Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Maybe. Maybe not.

What have you got in mind? I hope it isn't a facile platitude.

Or maybe, Spendi, it's the fact that competent scientists don't make good liars.

Here is a question for scientific evolutionists, especially American ones, to ponder.

Which of the following behavioural patterns do you approve of from a strictly evolutionist perspective-

1- That one works hard all year with one's nose in the books and gets a B+ pass in the exams.

2- That one has a good time all year, in the accredited manner, and cheats in the exams or tutorials and comes up with an A.

Failing Schools Find Hole In Law
Ark. Shows Bush Initiative's Limits

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 29, 2002; Page A01

ALTHEIMER, Ark. -- The quality of public education in this impoverished Delta town has long been an embarrassment to local officials, even by the modest standards of Arkansas, which ranks 49th nationally in the percentage of students who complete college.

In a school system so poor that the girls' and boys' basketball teams shared uniforms, 90 percent of the students scored below "proficient" last year on the Arkansas eighth-grade English test. Over the past three years, 56 percent of the boys and 35 percent of the girls in grades 7 through 11 scored in the bottom quarter nationally on the SAT-9, another standardized exam.

In short, Altheimer has the sort of struggling public school system that Bush administration officials vowed would no longer be tolerated under the No Child Left Behind Act, the far-reaching new federal education law that mandates serious consequences for failing schools and alternatives for the students who attend them.

But while 8,652 U.S. public schools have been identified as "failing" under the law, the two in Altheimer are not among them. The entire state, according to its officials, has no failing schools. [/u][/i]Michigan, in contrast, lists 1,513 failing schools, the most of any state, a total that officials there attribute to rigorous standardized tests.

The wide disparity in identifying failing schools underscores the limitations of the new law's impact on the nation's schools, a weakness that could undermine President Bush's signature domestic policy initiative.

"I think in the beginning, some people got carried away with saying how much this law would make a difference in education," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research organization. "In the end, the states are going to be the ones who define what failure is. If a state stares the federal government in the eye and says, 'We have no failing schools,' there is not much that the federal government can do."

Under the federal law, each state is allowed to set its own academic standards. The states -- not the federal government -- decide what constitutes adequate academic progress.

Have you heard the joke about private Christian schools? You can get A's in all subjects as long as you have memorized a few Bible verses.

In a school system so poor that the girls' and boys' basketball teams shared uniforms,

Under the federal law, each state is allowed to set its own academic standards. The states -- not the federal government -- decide what constitutes adequate academic progress.

(Letter to Baton Rouge Advocate, October 25, 2007)

Regarding Sen. David Vitter's earmark of $100,000 to promote creationism, I want to address comments by Sen. Vitter, Louisiana Family Forum Director Gene Mills and Ouachita Parish School Board Chairman Jack White in "Vitter redirects funds after creationism stir" (The Advocate, Oct. 20).

The earmark would ostensibly have enabled LFF "to develop a plan to promote better science education."

Sen. Vitter, R-La., asserts that these taxpayer dollars weren't intended to promote creationism. But if he had wanted to improve science education, he could have directed that money to many qualified organizations, rather than to LFF, a Focus on the Family affiliate.

LFF promotes both young-earth and intelligent design creationism on its Web site, as does former City Court Judge Darrell White (http://www.judgewhite.com), the LFF consultant who sold the Ouachita Parish School Board a creationist curriculum policy in November 2006.

As a member of the National Center for Science Education's board of directors, I would be happy to advise Sen. Vitter about where to direct the money. The idea that LFF is qualified to promote science education is ludicrous.

Mr. Mills commented that LFF "wasn't disappointed with the funding change and encouraged Vitter to redirect it." Given LFF's alliance with the Ouachita Parish School Board, we should take him at his word. No great leap is needed to imagine that Ouachita Parish was probably the beneficiary all along, given the board's Nov. 29, 2006, adoption of its "science curriculum policy" (httpo://www.opsb.net/downloads-file-166.html), which Darrell White wrote (as the document's electronic properties show).

Written in creationist code-talk, the policy permits teaching the "strengths and [non-existent] weaknesses" of evolution. Calling justifiable concern "vitriolic sensationalism," Mills predicts that "the battle" won't go away merely because the earmark was redirected.

The LFF will make sure this battle doesn't go away.

Jack White says that Ouachita Parish "does not have a program to promote the teaching of creationism." But Ouachita Parish's policy does precisely that, citing a 2001 congressional declaration (actually part of No Child Left Behind's legislative history) calling for science curricula to include "the full range of scientific views" concerning "topics," i.e., evolution, that "generate controversy."

Intelligent design creationist Phillip Johnson, who includes intelligent design in that range of views, wrote this language.

When I say I wrote the book on this, Sen. Vitter, LFF and the Ouachita Parish School Board should take that literally. My book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design" (2004, 2007), details not only the history of the creationist code-talk that LFF's Darrell White included in the Ouachita Parish policy, but the intelligent design creationist movement itself.

Barbara Forrest
professor
Holden

Roll out the barrel,
We'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel,
We've got the blues on the run
Sing boom tararrel,
Ring out a song of good cheer
Now's the time to roll the barrel,
For the gang's all here.

The idea that LFF is qualified to promote science education is ludicrous.

But that was tantamount to a "theory of successive creations"--or at least a divinely directed evolution. Jenkin had turned the tables. He convinced Darwin that 'freak' variations could not survive, only a wave of them appearing simultaneously. Others cut the knot and sought refuge in Argyll's 'creation by birth,' with each 'sport' preplanned and fixed. It was retreat on all fronts.

Written in creationist code-talk, the policy permits teaching the "strengths and [non-existent] weaknesses" of evolution.