Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Organized Ignorance = Religion

Organized Ignorance = Religion

New Stealth Tactic to Smuggle Creationism into Science Class
(By Sandhya Bathija, Church & State Magazine, August 27, 2008)

In the 21 years Patsye Peebles taught biology in Louisiana public schools, she never received one complaint from parents for teaching evolution.

"The bottom line is that I never questioned their faith," she said.

Whenever she had a student who brought up creationism, she always made it clear that science is science, and religion is religion.

"I wanted them to understand," Peebles said, "that science has to be testable and proven with evidence."

Whether they agreed with evolution or not, Peebles wanted her students to become what she calls "biologically literate citizens." Now she worries that a new Louisiana law, which would encourage teachers to question evolution, will push the state's education backward.

"My whole curriculum was based on evolution, I integrated it into everything I taught," said Peebles, who testified against the law in a state Senate hearing and serves as a regional coordinator for the National Association of Biology Teachers.

"Now this muddies the waters and keeps students from having a really good education," she said. "When they go to college, they will be at a disadvantage because they will not have a good understanding of science."

Already, more than half of the state's eighth-graders lack basic competence in science, according to recent national test scores.

But despite pleas from scientists, civil liberties activists and educators like Peebles, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed Louisiana Senate Bill 733 into law. The new statute will allow teachers to introduce into the classroom "supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials" about evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.

The "Science Education Act," as it is known to the law's proponents, is the first such "academic freedom" bill to make it into the law books. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design, is coordinating the promotion of similar bills throughout the country -- this year in states including Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Michigan and South Carolina.

"These bills are full of creationist code language," said Barbara Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. "The phrase 'academic freedom' has been used by creationists for decades."

Forrest is co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, a 2004 book that exposed the theocratic agenda of the Discovery Institute and other creationist organizations. She is leading the Louisiana Coalition for Science, a network of individuals and groups who organized opposition to SB 733.

Measures like Louisiana's new anti-evolution law are key pieces of the Religious Right agenda. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and its allies believe the Science Education Act is another attempt to force religion into public schools. AU has warned that lawsuits will result if Louisiana introduces religion into classrooms.

The major force behind the law in Louisiana is the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a Religious Right organization that actively promotes creationism. The LFF, which is a state affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, suggested the measure to its sponsor, Sen. Ben Nevers (D-Bogalusa).

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The LFF already has created a "textbook addendum" available on their Web site that teachers can use to introduce creationism to students.

To coincide with the textbook's chapter on fossils, the LFF's addendum states, "Flood waters do not produce fossils unless there is a sudden surge of water that is full of a lot of sediment. An example is when a dam breaks. When the billions of fossils that are everywhere are considered in this light, the earth's history had some very violent floods in its past."

Or to complement a chapter on life's origins, the LFF's "scientific" explanation states: "One of the smallest prokaryotes (H-39 strain of mycoplasma, a bacterium) consists of 640 proteins whose average length is 400 amino acid bondings.Under ideal conditions, the odds of this many amino acids coming together in the right order are approximately the same as winning the Power Ball Lotto every week for the next 640 years. How could this have happened accidently [sic]? The step from inanimate organic compounds to a living organism is beyond man's ability to create."

Critics say these types of publications will likely serve as the "supplemental materials" used to teach science under Louisiana's "academic freedom" measure.

"They may not be saying 'Noah's flood' or 'Adam and Eve' anymore, but it is the same creationist argument they are making," said Josh Rosenau, Public Information Project Director for the National Center for Science Education.

The Louisiana Coalition for Science fought hard to educate the state legislature on the dangers of this law and what it really means. Nine Coalition members, including teachers and scientists, testified at the Senate and House hearings to oppose the bill, but received no response or acknowledgment.

"The legislature knew full well what this bill meant, and they acted like they just planned for it to pass," Forrest said.

The reality of a new law that could result in costly litigation bills couldn't come at a worse time for a state with economic challenges. Prior to its passage, Alan Leshner, executive publisher of the journal, Science, and chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, referred to this measure as a "dangerous distraction."

"If the Louisiana bill becomes law, we are confident it would be overturned in court," Leshner wrote for the Shreveport Times. "But the fight would be an expensive, divisive distraction. At a time when Louisiana and the United States face serious economic challenges -- and incredible opportunities -- we must ensure the best possible science education for the next generation of problem-solvers."

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It looks like Louisiana is repeating history, despite concerns from teachers, scientists and legal scholars.

"They just aren't even paying attention to what teachers are telling them," Peebles said. "We don't need this, we don't want it."

america does not have journalism anymore, the fourth estate died when the corporate interests bought it, and then dismantled it. The places where journalists once worked are rapidly going out of business, and they are in the business of supplying content to fill the space around the advertisements (propaganda from the corporate interests).

Once upon a time journalists wrote stories, they were educated and had time to investigate and they also knew how to write. Now we have people who call themselves journalists who are maybe a bit more intelligent than the ignorant herd but not by much, and they are not given the time nor the training that would be required in order for them to learn to investigate and then write thoughtful stories. They repeat what they have been told, often told by people who have something to sell or an agenda.

There are many definitions of lies and the Thesaurus has a great source of words to describe the distorting and twisting of any facts. Among the word variations that cover the outrageous manipulations we experience daily are fabrication, inference misstatement, falsification, evasion, deceit and deception. A lie is the deliberate withholding of any part of the truth from someone who has a right to know.

People are becoming accustomed to receiving deceit and deception. We are being constantly lied to by governments, government officials, drug companies, the medical profession, multinational industry, food companies and politicians. Lied to by media, by 'reality' programs, doctored photographs in magazines, by employers and by unions.

Lied to in financial transactions, stockholders reports and false corporate statements. Lied to by advertising, salesmen and anyone trying to make money to our disadvantage. Falsification has been piled onto fabrication, until lying -- through omission, distortion, bias or clever wording -- has become a way of life! The list is truly endless.

Life has become like a jigsaw puzzle, but without the picture on the front of the box so that you don't know what it's really supposed to be like. Governments, multinationals and media are clever enough to make sure you don't always have all the pieces!

Try to look at the motives behind everything you hear and see, there is always a motive. What are they 'selling'? Keep an open mind and treat all information with a reasonable amount of suspicion. Look for seemingly reliable sources, as I do. We need to be constantly be alert and aware! Even question me.

We all know there is plenty of truth in our universe; it's just a bit hard to find. Try a little old fashioned commonsense.

Is that true wande? It is a science thread after all.

What is one to make of your attitude to science if it's only half true? Are all your quotes sales pitches?

Sandhya Bathija is in the communications department at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Theodor Reik in his book Of Love And Lust has this passage-

Quote:
Logan Clendening gives the male point of view in his book The Human Body. Man, says this physician, "is expressly made to roam over the earth impregnating as many females as he possibly can." It is "simply silly" to pretend that this is not the case or to try to control this desire by moral admonitions. The one thing that can control the male is common sense of the female, the sense "to lead him to the altar or to the Justice Court, the sense her old mothers fashioned for her to bind him with hoops of steel."

Man will bow his neck to matrimony only if there is no other way out, and "he wonders all the rest of his life why he did." Clendening emphasizes that the average man lies, coaxes, fawns in order to make woman give in to him, that he promises to love her forever to have his way. After it is accomplished, "he is alertly ready for the next candidate, and to remind him of the means he used to accomplish it or to call him names for using them is as unwordly as to rebuke the flowers for blooming or the bees for visiting them." Here is the biological truth, plainly spoken.

And these anti-IDers only want the biological truth to be told in biology lessons so when they start going all unwordly when the consequences arrive you can imagine the contempt in which they are held by people who know which way up is.

Bernard Shaw has Tanner in Man and Superman say-

Quote:
It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can. Marriage (he says) is apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat."

I'll bet it's a lot easier to become a professor now that when Mr Clendening was two.

New Stealth Tactic to Smuggle Creationism into Science Class
(By Sandhya Bathija, Church & State Magazine, August 27, 2008)

Already, more than half of the state's eighth-graders lack basic competence in science, according to recent national test scores.