Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Nope. Still trying to work out what this sociological problem is, spendius.

Wolf_ODonnell wrote:

Nope. Still trying to work out what this sociological problem is, spendius.

You might be better off being bemused/amused, instead of looking for rationality.......of course your time/efforts are your own.

Dylan owes his success to Tony Orlando & Dawn.

Chumly wrote:

Dylan owes his success to Tony Orlando & Dawn.

This all belongs on the music thread...and if Dylan was a one hit wonder, which he isn't, IMHO it would be for All Along the Watchtower

Rap

Chumly wrote:
Dylan owes his success to Tony Orlando & Dawn.

Stephen Fry did a marvellous programme on the BBC on Sunday about the production of the Gutenberg Bible.

But to redeem the Middle Ages and history and the magic of realism , we had Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press, in which he came and rebuilt Gutenberg's printing press with a lot of charming and quietly blissful men (like me) who made you realise why all artists proudly thought of themselves as craftsmen until the 19th century. The process was fascinating, but what stopped this from becoming a garden shed show with added Black Death was Fry's marvellous awe and boundless enthusiasm for the invention that ushered in everything you'd want to save in civilisation if the world ever catches fire. It was the device that switched on the lights and did it so perfectly the first time that Gutenberg could walk into Waterstone's and say, yup, those are my inventions. It's a good and worthwhile story told with humour and conviction, without patronage or side.

History is not a list of socioeconomic modules or bullet points; it's not a retrospective social work and media studies; it's a story, it's your story. Don't let any numpty, half-dead OU apparatchik tell you different.

Senate, House well on way to inherit the wind
(Mike Thomas, COMMENTARY, Orlando Sentinel, April 22, 2008)

As if to provide comic relief between budgetary sessions of brutalizing poor kids and the elderly, our Tallahassee primates continue their assault on evolution.

What makes this latest return to the 19th century interesting is that the Senate and House have swapped their traditional roles.

Usually it is the House that goes on crusades to create a Theocratic State of Florida, while the more moderate Senate tends to drag its heels and whine about the Constitution.

But on the issue of evolution, it is the Senate going out on a limb, or at least refusing to concede that our ancestors once did.

The controversy stems from a Department of Education decision to publicly acknowledge the existence of Darwin by mandating schools teach evolution. Unable to stop this bit of heresy, religious conservatives now seek to overturn the decision in the Legislature.

But they have to be careful.

They obviously can't promote creationism in the classroom.

They tried replacing that with a super-secret-code term: intelligent design. But a judge tossed that, too.

So now, after much pondering, they have come up with academic freedom.

They're not asking that teachers be allowed to teach intelligent design, just given the academic freedom to pooh-pooh evolution.

To make this all very scientific, the teachers would need "germane current facts, data and peer-reviewed scientific information."

That sounds good and un-Godly until you try to define terms such as peer-reviewed scientific information. Beyond that, good luck deciding who would have the final say in determining that something met that criteria.

I spent an hour on Google, digging for "scientific information" that claimed to be "peer reviewed," arguing that Earth is 7,000 years old and that T. rexes ate plants until Adam and Eve ate the apple. Then they got dressed, and the T. rexes switched to the Atkins Diet.

Imagine a teacher introducing such material as a critique of Darwin, with administrators and parents unable to infringe on his academic freedom to do so.

If you don't think this would happen, you haven't spent enough time in the Panhandle.

An analysis by more level-headed members of the House staff noted teachers don't have such academic freedom in other subjects.

"This fact raises issues concerning the underlying intent of the bill," noted the analysis.

Underlying intent is super-secret code for unconstitutional religious intent.

The House then reduced its evolution bill to a single sentence saying teachers must teach "a thorough presentation and critical analysis" of evolution.

Critics fear critical analysis will become a slippery slope to academic freedom and from there, off we go to intelligent design.

In the Senate, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, claims there is a Science Inquisition going on in schools, with anti-evolution teachers given bathroom and bus duty.

She couldn't produce any victims. Like her science, her legislation seems to be faith-based.

The House and Senate would have to agree on any final bill.

If it is the current Senate version, we soon will replay the Scopes Monkey Trial on Fox News, starring Sean Hannity as a dumbed-down William Jennings Bryan and the state of Florida as his dumbed-down baboon.

All this hardly meshes with House Speaker Marco Rubio's plan to make Florida a world-class education center in math and science.

"The jobs and careers that our children are going to aspire to fill haven't even been invented yet," he says. "Their competition is not Mississippi or Alabama; it's China and India and emerging markets."

Why, then, are legislators considering laws that would teach science at a Mississippi and Alabama level?

Because in China, India and every advanced country looking to pass us by, they teach evolution.

If it is the current Senate version, we soon will replay the Scopes Monkey Trial on Fox News, starring Sean Hannity as a dumbed-down William Jennings Bryan . . .