Posted on 01/03/2006 12:12:37 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Also today, Dover's board might revoke the controversial intelligent design decision.
Now that the issue of teaching "intelligent design" in Dover schools appears to be played out, the doings of the Dover Area School Board might hold little interest for the rest of the world.
But the people who happen to live in that district find them to be of great consequence. Or so board member James Cashman is finding in his final days of campaigning before Tuesday's special election, during which he will try to retain his seat on the board.
Even though the issue that put the Dover Area School District in the international spotlight is off the table, Cashman found that most of the people who are eligible to vote in the election still intend to vote. And it pleases him to see that they're interested enough in their community to do so, he said.
"People want some finality to this," Cashman said.
Cashman will be running against challenger Bryan Rehm, who originally appeared to have won on Nov. 8. But a judge subsequently ruled that a malfunctioning election machine in one location obliges the school district to do the election over in that particular voting precinct.
Only people who voted at the Friendship Community Church in Dover Township in November are eligible to vote there today.
Rehm didn't return phone calls for comment.
But Bernadette Reinking, the new school board president, said she did some campaigning with Rehm recently. The people who voted originally told her that they intend to do so again, she said. And they don't seem to be interested in talking about issues, she said. Reinking said it's because they already voted once, already know where the candidates stand and already have their minds made up.
Like Cashman, she said she was pleased to see how serious they are about civic participation.
Another event significant to the district is likely to take place today, Reinking said. Although she hadn't yet seen a copy of the school board meeting's agenda, she said that she and her fellow members might officially vote to remove the mention of intelligent design from the school district's science curriculum.
Intelligent design is the idea that life is too complex for random evolution and must have a creator. Supporters of the idea, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, insist that it's a legitimate scientific theory.
Opponents argue that it's a pseudo-science designed solely to get around a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that biblical creationism can't be taught in public schools.
In October 2004, the Dover Area School District became the first in the country to include intelligent design in science class. Board members voted to require ninth-grade biology students to hear a four-paragraph statement about intelligent design.
That decision led 11 district parents to file a lawsuit trying to get the mention of intelligent design removed from the science classroom. U.S. Middle District Court Judge John E. Jones III issued a ruling earlier this month siding with the plaintiffs. [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al..]
While the district was awaiting Jones' decision, the school board election took place at the beginning of November, pitting eight incumbents against a group of eight candidates opposed to the mention of intelligent design in science class.
At first, every challenger appeared to have won. But Cashman filed a complaint about a voting machine that tallied between 96 to 121 votes for all of the other candidates but registered only one vote for him.
If he does end up winning, Cashman said, he's looking forward to doing what he had in mind when he originally ran for school board - looking out for students. And though they might be of no interest to news consumers in other states and countries, Cashman said, the district has plenty of other issues to face besides intelligent design. Among them are scholastic scores and improving the curriculum for younger grades.
And though he would share the duties with former opponents, he said, he is certain they would be able to work together.
"I believe deep down inside, we all have the interest and goal to benefit the kids," he said.
Regardless of the turnout of today's election, Reinking said, new board members have their work cut out for them. It's unusual for a board to have so many new members starting at the same time, she said.
"We can get to all those things that school boards usually do," she said.
You left out Pinker, Dennett, and Monod. :^)
"At what point did the breeding of animals and manufacture of bronze become "scientific?" Was it as soon as any notion of God or intelligent design was left out of the picture?"
Well, now. Animal breeding is pretty simple, really. No science is really required. You merely put male and female animals together. When the females are in estrus, the male will pretty much take care of it for himself.
As for bronze, it wasn't invented by the Jews, you see. The folks who invented it had some other diety or three.
Bronze is interesting, metalurgically, since copper and zinc often occur in the same mineral deposits. The first bronze probably oozed out of an oven used for baking bread when the baker accidentally put too much wood in the fire and got it too hot. Ruined the bread, I suppose, but that little trickle of bronze would have been recognized as a useful metal.
Before the discovery of bronze, humans used native copper, as found in nature, to make tools. Silver and gold also occur as native elements in nature, so they were commonly used for ornaments, or for lovely things like the Ark of the Covenant.
Isn't that interesting? No intelligent design or creationism required. No science, either, although modern science grew, in part, from the experience of those working with metals and with the breeding of domestic animals.
It's an amazing world.
ID is Agnostic Creativeism... at least as ligitimate as Evolution..
Well... except for the mountain of evidence that supports the Theory of Evolution.
Contrast that with the marked (and admitted) lack of any evidence whatsoever to support ID.
So we should assume that at no point did it become necessary for humans to research and hypothesize regarding ways to breed animals for a living or make use of metals; that these practices do not involve, and never have involved, science.
So you have evidence you are a primate?...
Maybe you are?.. Pity, I was wishing better for you..
Me on the otherhand.. wait?.. you wouldnt understand..
What you choose to believe is immaterial. The common ancestor is even accepted by no less than Dr. Behe.
It's part and parcel of ID.
At his [Galileo] first appearance before the 1615 Inquisition, yes. But even then, Cardinal Bellarmine left the Church an "out":
"I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve round the earth, but the earth round the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary, and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated."-- Cardinal Bellarmine
Bellarmine died in 1621, long before the second trial of 1633 that confined Galileo Galilei.
Just clarifying the record of Cardinal Bellarmine.
"So we should assume that at no point did it become necessary for humans to research and hypothesize regarding ways to breed animals for a living or make use of metals; that these practices do not involve, and never have involved, science."
Of course not. Humans have always observed the world around them and acted accordingly. They saw that this one ewe produced larger lambs, so they bred more lambs from her offspring. They learned that by observations. Same with metals. The bronze from one mine was stronger than the bronze from another mine, but the other mine's bronze was a more golden color. Observation.
Thing is that science is more than just observation. It is a precise system for forming hypotheses based on information, then testing those hypotheses.
Science grew naturally out of the experiences of mankind. Sometimes, though, religion got in the way of that growth, making it take a bit longer for real science to appear.
But, what the bronze age folks were doing was not science. It was observation and trial and error. It worked OK, but wasn't science.
I give you alchemy as an example. It didn't work. The techniques of alchemy, however, became useful once the idea of testable hypotheses came into play.
Science is a system. Without the system, science does not exist.
But they will eventually come down, right?
Well, I do think I have a good sense of humor! LOL
Dear Patrick, please go read the First Amendment. There are two religion clauses....
People of the Left apparently know only the first one: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." They apparently never heard of the second one: "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." If Congress cannot do this, then certainly the courts cannot do this -- under the constitutional separation of powers doctrine.
You not being a Man of the Left, I'm surprised you aren't aware of the second religion clause. Leftists would have it expunged, for it stands in the way of socialist secularism, which is their goal for American society. They won't be satisfied until they turn the United States into a clone of Socialist Europe.
I could tell you that the Framers believed that the dignity of the individual can be secured only by the fact that he is "under God." After all, it was the Creator who vested in man reason and free will, and endued him with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and happiness as necessary conditions giving scope to the full expression of that reason and that liberty. But I think you'd resist that assessment. In which case, you and the Framers may have a difference of opinion in the matter.
The Left Progressives know that. That's why God is "Public Enemy No. 1" in their books; they know they can't "get a free hand" with man without taking out God first. So to speak. They know that a man cannot be made the subject of, the property of the State if his first allegiance is to God. We are free men and citizens, not mere chattels of State power.
And hosepipe is exactly right: The religion clauses are about protecting religion from government, not protecting government from religion.
"But they will eventually come down, right?"
Come down where? Not necessarily. They MIGHT come down, if they travel close enough to some other object out there in space. If not, they won't ever come down anywhere.
Did you think they were coming back to Earth, mlcnnn? They're gone into the far reaches of our galaxy, probably never to touch down anywhere again.
You know that the universe is mostly empty, right? All those little lights in the sky are unimaginably far apart from each other...so far that an object traveling outside of one solar system is very, very unlikely to ever encounter another solar system.
So, it's bye-bye for those craft. They're galaxy-wanderers now, and probably forever. That little plaque on one of them, with the cute drawing of the naked man and woman holding hands, will most likely never been seen by any intelligent life form. A bit sad, but the universe is huge, and we are so small. Makes you feel kind of insignificant, huh?
I must go for the day. Perhaps we'll encounter each other once again.
LOL Fester! But actually, I prefer coyoteman "unreduced" to automatic blender slush. :^) He's so much more interesting the way he is -- that is, in his present, astronomically complex yet wholistic state.
Yep. I did several years ago when I read about it on the talk.origins newsgroup.
Full disclosure: I used string cheese from the vending machine instead of a chocolate bar.
"The religion clauses are about protecting religion from government, not protecting government from religion."
They're about both.
The Founders were well aware of the mischief that results from mixing the two - both the state and the church suffer.
As for free exercise - trying to enshirine one's beliefs through the power of the government doesn't exactly qualify as "free exericse".
Well jeepers, that would be a refreshing change, xzins!
I totally agree with your statement.
I don't believe either Behe or ID.. What they believe is immaterial to me.. What you believe is not.. For this dialog..
I've been thru so many iterations of what I believe, what I believed last week is not the issue, what I will believe next week is.. I started with evolution and escaped that box.. currently evolutionary concepts are merely cute, something for teenagers or democrats to fret over.. Any adult should be beyond all that..
I didn't realize it was ME we were talking about!
That would be quite a strain on my system; not sure at all that it would be the solution to my problems.
You may use whatever cute names you choose. You may choose to believe whatever you like. It doesn't begin to change the evidence.
Your personal beliefs do not invalidate the mountains of evidence that support the ToE.
Has anybody asked you what are your personal beliefs on germ theory? Do you have a cosmological objection to that one, as well?
Ah!.. both.. What you miss is the first part, make NO LAW about either of them.. How can you miss something so obvious unless you WANT to miss it.. Congress is not to touch either of them.. touch = makeing a law.. thats what congress does is make laws.. Question: How can you miss this, unless its on PURPOSE?..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.