Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

However, if the phrase had been "ballooning bag of bullshit" would it be even more stylish (alliteration)?

Reviewer: Kurt A. Johnson (Marseilles, Illinois, USA)

The Decline of the West is the magnum opus of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German historian and philosopher. In it, Spengler rejects the idea that the future of the West (or indeed of any culture) is an open-ended advance from the primitive past to an ever more glorious and expansive future. Instead, cultures (including the West) experience an almost organic history of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
According to Spengler, the West moved out of its Summer period with the dawn of the nineteenth century, and into a Civilization phase. This phase is dominated by mega-cities, and money and atheism come into ascendance. And what lies in the future? Caesarism, and a long period of stagnation in the arts and sciences.

Now, the above summary is inevitably bound to be overly simplistic, even to the point of being misleading. The Decline of the West was originally published as two books, and it is a deep and erudite philosophical look at the history of the world, so any small summary is bound to be insufficient to do it justice.

Having heard this work referenced so many times, I decided to read it for myself. In fact, though it does present a deterministic view of history, it does not propose a West that is about to collapse and be swept into the dustbin of history (as some people want it to). In fact, this is a cogent, penetrating look at history, which certainly seems to accurately predict how the West has developed from the first book's initial publication in 1918.

Now, I must admit that like many scholarly books of the era, this one has a dense, thickly argued text that makes for some very heavy reading indeed. But, if you are willing to devote time to the reading of this book, and more time to digest what it has to say, you will be rewarded with one of the fascinating and thought-provoking look at the modern West. Are we at the End of History, or the end of the West? Read this book and find out.

Chaos reigns at board
(Bob Sigman, Jackson County Sun, July 20, 2006)

The autocratic, arbitrary conduct of the 6-4 ultraconservative majority on the Kansas Board of Education rolls on, leaving astounded Kansans wondering what is next on the Christian coalition agenda.

"Every month it gets worse and a little more chaotic," exclaimed Sue Gamble, Shawnee, referring to the meetings of the 10-member group that is elected to oversee K-12 education in Kansas.


Gamble, whose board district is mostly in Johnson County, is an avowed opponent of the six-member majority of right-wingers who control the board. And she knows her way around public service, having served on the Shawnee Mission school board and in other leadership capacities over the years.


So she is drawing on her experience when she observed, in an interview this week, that there is confusion among Department of Education staff regarding "just exactly what they should be doing."

It is no coincidence, she pointed out, that turnover in the Education Department has doubled in the last year, from about 10 percent to 20 percent. That means employees with expertise and understanding are leaving and the ones who follow are stepping into a muddled work place.


Gamble said 47 of the 53 who left resigned and six retired, an indication that most of the employees who departed did not want to stay there, preferring to seek work in other places.


Many of them will not say, officially or in public, why they no longer want to be employed at the department. But in private, Gamble said, they share their feelings about dissatisfaction with the unsettled conditions, including the leadership of Bob Corkins, the education commissioner who was handpicked by the 6-4 conservative majority last year.


His selection, Gamble recalled, was a "fiasco," in which the conservatives abandoned conventional hiring procedures. During the course of the selection their antics prompted a national education group, which was retained to assist the board, to withdraw.


The conservatives then proceeded to name Corkins, a known critic of public education without professional experience in the field.


Since then the conservative majority and Corkins have acted on major issues without the knowledge of moderates on the board. As recently as last week a pamphlet on evolution, intended for widespread circulation across the state, was presented to the board as a finished product.


Gamble said she was "blindsided" by the publication, which she said contains misleading information about the teaching of evolution and intelligent design. Gamble was not the only one bothered by the pamphlet.


Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, a nonprofit statewide group that favors the traditional instruction of evolution, criticized the pamphlet in a news release and interview this week. He said the slickly produced pamphlet appears to be "campaign material printed at state expense."


Krebs is a member of the committee that drafted the first version of the evolution-related science standards, which was rejected by the conservative board majority. He pointed out in some detail how the pamphlet is deceptive about the role of intelligent design in the standards.


Steve Case, chair of the writing committee, said in the news release that misstatements in the pamphlet are similar to the "science hearings" staged by the conservative majority.


"The board spent $30,000 of taxpayer money on these hearings in an outrageous display of pseudoscience and misinformation," Case asserted.


Gamble cited other examples of questionable action by the right-wingers.


All of this is alarming. With their policies on issues such as evolution instruction and sex education, the right-wing-dominated board is inflicting its narrow, religious-based notions on the education of Kansas children.


Some, not all, Johnson County voters can help turn out the destructive conservative board members. John W. Bacon, Olathe, is a member of the 6-4 conservative majority who should be denied a new term. He is opposed in the 3rd District Republican primary by Harry E. McDonald, Olathe.


A vote for McDonald is a step toward a more rational, well-motivated Board of Education.

spendi: court records show that the major owner of that newspaper is...........bob dylan!