The ID lesson in Dover was originally scheduled to occur tomorrow, on Thursday. It now appears that it won’t occur until next Monday or Tuesday. So we are still at ID-Day minus 5.
York Daily Record story: Dover to discuss “design” next week
Special section at the YDR: Dover Biology
York Dispatch: Dover delays biology class statement
The letters on the York Dispatch webpage are a bit harder to find, but there have been some excellent ones:
- “Pseudoscientific balderdash“
- “Dover board ignores the evidence“
- “New paradigm needed: More intelligent ‘intelligent design’“
- “Teachers’ ‘sabotage’ makes sense“
See also the many previous posts on Dover on The Panda’s Thumb.
From the link: Dover to discuss ‘design’ next week
What’s this? I do hope those board members are keeping the 10 commandments in mind.
I also hope one of those reporters was packing a tape recorder.
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You should post that in the Onyate Man thread.
You know, if I was in this high school I’d be pissed as hell at the Johnsonite Christians for pulling this stunt.
I’d probably bring a bunch of Bible-debunking literature to class or a stack of papers showing where websites can be found which trash “ID theory” and its peddlers. Of course, if someone simply handed me that material, I wouldn’t have to take time out of my lunch hour to create it.
Are there any thoughtful students enrolled in biology classes at Dover who understand what this “controversy” is all about?
GWW:
Maybe I’m in a bad mood today, but I know the parents of these students voted in the current school board, and I know that about 98% of peoples’ beliefs essentially match their parents’ beliefs. So I fear they do understand – this controversy is a straight battle between good and evil. Eating of the tree of knowledge is a sin. So the case is pretty open and shut.
I wonder how many of the citizens voted in the school board election in Dover. Anybody have the statistics?
I’ll bet it’s another case of evil winning because good folk went to the kids’ soccer games that day instead of voting …
An impossibly vague assertion but I’ll still call you on it: baloney.
GWW:
Maybe it is baloney. So where do you think creationists come from? Is it decreed in heaven? Indoctrinated in churches? But who selectes children’s churches? What’s your speculation?
“Meanwhile, it seems, a member of the administration will read the intelligent design statement to the students.
“That’s an egregious response, directed by a school board obviously hell-bent on having its way imposing religious strictures on a secular and public institution.”
Hell-bent. Nice turn of phrase.
Generally speaking? I think it’s the default position for anyone who believes in God that didn’t get a decent education.
And I think that most people believe in God, initially, because their parents do.
But your claim was far broader in scope. You said: “I know that about 98% of peoples’ beliefs essentially match their parents’ beliefs”.
Now, I’ll grant you that this is correct in the mundane sense that 98% of everyone’s beliefs are similar because we’re all humans, we all breathe air, eat food, etc.
But if we’re talking about “beliefs” as they relate to the relative merits of scientific, historical, social and/or artistic claims, I don’t buy this 98% similarity business. I think that kids do not accept all of their parents (or any adults)beliefs quite so readily, especially high school kids. Don’t you remember: “never trust anyone over 40”?
Isn’t this one of the facts that is being exploited by the creationists peddlers to lure kids over to their side? That scientists are “suppressing the evidence” and “keeping the truth” out of schools? It’s a bizarre take on “hey kid, don’t believe everything The Man has to tell you.” I say “bizarre” because in this case the advice to rebel is part of a script that is being recited by people who are among the least tolerant and most scientifically ignorant individuals on the freaking planet!
I’m reminded of that hilarious Jack Chick tract on evolution where the kids “revolt” and make a fool out of their biology teacher. A brilliant piece of propoganda. Like most of the best propoganda, of course, it’s a disgusting lie which benefits only the propogandists.
GWW,
That was, “Never trust anyone over 30.”
In comment #13503
Judging by their own accounts, a lot of them are converted atheists.
Abiogenesis? Virgin birth? Clay? Rib? So many possibilities…
Wasn’t today ID-Day?
At last, those Dover evangelicals will able to sleep peacefully knowing that their children’s soft impressionabe minds are protected from cold hard scientific facts about biology.
Yup, today was ID Day, and the administrator who read it ducked questions from the kids about it:
From here. Sure did add to those kids’ biology knowledge, huh?
RBH
Update