Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Hey, that was weird, my most recent post appeared several posts earlier than when I posted it. It actually appeared before the post from Timber which I quoted. (I wonder where this one will go...)

I see the issue has been resolved as intelligent design just being a load of ****. Onto the next question!

"The intent of the board needs to be very clear," said board member John Austin, an Ann Arbor Democrat. "Evolution is not under stress. It is not untested science."

Uh oh, it happened again.

clipping a bit from Timbers post

Quote:

"The intent of the board needs to be very clear," said board member John Austin, an Ann Arbor Democrat. "Evolution is not under stress. It is not untested science."

.
Ill bet that gives the anti-science lobby (Creationists and IDers) the fits.Another one down for the IDers. They may soon have to make up some other "reality"

D-Ann Arbor, Term Expires 1/1/2009
Mr. Austin was elected in 2000. He is a Senior Partner with Public Policy Associates, a research and consulting firm based in Lansing. Mr. Austin holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Economics and Political Science.

State Board of Education member John Austin plans to kick off his campaign for Michigan secretary of state tomorrow.

Austin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, was elected to the state board in 2000.

He has served as an assistant chairman for the Michigan Democratic Party and as a consultant with the Public Policy Associates of Lansing.

Austin also ran for secretary of state in 1998 but lost the Democratic nomination to state Rep. Mary Lou Parks.

Parks lost the election to Secretary of State Candice Miller, who can't run this year because of term limits.

"We have tremendous opportunities and need to make big changes," Austin said yesterday. "That's the agenda I'm going to be pushing."

Austin already faces a challenger for the Democratic nomination. Detroit attorney Melvin "Butch" Hollowell announced his candidacy for secretary of state in February.

Both Austin and Hollowell say they will place campaign finance reform and election reform as their top priorities.

But there is at least one big difference between the two candidates: The Democratic candidates they're backing in the governor's race. Austin supports U.S. Rep. David Bonior, while Hollowell is a close friend of Attorney General Jennifer Granholm.

"We have tremendous opportunities and need to make big changes," Austin said yesterday. "That's the agenda I'm going to be pushing."

Gee- are we back to the straw man again.

The real empty foundation is the complacent and self-flattering notion that what goes on in science classrooms is actually science. It's entertainment. And not for the kids either. It's for the adults posturing around it attempting to feel better about themselves.

Everybody of significance knows that. It's just a vast pretence.

State education board drops evolution debate
(Catherine Candisky, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, October 11, 2006)

Eight months after scrapping curriculum guidelines that critics feared would open the schoolhouse door to creationism, the State Board of Education yesterday pulled the plug on its seemingly incessant debate over Darwin's theory of evolution.

The board voted 14-3 to "discharge" a subcommittee that had been keeping the issue alive.

Martha Wise, a board member from Avon, said she pushed to end the discussion because the issue had become a lightning rod for debate and had long overshadowed the work of the board.

"It was time to move on," she said. But that doesn't mean that a new board might not feel differently, she added.

The 19-member board includes 11 elected members and eight appointed by the governor. Five seats are up for election Nov. 7, and the governor will fill four more when those terms expire this year.

Michael Cochran, co-chairman of the subcommittee and Franklin County's representative on the board, vowed to keep the issue alive.

"I will guarantee you that as long as I am chair of the committee, it's gonna be on the agenda next month," the Blacklick pastor and lawyer told his colleagues.

Joining Cochran to vote against Wise's motion were board President Sue West- endorf, of Bowling Green, and Emerson Ross, of Toledo.

Board member Deborah Owens Fink, of Richfield, who like Cochran has long argued that critics are wrong to assume that "critical analysis" of evolution was a thinly veiled effort to inject religion into the classroom, left the board meeting before yesterday's vote.

In February, the board voted 11-4 to eliminate portions of curriculum guidelines for 10 th-grade biology and an accompanying lesson plan that called for critical analysis of evolution. The move came after a federal judge ruled that a similar curriculum used in a Pennsylvania school district was unconstitutional.

At the time, the board also directed a subcommittee cochaired by Cochran to determine whether a replacement lesson was necessary.

Such a proposal never surfaced. A majority on the committee appeared to favor doing nothing more to the standards. Still, behind-the-scenes discussion by some board members kept the issue alive, drawing national attention and thousands of e-mails from critics who feared another effort to undermine the teaching of evolution by injecting religion into the science classroom.

Patricia Princehouse, a biology professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, yesterday applauded the board action.

"I'm deeply impressed by the leadership and courage of the board with making a clean break from creationism," she said.

There's your lead-off straw man - what "goes on in science classrooms is neither science nor entertainment, it is education, and while it specifically is ]i]FOR[/i] the kids, it isn't ABOUT the kids, or about making anyone "feel better about themselves, its about the future.

What is demonstated in you conclusion, that "Everybody of significance knows that. It's just a vast pretence." must be considered either woeful ignorance or willing mendacity on the part of its presenter.

Martha Wise, a board member from Avon, said she pushed to end the discussion because the issue had become a lightning rod for debate and had long overshadowed the work of the board.

eliminate portions of curriculum guidelines

critical analysis of evolution.

from critics who feared

"I'm deeply impressed by the leadership and courage of the board with making a clean break from creationism," she said.

It's just a vast pretence." must be considered either woeful ignorance or willing mendacity on the part of its presenter.

I studied French for 3 years but can't speak a lick.

Quebec ignoring illegal evangelical schools
(CBC News, October 12, 2006)

Quebec has quietly tolerated evangelical schools that are not recognized by and do not have permits from the province's Ministry of Education.

That leaves as many as 4,000 current students without provincially recognized diplomas if and when they graduate from the schools, Radio-Canada has learned. Radio-Canada is the CBC's French-language service.

Claude Grant, a lawyer who represents l'Association des églises évangéliques du Québec, estimates 20 such schools teach a Bible-based curriculum to up to 4,000 elementary and high school students throughout the province.

At least two such schools operate in the Outaouais region, teaching about 100 students between them. Most of the students are from Gatineau or from Saint-André-Avellin in the Petite-Nation region.

Charles Boucher, a Pentecostal minister at l'Église Nouvelle Alliance in Gatineau, on Tuesday had a Radio-Canada reporter visit the school affiliated with the church.

About 40 students attend inside a modest grey church building. Several classrooms within are lined with white cupboards and library-style carrels.
Boucher said schools like his are a response to the immoral curriculum at public schools.

"Certain teachings that are conveyed there are anti-biblical," he said in French to a Radio-Canada reporter.

He gave teachings on sexual education and evolution as examples. His school teaches creationism instead of evolution as the origin of different types of plants and animals.

Boucher said his school's education is based on an American program and uses books from the U.S.

The Coeur-des-Vallées school board in the Outaouais region filed a complaint with the Ministry of Education about the religious schools last year.

The ministry declined to be interviewed by Radio-Canada for this story.

However, Grant said the province is aware of the schools and is discussing with them how to bring them under regulation.

He said discussions have been going on for at least 15 years, and he showed a reporter some of the binders containing the schools' correspondence with the ministry.

The ministry has not yet given the schools the permits required for them to operate legally.

But nor has it taken any action against the schools, Grant said. He suggested there is an explanation for that.

"It's because they are aware that we want to preserve a cultural heritage in a way," he said, "and there is a void left by the secularization of the education system."

"It's because they are aware that we want to preserve a cultural heritage in a way," he said, "and there is a void left by the secularization of the education system."

I studied French for 3 years but can't speak a lick.

I studied French for 3 years but can't speak a lick.