Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

The editorial below appeared in the York Dispatch, a local newspaper serving the Dover, PA area:

Quote:

Piper's high fee -- thanks to 'design'

It's a well-worn cliché, but for the Dover Area School District, it's clearly time to pay the piper.

It didn't have to end this way. But the previous board's insistence on pressing its religious zeal into a biology class, despite level-headed warnings from the public and legal experts, has resulted in the new board -- and district taxpayers -- being saddled with a $1 million legal judgment.

Bernadette Reinking, president of the current board, called the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP "very gracious" in cutting the federal court judgment to $1 million from more than $2 million, which could have been levied.

Legal costs being what they are, that's probably correct. The law firm represented 11 parents who filed suit against the old board for their including a statement regarding the concept of intelligent design in a ninth-grade biology class. The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State also acted on the parents' behalf.

Judge John E. Jones' decision in U.S. Middle District Court on Dec. 20 was a scathing reprimand of the board and those members who voted to include the intelligent design statement in the curriculum.

Only one of those board members at the receiving end of the court's yardstick remains seated.

That member, Heather Geesey, said after Tuesday night's vote to pay the judgment that she considers a call from the public for previous board members to apologize "rude" and doesn't think an apology is appropriate.
She's wrong. All members of the previous board who voted to include the intelligent design statement in the curriculum owe every taxpayer and student in the district an abject apology, for requiring the district to pay -- out of taxpayer dollars -- a $1 million fee and for failing in their oath to serve the best interests of the taxpayers and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Some board members who were the prime instigators of the intelligent design lied openly on the witness stand during the six-week federal trial.
Instead of setting an example for the students under their charge, their actions were reprehensible and utterly irresponsible.

The Dover Area School District may have gotten off relatively easy in the case of the monetary judgment at the end of the day.

Now it's up to the new school board to show exemplary leadership and wipe away the shadow of what became a national embarrassment.

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It likely won't sink in immediately, Wandel, but eventually, people may realize that they need to be aware and need to be vigilant in matters concerning their school district and board elections. I agree with the York editorial writer(s)--the "stealth" candidates who lied their way onto the board owe an apology to the taxpayers of their district--and were there any justice, they'd owe the school district the one million clams they're going to be obliged to shell out.

A few more judgments like that and the message may start to get through.

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BBB

Setanta wrote:

It likely won't sink in immediately, Wandel, but eventually, people may realize that they need to be aware and need to be vigilant in matters concerning their school district and board elections. I agree with the York editorial writer(s)--the "stealth" candidates who lied their way onto the board owe an apology to the taxpayers of their district--and were there any justice, they'd owe the school district the one million clams they're going to be obliged to shell out.

A few more judgments like that and the message may start to get through.

Maybe the intelligent design zealots could hold bake sales at their churches each week to raise the money to reimburse the tax payers for their illegal crusade. Even better, all the tything money donated to their churches should be used to pay the debt.

BBB

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It's an embarrassment to the high literary standards which farmerman has sought to maintain on this thread that an expression such as-

Quote:

wipe away the shadow of what became a national embarrassment.

has appeared on it.

A national embarrassment,if such it be,does not cast a shadow and, in the event that it did so,would not be "easy" wiped away even "at the end of the day".

It is very poor form to apologise for using a "well worn cliche" and then proceed to use it.And the "piper" in this case is surely the old board who have have led this very merry dance and not the law firm or their clients which,in a pied-piper comparison, are closer to the position of the rats albeit more fortunate ones than the original rats.

The strange mixture of metaphors such as "pressing","level-headed" and "saddled" in the second paragraph suggests to this writer an education in a atheistic setting.The "saddled" places the Dover residents into the role of a horse.

It seems to me that it was the actions of the plaintiffs,however provoked,and rendered unnecessary by the election,which caused the Dover residents who voted in the old board to have to pay the invoices.

I also have never heard of a court having a "yardstick" before.There are some quite exotic usages of the comma as well and I didn't know that the solecism "gotten" had now made its way into prose usage.

It would seem that English is not taken too seriously in the offices of the York Dispatch,or by its readers,if one assumes that the above quote is the result of a day's work by a lady journalist whose production doesn't fall all that far short of a politically motivated rant.

If anything is an embarrassment it is that report and my commiserations go out to the citizens of Dover as indeed they do to Americans generally for "twenty years of schoolin' " having such an outcome on an elite profession such as journalism.

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If you've ever had financial dealings with a fundamentalist minister, you'll know just how hopeless such a proposition is . . . they pinch pennies till Lincoln screams . . .

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Setanta wrote-

Quote:

-and were there any justice, they'd owe the school district the one million clams they're going to be obliged to shell out.

Are the people designated by the "they'd" the same people designated by the "they're?

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Steanta wrote-

Quote:

If you've ever had financial dealings with a fundamentalist minister, you'll know just how hopeless such a proposition is . . . they pinch pennies till Lincoln screams . . .

It is rather bad form to draw conclusions about a group of people from the behaviour of a single individual.Ms Greer went to some pains to explain that she hadn't done that when she said "All men are rapists."The reason it is bad form is because it underestimates the intelligence of one's readers.

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I didn't realize that using a word as defined in the dictionary was now a metaphor or incorrect grammar.

Thanks to you spendi I now realize that the dictionary is useless.

"gotten" is not a past participle of "get" even though the dictionary says it is
"saddled" doesn't mean "burdened", rather it is a metaphor for calling someone a horse. I wonder if "burdened" is a metaphor calling them a jackass since a jackass is a beast of burden?

Spendi, you certainly are burdened with all of us here incapable of mining the scintillating truth buried in your incoherent ramblings.

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parados-

I was only having a bit of fun really.And I was in a hurry.

The report wande quoted is not very good is it when you think about it.

All words,apart from connecting words,are metaphors.The word "word" is a pictogram symbolically representing what we have agreed to call an item of meaning so that we can understand each other.

The world was never created at all for animals.It was created for us when we used words.An animal has no knowlege of a world as an abstract concept.

A professional writer ought to try to learn to write a little better than the quote from the York Dispatch.Our professional sportsmen and women would be booed off performing their skills at that level.Perhaps recruitment procedures in the paper are a little more lax than those in sport but that could only be based on failings in the readers.Some local newspapers in my experience often find employments for young ladies with the right connections irrespective of their journalistic abilities.It probably stems from that cynical attitude which holds that reports are merely scribblings on the back of adverts.An advertising manager might explain that for you.

Newspapers are never objective.The York Dispatch possibly feels it will benefit from an atheistic readership.There is a marked difference between an editorial attitude to interest rate increases in areas with a population of retired people living on investments and one where there are a lot of new houses bought with mortgages.Sometimes the editor's own fiscal arrangements play a part.

Basically,the article in question could be compared to a shop selling empty plastic bags.Classified advertising is where the real action is.

"Don't follow leaders,watch the parking meters."

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I was thinking the same thing, Parados. He does seem burdened by some compulsions. Perhaps we should tell him that editorial writers are allowed to use some literary allusions, 'saddled' not being one of them, as it's use for a description of a debt's burden is common here in former colonies, a remnant no doubt of our pioneer past. (Probably not. :wink: )

As to his never having heard of a court having a yardstick, that seems to me to be the most puzzling comment made by him, or at least the most puzzling one made most recently. Courts weigh and measure many things,- careful now, I am not being literal-, a yardstick would be handy for such use, but the use implied by the editorial was the same one applied with great glee by the good Sisters of Mercy at St. James School across our knuckles when we did something as outrageously stupid as the former Dover Board.

As to him not knowing there were fifty United States.

Pass the yardstick.

Joe(Hi, Spendius, how are yah?)Nation

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Hiya Joe-

I'm okay.Trust you are too.

I don't think there's anything unusual in having a few compulsions.I do often feel some of them to be a bit of a burden.In fact one is more in the way of a cross.If you have escaped such a fate good luck to you.

I wasn't objecting to "saddled".I was commenting on the mixture of metaphors rather than each one in isolation.Mixing metaphors is a technique in irony and I don't think the writer has an ironic bone in her body.Women rarely do.But I think an editorial,which I gather it is,ought not to use such expressions.Do you really think that the phrase "on the receiving end of the court's yardstick" is appropriate as an example of language use?As I understand things,which I'll admit may be a bit confused,it is Dover residents who are being caned rather than the lady who "remains seated".

I've gone out on a limb guessing the sex of the writer.Perhaps wande will confirm my guess or otherwise.I made a study a few years back of feminine literacy for a project I had on at the time.I have also made a study of male literacy and the effect of feminine influence upon it.

I have to say though that I am confused by your third sentence.

I had heard a song somewhere referring to fifty one states which possibly confused me but what was more interesting in the post concerned was Setanta's calling them "sovereign".I didn't pursue such a slipshod use due to not wishing to derail the thread with the complexities such a concept entails.

If you think the Sisters of Mercy exhibited great glee in rapping your knuckles just wait until women generally get morals off their backs as all the contributors on here seem determined to persuade them to do.

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Joe-

Perhaps if you familiarised yourself with the literary productions of a few men who were hardly influenced by women or even not at all you might get a clearer understanding of my general position.Or of those,possibly more famous,who had been and learnt the error of their ways.

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Joe-

Here's a quote I just spotted on another thread-

Quote:

Happy housecleaning - for sure you wanna avoid getting out of the comfort zone pertaining to your domestic partner; if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy

It's from an anti IDer of course.

Any young man who takes any notice of that is in the ****.

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Whatever.. Back on topic spendi, youre engaging in verbal masturbation again.

Weve discussed ad nauseum, the Federal basis for the Jones decision at Dover (cf Lemon Test, , and Weve discussed the Establishment Clause Challenge of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the US. As important as the precedents established therein were clearly hammered home by judge Jones, it must be remembered that ID , to be taught in the science curriculum, violated the Pennsylvania Constitution as well. Article 1 sec 23

Quote:

"All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship , or to maintain any ministry against his will; no human authority can In any case whatever, control or interefere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship

Those principes , (enunciated above in Pas Constitution), reflected a concern for religious freedom long before the first Amendment of the US Constitution was made applicable to the states under the fourteenth amendment. They received a brief "drive by" in Judge Jones decision and have rooted this decision in "applicable legalspeak" that will give it a large footprint in the remainder of the states that decide to follow this exact route of official deception and "stealth Creationist impressment'.

Finally, in Judge Jones own words,

Quote:

"Those who disagree with our holding (for the plaintiffs, Kitzmiller et al) will likely mark it as a product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.
Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID(sic), who , in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers... deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its utter waste of monetary and personal resources"

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farmerman wrote:

Finally, in Judge Jones own words,

Quote:
"Those who disagree with our holding (for the plaintiffs, Kitzmiller et al) will likely mark it as a product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.
Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID(sic), who , in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers... deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its utter waste of monetary and personal resources"

Judge Jones for President.

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Loved it.Beats Lenny Bruce into a cocked hat.

"Utter waste of monetary and personal resources".

He should tour Europe.We love exquisite phrasings of the "It is", "no it isn't" dialectics.

Who ended up with the dough is the question Miles Copeland would have asked.

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Well-"this is manifestly not an activist court" is a mode of debate where being a retired judge with a narcissistic,attention seeking number plate and out in the sticks where nobody ever heard of before is a really.really,really clinching argument.

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spendius wrote:

Well-"this is manifestly not an activist court" is a mode of debate where being a retired judge with a narcissistic,attention seeking number plate and out in the sticks where nobody ever heard of before is a really.really,really clinching argument.

I liked this part even better...

The Judge wrote:

The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.

You just don't hear judges saying things like "breathtaking inanity" very often. It sounds like something Set would say. I love it Smile

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ros wrote-

Quote:

Judge Jones for President.

Well ros-if such a thing came to pass,and one never knows as Mr Ford found out,President Jones would have to learn to start wasting monetary and personal resources and pretty damn fast too if the Dow Jones (is he related?) isn't going to take one hell of a beating and with it all the pension funds.

If wasting monetary resources was to be thought unconstitutional I should imagine every American male would be sat watching the television with a few cans and $700million dollars piled up in the spare room.And that would be no good at all would it?It has to circulate you see.The guys who get rich are like those slick fairground attendants who go round the Whizzer taking tickets while your stomach is churning and your squeeze is clinging on for her dear life screeching.They are up to speed with the circulation system.

So Judge Jones can be shown to be wearing a particular hat at the time of his remarks and were he to find himself wearing the hat ros suggested,ironically possibly,he might be thought of as doing he would soon be whistling to another hymn sheet.

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spendius wrote:

Well ros-if such a thing came to pass ... President Jones would have to learn to start wasting monetary and personal resources pretty damn fast if the Dow Jones isn't going to take one hell of a beating, and with it all the pension funds.

What are you talking about.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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