 12:21:48 PM”

“Wow - those ID hucksters have sure had a series of setbacks lately. I guess people are fed up with their crap.”

“[...]
Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that beyond Dr. Hansen's case, there were several other instances in which political appointees had sought to control the flow of scientific information from the agency.
[...]
In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.
[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/science/04climate.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin”

“...but it is a theory.

How does this demonstrate an attempt to control the flow of scientific information?”

“Presidential appointees should be deciding scientific terminology?”

“How can you not see this as control? He's telling them what to write. That's control.”

“Violin - If you're going to hold what comes out of the government to Bush, like what is printed in NASA, then "yes", he should be able to decide scientific terminology in that useage. These are only for writings that could get traced back to him, not in the general scientific community.”

“You usually use English pretty well, sarge. In this case I really can't tell what you're trying to communicate.


More at the end of the article:

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.

The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity.

Mr. Wild declined to be interviewed; Mr. Deutsch did not respond to e-mail or phone messages. On Friday evening, repeated queries were made to the White House about how a young presidential appointee with no science background came to be supervising Web presentations on cosmology and interview requests to senior NASA scientists.
”

“The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

I agree with this statement.

However I do believe that NASA is an institution founded in Science and as such should seek to use naturalistic explanations to naturalistic phenomena. Intelligent Design is not naturalistic (it is supernatural) and hence NASA should not be promoting it. As a Scientific institution it is their charter to promote naturalistic theories such as the Big Bang.

…but the Big Bang theory is a theory (a naturalistic theory) and I have no problems with the terminology beings sharpened on the NASA web site.”

“What I'm saying is that Bush (admin) isn't trying to decide scientific terminology. He's just trying to be accountable for what comes out of NASA.
last edited: 2/06/06 4:44:17 PM”

“He should worry about being more accountable for what comes out of his ASSA. LOL! Sorry, carry on...”

“It's not Bush saying any of this. The point is that Bush is held accountable when somebody says something in his admin that they don't like, ... they blame Bush, or commonly "The Bush Administration". So for his administration to take a proactive stance in this case makes sense - and Bush doesn't have to worry about scientists blaming him for not accurately portraying the Big Bang for what it is ... a theory (as I'm sure any good scientist would agree).”

“In related news, the Smithsonian will be putting new signs on their dinosaur exhibits that say they "theoretically" lived 65-70 million years ago.</satire>”

“Dinosaurs were older than that, 230 million years or something like that. 65-70 million years ago was when they got wiped out, I thought.”

“http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/tl1.html <-- all the answers (in theory)”

“Violin - Even among respected scientists there is still debate and discussion about the Big Bang event and how it happened.”

“Hell, that's even debated among disrespected ones too!”

“The funny thing is that the Big Bang doesn't negate intelligent design. If God created the Universe - this could be how God did it.”

“Saying the Big Bang theory doesn't negate ID is like saying Science (naturalism) doesn't negate non-Science (super-naturalism)... that Science can't contain non-Science. It's a sort of tautology.

ID is non-naturalistic hence not Science. Science doesn't try to contain all knowledge that is true, only naturalistic knowledge. That is, ID may or may not be true but whatever the case it's not Science.”

“pedxing - I agree, and I think something like that did happen. My problem is that very beginning point which scientists claim .... never mind ... been down that road ... LOL”

“What went Bang when the big bang banged?


JS: Science neither negates nor contains non-science - at least by my understanding of the terms. To me, science is a method of knowing. Cautious scientists would not say that that something does not exist simply because it is not open to scientific inquiry v- they'd simply argue that it was outside the realm of science.

In fact, there is a paradox. If we are to study origins of the universe, we are looking - ultimately - for event that was not caused. If we look for origins of the universe we end up referring to some state of affairs, which would have to have been preceeded by another state of events. There is an infinite regress until we come to a state without cause or precedent, i.e. without scientific explanation.

As far as I can see, we either have faith that there is somehow a scientific explanation that gets us out of the paradox, or we have faith that there were supernatural origins (which leads us to the problem of what created God, and what created Gods creator) or we admit ignorance at some point along the causal chain.”

“Which reminds me of the famous joke, one version of which is recounted by Clifford Geertz:

There is an Indian story--at least I heard it as an Indian story --about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked, "what did the turtle rest on?" "Another turtle." "And that turtle?" "Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down.”

“For me, when mysticism, religeon or spiritualism becomes unfortunate is when we pull forward "the veil of ignorance" that resides at this great distance and allow it to obscure what is knowable through science.”

“Science is the study of nature using naturalistic explanations. The reason Science has made so much progress is that it doesn’t look outside nature for the development of its knowledge. That is to say Science doesn’t try to explain non-naturalistic things (spiritual matters, for example) and it doesn’t use non-naturalistic explanations in its theories ("the Gods did it").

Just because something isn’t naturalistic doesn’t mean that it’s not true. It just means it’s not Science. Lots of things aren’t Science and just because they are non-naturalistic (supernatural) doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”

“Yeah - we agree Jimmy-sama.”

“hehe”

“You guys are amazing, truly.

We've gone through this before.

Just because you don't know how to prove something at this moment, does not mean it's not science.

Science is the discovery of what is proveable. Right?

Before telescopes, and microscopes, etc etc ... many things were not "proveable" or even investigateable. But they were and are science.

You guys are limited by your tools and knowledge. You are using that fault of yours to limit the scope of the definition of what is science.

Frankly, you both should be embarrassed.”

“You are wrong.”

“You are right.

It requires "shame" to be embarrassed.

j/k”

“hehe”

“Sarge: You just don't get it. Science is a mode of inquiry not a content area. Until you can find a way to gather and analyze data scientifically, you don't have a science. So yeah, hypothetically at least, we could have a science and scientific discoveries regarding God, Creation or the thermodynamics of hell fire or heavenly grace - but we don't now.

A field of inquiry becomes a science when there is a means of scientifically exploring it. Some day ID or even creationism could become a science. They ain't now. If you have dreams of developing a scientific approach to any of these issues, all power to you - and if you develop a scientific knowledge base - I hope it will be taught in schools.

As an example: Psychology has become a science. It wasn't 130 years ago. Concepts of mind, or even Freudian concepts like ego, Id and Super-ego were not understood in ways that allowed for objective measurement or scientific inquire. It took a while to develop scientific concepts and scientific methods for psychology. In the process, concepts like mind, ego and Id fell by the wayside.”

“pedxing - Since science can be measured concretely, as you suggest, what year did psychology become science and what was the event that made it so?”

“I remember a similar argument at a staff meeting regarding teaching sex ed in school. I don't know if this will help, but my response was,"I don't think we need that. Hell I got all my education watching the dogs on the Farm. The most important one, no matter what she does, NEVER LET GO OF THE RIGHT REAR LEG."

As for intelligent design debate, I know what I believe, and a man has to know what they believe. Hell half the crap they teach in School is garbage anyway.”

“Hell half the crap they teach in public School is garbage anyway.”

“Hell half the crap they teach in School is garbage anyway.”
XL400236

As is obvious by your atrocious grammar: lack of a comma after "Hell" and "garbage" and your capitalization of "School"; "that is taught" also would have been more appropriate than "they teach". And don't get me started on "A man has to know what THEY believe." ~smile~”

“Thank you ObliviousTroll....want to chat about word spacing....(LOL)”

“can't we all just get along??? :)”

“Can't we all just smoke a bong?”