More Dover

I assume that everyone here knows what the term “santorum” refers to. In any event, I do anxiously look forward to watching this guy descend in a glorious flyball which he certainly will do. We only have to wait patiently and keep the spotlights on him.

HAHAHAHAHAHAH indeed!!!

Unstated is the nature of that intelligence.

“That could be Mother Earth, Buddha, or whoever the Muslims believe in,” said Buckingham, who belongs to a fundamentalist Christian church.

Then the earth is quite young indeed because Buddha was born about 2500 years ago. If Buddha created all the living life forms on earth, then maybe he also wrote Buckingham’s holy book, which descibes mythological organisms with names like Moses who allegedly walked on terra firma 1000 years before Buddha.

Mr. Buckingham is the real deal: an unapologetically ignorant and more-or-less sincere fundie. A more appropriate or honest public face for “ID theory” probably does not exist. Let’s just hope that these streaks of candor aren’t merely the temporary side effects of Oxycontin withdrawal.

An interesting development. It looks like the plaintiffs want to get the public to get a good long whiff of the stench emanating from the mouths of ID apologists.

Note the 2^nd and 3^rd paragraphs.

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/cent[…]10573245.htm

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Eight families who sued a school district over the presence of “intelligent design” in its curriculum will not ask a federal judge to block the lessons that are expected to start next week, an attorney said Wednesday.

Witold Walczak, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said that during depositions this week, Dover Area School District officials “either denied or could not remember making statements at public school board meetings … about a desire to find biology textbooks that discuss creationism,” even though local newspapers reported their comments last summer.

Because the witnesses’ statements raised questions about their credibility and because the case is so complex, the plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to schedule a trial in the spring instead of seeking an immediate court order that would prevent the lessons, Walczak said.

“While we believe the introduction of intelligent design next week is unconstitutional, we did not want to ask the court to decide the matter without a hearing,” Walczak said.

Ronald A. Turo, a Carlisle lawyer representing the district, referred questions about the depositions to the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which the school board has retained to defend the district. Thomas More officials did not immediately return a telephone call Wednesday.

In a court filing Wednesday, attorneys for the district sought a dismissal of the lawsuit. They argued that the curriculum “does not advance religion, but merely provides the students of Dover High School with an honest science education … by informing students about the existing scientific controversy surrounding Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.”

The curriculum language originally approved by the school board said students must be “made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and other theories of evolution, including but not limited to intelligent design.”

In November, the board sought to clarify the rule by saying that teachers would read a statement advising students that Darwin’s theory “is not a fact” and that intelligent design “is an explanation of life that differs from Darwin’s view.”

In December, attorneys for the district argued that the court order the plaintiffs were considering was unnecessary because reading the statement to students does not constitute teaching the concept.

“What is going on is a one-minute statement that’s being made in a 90-minute section in a multiple-month subject,” Turo said.

Walczak disagreed.

“The parallel I would draw would be, if a social-studies teacher teaching World War II would talk about the Holocaust and make a statement - just a couple paragraphs - that there are gaps in the historical records of the Holocaust, and you should know an alternative theory that the Holocaust never happened,” he said.

The fight over intelligent design - a concept that holds that the universe is so complex it had to be created by a higher power - is the latest skirmish in nearly eight decades of litigation over evolution.

Since the board voted Oct. 18 to require that intelligent design be taught in ninth-grade biology classes at Dover High School - believed to be the first such requirement in the nation - the case quickly evolved from a local dispute into a nationally watched showdown between civil libertarians and religious activists.

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued in December on behalf of parents who objected to the requirement. To defend itself, the school board hired the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit group that bills itself as a champion of Christian freedoms.

The plaintiffs argue that intelligent design is merely a secular variation of creationism, the biblical-based view that regard God as the creator of life, and maintain that the Dover district’s curriculum mandate may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.