Intelligent Design shot down

[PennSkinsFan]

PA Judge just made the decision...

[RedskinsDave]

Originally Posted by PennSkinsFan

PA Judge just made the decision...

A pox upon his house!! Sorry, I just wanted to beat Falwell to the punch.

[akhhorus]

The freedom haters in the SC state Legislature and SC Dept of Education also shot down an attempt to "examine the teaching of biology and discuss whether ID should be taught".

[Ibleedburgundy]

What a pathetic attempt to backdoor the church into the public schools. I wonder if Bush believes in evolution.

[BurgundyNGold]

Originally Posted by akhhorus

The freedom haters in the SC state Legislature and SC Dept of Education also shot down an attempt to "examine the teaching of biology and discuss whether ID should be taught".

Wow, if ID isn't making it in SC, they don't have a future anywhere. Well, aside from Kansas where there is a history of folks having difficulty believing that men and apes descended from a common ancestor. And yet, many of them don't have a problem descending onto a common incestor. Go figure.

[Spence]

Originally Posted by RedskinsDave

A pox upon his house!! Sorry, I just wanted to beat Falwell to the punch.

Yeah, I see an episode of 700 Club in the near future, with Pat Robertson uttering the words 'locusts' and '40 years' in the same sentence.

[CNYSkinFan]

Originally Posted by Ibleedburgandy

What a pathetic attempt to backdoor the church into the public schools. I wonder if Bush believes in evolution.

I wonder if Bush knows how to spell evolution.

Pat Robertson is going to be mad. I bet he goes to the big guns and actually calls for the biblical destruction of PA. and that is fine with me, as long as it s after we beat Philly,

[Ibleedburgundy]

Originally Posted by CNYSkinFan

I wonder if Bush knows how to spell evolution.

Pat Robertson is going to be mad. I bet he goes to the big guns and actually calls for the biblical destruction of PA. and that is fine with me, as long as it s after we beat Philly,

Philly was smoten in the SB last year.

[Spence]

In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district Tuesday from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

Jones decried the "breathtaking inanity" of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.

A six-week trial over the issue yielded "overwhelming evidence" establishing that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago.

The school system said it will probably not appeal the ruling, because the members who backed intelligent design were ousted in November's elections and replaced with a new slate opposed to the policy.

[T]he judge said: "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."

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.
...
President Bush also weighed in on the issue of intelligent design recently, saying schools should present the concept when teaching about the origins of life.

In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments "may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science." Among other things, he said intelligent design "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation"; it relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments; and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community."

"The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources," he wrote.

The judge also said: "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."

Former school board member William Buckingham, who advanced the policy, said from his new home in Mt. Airy, N.C., that he still feels the board did the right thing.

"I'm still waiting for a judge or anyone to show me anywhere in the Constitution where there's a separation of church and state," he said. "We didn't lose; we were robbed."

Source

[CNYSkinFan]

Damn secular liberal judge appointed by Clintons we need to get rid of all those bastards....oh wait

A six-week trial over the issue yielded "overwhelming evidence" establishing that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," said Jones, a Republican and a churchgoer appointed to the federal bench three years ago.

A judge handpicked by the Bush WH abandons the religiour right? GOOO GOD NOOOOOO!!!!!!!

[VTBob]

good judge

[Paintedbird]

Why do they allow these sexual judges to rue on anything anyhow?

[Paintedbird]

The morning paper has another letter to the letter saying evolution is just a theory, which is not what I want to know in the morning. So, I thought I would make a definitive, irritable statement here just in case someone like the letter writer should happen to look this way.

In re to a concept like evolution there are only two words used as parts of the scientific method/process: HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY

There is no such thing as a PROOF or LAW. Those two terms have application in other scientific matters (specified in your dictionaries) but not in a context applicable to an examination of evolution.

When the word THEORY is used in science it means that something has been established as fact-- in so far as it accounts for all known phenomena related to it and is contradicted by none.

George Will in a recent column defined THEORY flatly as FACT so as to be as clear as possible. I'm beginning to think he was right to do that...because people are so prone to use the word as synonymous with guess or speculation. It's not. A scientist uses the word THEORY to denote that A CONCEPT IS BACKED BY EVERY KNOWN FACT EVER EXTRACTED FROM THE UNIVERSE AND IS CONTRADICTED BY NONE.

Evolution is one of the best backed theories in all of science. It is evidenced in all the branches of science, from physics to astronomy to geology, etc. If ID had a leg to stand on, huge holes would be ripped in the fabrics of all the various branches of science, not just in biology.

[Booser]

Originally Posted by Paintedbird

A scientist uses the word THEORY to denote that A CONCEPT IS BACKED BY EVERY KNOWN FACT EVER EXTRACTED FROM THE UNIVERSE AND IS CONTRADICTED BY NONE.

Evolution is one of the best backed theories in all of science.

By your logic then evolution would be a FACT; but in order to be a FACT it would have to be contradicted by NONE (your words, not mine). You are aware, though, that at the biochemical level there are some serious problems with evolution when it comes to processes that are irreducibly complex... that would seem to invalidate your argument for evolution. Theories are not FACT, that is the difference between theories and Laws.

A better example for your argument would be the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - because never, never has there any been anything that moves toward order over time (but you are familiar with entropic processes). That is why it is a law, and why it is actually a great argument against evolution.

As a side note, I am always interested in scientists who espouse evolutionary arguments but fail to see the contradiction in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

[Paintedbird]

Originally Posted by Booser

By your logic then evolution would be a FACT; but in order to be a FACT it would have to be contradicted by NONE (your words, not mine). You are aware, though, that at the biochemical level there are some serious problems with evolution when it comes to processes that are irreducibly complex... that would seem to invalidate your argument for evolution. Theories are not FACT, that is the difference between theories and Laws.

A better example for your argument would be the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - because never, never has there any been anything that moves toward order over time (but you are familiar with entropic processes). That is why it is a law, and why it is actually a great argument against evolution.

As a side note, I am always interested in scientists who espouse evolutionary arguments but fail to see the contradiction in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

You are incorrect about the difference between a Law and a Theory. The entropic process observed under scientific criteria may be called a Law in that there is no causative agent being examined to THEORIZE about; the process observed is established as always occuring under certain circumstances and is called a Law (instead of a Theory) for reasons you have correctly set forth.

If you had a hypothesis about the causative agent(s) of the entropic process and how it worked and why and tested that hypothesis under scientific criteria and the hypothesis meant all the tests and was contrdicted by none, then you would have a THEORY, in scientific language, a difference sort of hypotheis, one that meant all criteria of FACT.

Evolution could never be a LAW under any circumstances, including it's undeniable proof as fact. Science simply does not use the word Law in regard to complex explanations of the causes of phenomena, no matter how proved.

In re to the terminology of science, nothing that is a Law is an argument for anything; a Law is an observed empirical fact. If a Law contradicts a theory, the theory is not wrong, it is NO LONGER A THEORY. The two terms refer to two difference kinds of scientific truth-- but are intended as equals. LAW = Theory

If scientists agreed with you that the LAW you mentioned and the PROBLEMS you mentioned contradicted the concept of Evolution, there would no longer be a THEORY OF EVOLUTION. If a Law were disproved, Theories would fall.

As to your notion that the Law that NOTHING MOVES TOWARD ORDER OVER TIME-- no offense, I find it really amusing that you think evolutionists might believe evolving from lower forms of life to our present neurotic bundles goes hand in glove with moving from lesser order to greater order.

Really, you are off-base here. The idea that the universe is growing more orderly probably belongs in your camp. It doesn't belong in mine.