Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Is that science wande? Just wave your paintbrush over the last few hundred million years. I like the word "Note". Very reassuring I must say.

Calling me "embarrassing" is out of the same bag as all the other names.

I continue to fail to find science guidelines at the site of the Minister of Education. However, in one of the off-site links, i did find this interesting article on the brouhaha in northern Québec. It is, however, in French. When i have a little more time, i'll read through it to see if there is any comment on provincial policy about teaching evolution, and if i do, i provide a translation here.

By the way, the article is entitled Darwin sur la glace--Darwin on Ice, and amusing little title as it refers to teaching science to the Inuit--people crudely referred to as Eskimos.

Here, i'll give you the first paragraph of the article:

L'accueil qu'a reçu Alexandre April, au début de l'année scolaire 2005, lui a fait l'effet d'une gifle. La directrice de l'école du village avait réuni tout le personnel pour souhaiter la bienvenue aux nouveaux professeurs. Après les formules d'usage, quelques conseils furent prodigués aux enseignants: «Nous ne voulons pas entendre parler de la théorie de l'évolution ici», les a-t-elle avertis d'emblée. Depuis, chaque fois que le jeune enseignant du secondaire évoque l'évolution de l'homme dans ses cours de français et de sciences humaines, il se fait traiter de singe par ses élèves amusés. Certains parents, eux, ont été jusqu'à porter plainte contre ce prof récalcitrant, outrés de savoir qu'il affirmait en classe, malgré l'interdiction de la directrice, que l'être humain descend des primates.

The reception which Alexandre April received, at the beginning of the 2005 school year, had the effect on him of a slap in the face. The village school board assembled all of the staff in order to offer a welcome to the new teachers. After the usual formalities, several pieces of advice were showered on the teachers: "We don't want to hear of anyone speaking of the theory of evolution here" they had warned the assembly. Thereafter, each time the young secondary school teacher evoked the evolution of man in his course on French and Science Humanities [a difficult term to translate, sciences humaines expresses the notion that the natural sciences form a part of the humanities], he was called a monkey by his amused students. Certain of their parents brought a complaint against this recalcitrant teacher, to know if he affirmed in class, despite the prohibition by the school board, that human beings descend from primates.

Here's the only part of the article i could find which addresses the attitude of the Ministry:

Au ministère de l'Éducation du Québec (MEQ), on marche sur des œufs. «C'est une question délicate, qui touche autant les écoles, la commission scolaire, le ministère de l'Éducation, les Affaires autochtones… Nous allons vérifier s'il y a des ententes particulières au sujet de l'évolution, mais c'est à la commission scolaire de s'assurer que le programme du ministère est bien respecté», dit la relationniste Marie-France Boulay. La commission scolaire Kativik, créée en vertu de la Convention de la baie James et du Nord québécois pour permettre aux Inuits de gérer leur propre système d'éducation, jouit bien d'une certaine autonomie, notamment en ce qui concerne la culture inuite et la langue inuktitute. «À part cela, les écoles de Kativik sont censées suivre le même régime pédagogique que tout le monde», affirme Marc Décarie, de la Direction générale de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue et du Nord-du-Québec du MEQ, qui dit avoir informé ses supérieurs de la situation.

At the Ministry of Education of Québec (MEQ), they're walking on eggs. "It's a delicate question, which touches so many schools, the Scholastic Commission, the Ministry of Education, Autonomous Affairs . . . we are going to verify that there are particular understandings on the subject of evolution, but it is up to the Scholastic Commission to assure that the program of the ministry is well respected." said the Public Relations officer Marie-France Boulay. The Scholastic Commission of Kativik, created by virtue of the Treaty of James Bay and the North of Québec in order to allow the Inuit to devise their own educational system, allowing the play of a certain autonomie, notably in that which concerns the Inuit culture and the Inuktitute language. [For those who are unaware, the term Eskimo is derived from a French version of a term of contempt applied to the Inuit by the Algoquian tribes--their proper name according to the people themselves is Inuit, and their language is Inuktitute.] "Apart from that, the schools of [the] Krativik [district] are required to follow the same teaching program as everyone else", affirms Marc Décarie, of the General Admininstration of l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue and of North Québec of the MEQ, who is said to have informed his superiors of the situation.

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It appears that the Pentacostals, who are mentioned in the article as having made deep inroads in the Inuit community in the last fifteen years, are going to attempt to use the cultural identity of the Inuit as a dodge to keep evolution out of the schools, by alleging that it is culturally offensive to the Inuit.

I imagine a competent barrister should find it a relatively simple matter to demonstrate the Pentacostal's activities among the Inuit over the past couple decades constitutes prohibited interference with indigenous cultures.

Hey, is that like "the prime directive", in the original Star Trek?

Too bad our government doesn't follow "the prime directive." What disasters religion seems to always manage to get us all in.

This is more like it.

Pussy footing is getting boring.

Tell me more. Able me to know.

It's the oxymoron of organized religion that gets us in trouble. As I stated on another thread, quoting Fran Leibowitz, "Life is just one thing after another and death is a cabaret."

Great, now I've got a mental image of the Grim Reaper doing the Can Can. Thanks a lot.

Are any more of Google's Top 20 oxymorons getting us into "trouble".

It's reading Liobwitz wot keeps me cheerful your worship.

A classic oxymoron if I've ever seen one...

timber-

I have finally found the time to study your post of May 24 (2056752) for which many thanks.

There is much in it to discuss. Too much actually.

In your view could the Judge at Dover have given any other opinion had he had a mind to. By which I mean had his own sympathies been with the school board in the underlying tone of its position without reference to the manner in which they proceeded. It seems odd that a Republican appointee of Mr Bush should be so unequivocal and so unsympathetic to a position one would normally expect him to, if not endorse, at least be more neutral about.

Would you agree that the teaching of evolution science without any qualification constitutes, in effect, the teaching of irreligion which, in some eyes, might be seen as a type of religion?

Would you agree that such teaching of evolution without qualification could not sit comfortably in a school and in a community with the teaching of the qualifiers to evolution in other classrooms in close proximity and that teaching evolution without qualifiers in one classroom thus necessitates that it is the sole process throughout the school in order to avoid dissension and the risk of science and the school being discredited in some families?

What do you see as the advantages of teaching evolution when there is so much non-controversial science to go at and so many other sources outside school for anyone interested in it to learn from if they so wish and which are likely to be of a higher standard than one could expect teachers to be able to match and to which teachers could point their students at when these issues come up,if they do?

But thanks again and I'm sorry I took so long to read your post but it was obvious that it deserved a little more diligence than usual.

Saying that "jumbo shrimp" is an oxymoron is only a linguistic conceit. In the 1890s, a representative of the Chinese Emperor visited the United States. Much ado was made of his visit, and all things Chinese became popular (despite racist policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act). Most Chinese in the United States were clustered on the West Coast, but there was an enclave in New York, and one of the Chinese restauranteurs there was hired to produce a "Chinese" dinner for the Ambassador when he arrived in Washington. Chinese food became all the rage. Chinese men had spread throughout the country to a limited extent as a result of the employment of Chinese in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Those working from west to east had employed a great many Chinese men, and went to great expense to provide them the types of food they preferred. After the completion of the railroad, many Chinese men migrated to communities along the length of the railroad. When Chinese food became a popular new fad, those Chinese who had cooked for the railroad workers, and many others, found a new, lucrative source of income in opening restaurants around the country.

For many Americans, their first exposure to shrimp was in Chinese cooking. The cooking of "stir fry" foods meant that the very small shrimp, known commercially as "40-60" (meaning 40 to 60 shrimp make up one pound), were most often used in Chinese restaurants. From this, the word shrimp came to be a synonym for very small in American usage, and thereafter spread throughout the English-speaking world. Further confusing the issue is the habit of cooks from east Asia of referring to the largest shrimp--jumbo shrimp or tiger shrimp--as prawns, which is, in fact, a different creature altogether.



Very small shrimp are also often referred to as "popcorn shrimp," because one cooked shrimp is no larger than a large kernel of popcorn.





The tiger shrimp, or "jumbo shrimp," is considerably larger, and is commercially referred to as "8-10," meaning that eight to ten of them, with the head removed, make up one pound. These are also often referred to as "prawns" by east Asian cooks.



The true prawn is quite a different creature from the shrimp. I've eaten many a tasty prawn in Ireland, where the two most commonly touted crustaceans are the Galway Bay prawn and the Dublin Bay prawn. When Italian cooks prepare scampi, they often are using the locally harvested prawn, although the term is also often applied to shrimp. The term shrimp scampi which is often described as a redundant term is not in fact redudant, since the dish scampi is usually prepared from prawns, and calling it shrimp scampi simply informs the gourmand that he or she will be eating shrimp rather than prawns.

Jumbo shrimp is not necessarily an oxymoron.

Cobb County School District had appealed a previous federal court decision that required them to remove evolution disclaimer stickers from biology textbooks. The opinion by the three judge appeals panel is now available online:

Cobb County Appeal Decision

Spendi, finally , gets the entire point of the DOver case. It was clearly spelled out in a series of Introductory Statements that the school board based their case.These points needed adjudication because there would remain a severe inconsistency and conflict between the schoolboard, the state constitution, and the US constitution (1st , 10th,and 14th amendments)

1Pa Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwins Theory of Natural Selection, eventually this is to be able to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

2 Because Darwins Theory "Is not a fact"...Gaps in the theory exist.

3Intelligent Design is an explanation of "The Origin of Life"(sic) which differs from Darwin.A reference book "of Pandas and People" is available for students who might be interested in obtaining an understandi.

ng about what ID actually involves.

4 With respect to any theory , students are urged to keep an open mind. As a standards driven district, class instruction focuses upon achieving proficiency on Standards based tests.

As one can see these points are internally unstable(in a mathematical sense)

Dover wanted it so many ways that they shot their entire case by virtue of conflicting logic in their opening brief.
The judge was very methodical(His GOP conservatism must be set aside, because he is being asked to become a Solomon and deliberate the case based upon law and reason alone)

Jones established the Juriprudential "Landscape" of his intended decisions. (He in effect, limited the scope of his decision by law)

He , by starre decisis, accepted the methodologies of deliberation previously established in a number of cases (see Sets excellent post on some of the many precedents from Fed cases alone. See this in gungas thread named evolution 101). These methods included

!Applicability of the Endorsement test and

2 Applicability of the Lemon v Kurzman case (called the "Lemon Test")

Jones was "fenced in" by the law. He could no more make a "Bush friendly decision" than he could rule against Brown v Board of education. The fences of the law had led Jones to this decision.
All he had to prove was simply that
1ID was religious based

2The schoolboard was "Pushing ID"

3This violates the Constitutions of both Pa and The US.


NOW, did he go farther in his opinion than he needed? I think that history will show that Jones was merely practicing good Conservative fiscal logic.
He stated , in effect, that these kinds of cases will tie up and slow down the courts and waste scads of money if we do em elsewhere on a " one at a time" basis. Jones therefore, shot a huge broadside at the entire ID movement and challenged them , (IMHO) to come up with something better. As we can see, the entire ID movement is scurrying around to come up with a more valid challenge to science by bolstering the "teach the controversy" movement (even though Jones saw through this and mentioned it as an obvious next step that would also be doomed to failure. Also, the IDers in the US are moving all around the planet like a fungus.
Of course, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Those boys and girls in Dover shot themselves in the foot before it ever went to court when they publicly admitted to a religious agenda after being elected to the school board.

A book should follow. An author of the stature of Dave Barry should be chosen to chronicle this whole episode.

"Now I am not making this up..."

oh yeh, set, Are we celebrating a Phuck-off Phriday? Our post on the adjectives often used to describe "shrimp" was outstanding.