Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Intelligent design: religion or science?
(By MARILYN H. KARFELD, Cleveland Jewish News, January 13, 2006)
Religion, education, law and, above all, politics have played a role in shaping Ohio's science curriculum, said panelists at a Temple Emanu El forum this week on the constitutionality and instructional value of teaching intelligent design in biology class.
Late last month, a federal judge barred the teaching of intelligent design in Dover, Pa., public school biology classes, ruling that it unconstitutionally endorses religion, specifically Christianity.
On the strength of that decision, critics of an Ohio master biology lesson, "Critical Analysis of Evolution," which encourages students to examine alternate theories to evolution, vowed to challenge the lesson. In court, if necessary.
This week, they watched as the Ohio Board of Education (OBE) voted 9-8 to keep the controversial lesson. Most scientists oppose the lesson because they say it uses concepts straight out of intelligent design literature and allows a pseudo-scientific rehash of creationism to creep into high-school biology classrooms.
Two board members were absent, including Cuyahoga County representative Virgil Brown Jr., who voted in the past to delete the lesson, said Patricia Princehouse, Case Western Reserve University evolutionary biologist. She's hopeful that the full board will vote next month to eliminate the lesson.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which helped sue the Dover school board, says it will next turn its attention to the Ohio lesson plan with an eye to litigation, Princehouse said. The watchdog group sought an injunction yesterday against a California high school that is teaching intelligent design as a scientific theory, but doing so in a philosophy class.
The Ohio model lesson has similarities to the Dover intelligent design policy struck down by Judge John E. Jones III, said civil rights attorney Avery Friedman, one of four panelists at Temple Emanu El.
Ohio's lesson is "creationism by stealth" and violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and will "certainly result in federal litigation," said Friedman. "Ultimately, the OBE and individual defendants will lose." He said taxpayers would end up owing millions of dollars to satisfy the judgment.
Noting that Judge Jones is a church-going "staunch conservative Republican appointed by President George W. Bush," Friedman said his decision "while not binding, will without question be used by other federal courts because of its lucidity and impartiality."

He said taxpayers would end up owing millions of dollars to satisfy the judgment.

Quote:

He said taxpayers would end up owing millions of dollars to satisfy the judgment.

Who will they be owed to?

Notice the link between self-discipline and a spiritual dimension.

It makes one wonder whether rejection of spirituality is simply a self-serving justification for the opposite of self-discipline which is self-indulgence.One would suppose that with regular items on English programmes relating to obesity,effective ending of marriage and record levels of energy consumption, and thus poison production, in the USA, a powerful lobby would exist to downgrade any signs of spirituality.The honourable Judge Jones has given this lobby a boost recently and one presumes therefore that he belongs to it.

A good example of self indulgence running riot is the continued fatuousness and excruciating boredom of some of the contributions to this record breaking thread.It is as if some people think that their voice should be heard despite them obviously never having made the slightest effort to study the profound themes involved in ID and religious matters generally or even to read posts on the thread with any attention.

We are dealing with social phenomena in the here and now and the future is the field of play.Anybody not addressing him or herself to that might just as well be shouting at the sky.

?Critical Analysis of Evolution,? which encourages students to examine alternate theories to evolution, vowed to challenge the lesson. In court, if necessary.

They confuse active discussion among scientists

What does "What's on first?" mean?

Scientists all over the nation must hold their heads and groan whenever Richard Dawkins appears on television, as he did in The Root of All Evil? (Monday, C4). He is such a terrible advertisement, such an awful embarrassment, the Billy Graham of the senior common room. His splenetic, small-minded, viciously vindictive falsetto rant at all belief that isn't completely rooted in the natural sciences is laughable. Dawkins is a born-again Darwinist, an atheist, so why is he devoting so much blood pressure and time to arguing with something he knows doesn't exist? If it's not there, Richard, why do you keep shouting at it? He looks like a scientific bag lady screaming at the traffic, and watching him argue with a fundamentalist Christian, you realise they were cut from identical cloth, separated at birth. Dawkins is, of course, the archetype of a man who protests too much, and I'd say he's well on his way to, if not a Pauline, then at least a Muggeridgian conversion. Any day now, he'll be back on telly quoting CS Lewis.

'Intelligent Design' Negotiations Continue
(AP, January 15, 2006) FRAZIER PARK, Calif. The group that sued a San Joaquin Valley school district over a class teaching a religion-based alternative to evolution says its trying to negotiate a settlement with school officials.
But if none is reached, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State says it will argue its case against El Tejon Unified School District in court on Tuesday.
That's the same group that successfully blocked Dover, Pennsylvania, schools from introducing intelligent design to science classes last month
The group sued El Tejon school officials last week on behalf of eleven parents opposed to a class on intelligent design at a high school. They say the class was "designed to advance religious theories on the origins of life."
But the school district's superintendent John Wight has defended it as a philosophy class designed to educate students on both points of view.

A section out of AA Gill's television review column in this week's Sunday Times Culture Magazine-

Quote:

Scientists all over the nation must hold their heads and groan whenever Richard Dawkins appears on television, as he did in The Root of All Evil? (Monday, C4). He is such a terrible advertisement, such an awful embarrassment, the Billy Graham of the senior common room. His splenetic, small-minded, viciously vindictive falsetto rant at all belief that isn't completely rooted in the natural sciences is laughable. Dawkins is a born-again Darwinist, an atheist, so why is he devoting so much blood pressure and time to arguing with something he knows doesn't exist? If it's not there, Richard, why do you keep shouting at it? He looks like a scientific bag lady screaming at the traffic, and watching him argue with a fundamentalist Christian, you realise they were cut from identical cloth, separated at birth. Dawkins is, of course, the archetype of a man who protests too much, and I'd say he's well on his way to, if not a Pauline, then at least a Muggeridgian conversion. Any day now, he'll be back on telly quoting CS Lewis.

hehehe!