Yesterday, I posted this link to more evidence to confirm evolution, but as is often the case, scientific evidence has little impact on policy choices. As such, the version 2.0 of the Scopes Monkey Trials continue in earnest in Dover:
A school district is undermining science education by raising false doubts about evolution and offering “intelligent design” as an alternative explanation for life’s origins, a biologist testified at the start of a landmark trial.
“It’s the first movement to try to drive a wedge between students and the scientific process,” said Brown University’s Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers for eight families suing the Dover Area School District.
Dover is believed to be the nation’s first school system to require that students be exposed to the intelligent design concept.
District policy requires school administrators to read a statement before classes on evolution that says Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact” and has inexplicable “gaps.” It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Ahh, the old ‘evolution is just a theory’ canard. That one NEVER gets old. This is nothing new:
The history of evolution litigation dates to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution.
The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.
In 1968, the Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism. President Bush has also weighed in, saying schools should present both concepts when teaching about the origins of life.
And kudos to the MSM for getting this one right. Even though this is a trial about ‘intelligent design,’ they continue to hammer home that ID is nothing more than warmed over creationism:
“Intelligent design isn’t science. It’s old theology,” said Eric Rothschild, lawyer for 11 parents who sued the Dover school district of central Pennsylvania over including intelligent design in its ninth-grade biology curriculum.
“It’s a clever tactical repackaging of creationism,” he said, telling a packed courtroom that the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed teaching creationism in public schools in 1987.
Pity the poor fools who keep advocating Intelligent Design and denying evolution, for even their arguments are evolving.
jg
This is so surreal.
metalgrid
Well, the US is lacking in the area of an under-educated cheap menial labor force. Keeping children from these school-board areas badly educated helps fill that niche when they grow up and are unable to pursue careers that are reliant on critical thinking and/or science.
We should be praising the creationists for providing us with an illiterate segment of society we can use as a cheap labor force in the future.
jg
I can see why the conservatives would want kids to not know how to think critically. These fuckers would never get elected if students were taught to divorce their own feelings from a subject. Since everything is spun back as the liberals fault its beneficial to have a base that can’t figure out your lying.
Mr.Ortiz
The sad thing is that in its attempt to inject science into religion, ID waters down both. We’ll have a generation of kids who think science means taking your best guess and who worship a nebulous intelligence–totally not God, we swear–for engineering eyeballs on our behalf. Sermons will end: Thanks SmartGuy!
DougJ
They’re your boys, John, the creationists. You vote for their candidates, you repeat the talking points of their political masters. (Full disclosure: I did too until late 2003)
jg
I was never with the creationists but I called my self a republican for just about all of my life. I still think I am but these clowns in washington who are ruining the name. Bush lost me in mid 2003, right around the time we changed our rationale for the war.
Steve J.
PANTYHOSE SAVES THE DAY FOR SCIENCE!
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html
The second major argument for intelligent design comes from William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher affiliated with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based Christian think tank that serves as the nerve center for the ID movement.
Dembski argues that nature is rife with examples of non-random patterns of information that he calls “complex specified information,” or CSI for short.
An example of CSI from nature is DNA, the molecule found in all cells that contains the genetic instructions for life. DNA is made up of four repeating chemical bases arranged into complimentary pairs. The bases can be thought of as “letters” in a four-letter alphabet and can be strung together to form genes, which can be thought of as the “words” that tell the cell what proteins to make.
“If Dembski were right, then a new gene with new information conferring a brand new function on an organism could never come into existence without a designer because a new function requires complex specified information,” Miller said.
In 1975, Japanese scientists reported the discovery of bacteria that could break down nylon, the material used to make pantyhose and parachutes. Bacteria are known to ingest all sorts of things, everything from crude oil to sulfur, so the discovery of one that could eat nylon would not have been very remarkable if not for one small detail: nylon is synthetic; it didn’t exist anywhere in nature until 1935, when it was invented by an organic chemist at the chemical company Dupont.
The discovery of nylon-eating bacteria poses a problem for ID proponents. Where did the CSI for nylonase—the actual protein that the bacteria use to break down the nylon—come from?
There are three possibilities:
· The nylonase gene was present in the bacterial genome all along.
· The CSI for nylonase was inserted into the bacteria by a Supreme Being.
· The ability to digest nylon arose spontaneously as a result of mutation. Because it allowed the bacteria to take advantage of a new resource, the ability stuck and was eventually passed on to future generations.
Apart from simply being the most reasonable explanation, there are two other reasons that most scientists prefer the last option, which is an example of Darwinian natural selection.
First, hauling around a nylonase gene before the invention of nylon is at best useless to the bacteria; at worst, it could be harmful or lethal. Secondly, the nylonase enzyme is less efficient than the precursor protein it’s believed to have developed from. Thus, if nylonase really was designed by a Supreme Being, it wasn’t done very intelligently.
DougJ
I didn’t mean to say I was ever a creationist, but I supported Bush and by doing so supported creationists.
Personally, I don’t have that big a problem with them. I think they’re misguided, but I think that ultimately, ID will drift into becoming evolution started by God, in effect and we will forget about the whole debate. So I don’t see any of this as that big of a deal. But John clearly does, yet he’s happy at other times to repeat Karl Rove’s talking points. In for a penny, in for a pound.
John Cole
DougJ- I don’t spout talking points. I state what I honestly think. If the ‘talking points’ and what I think overlap, I don’t change my opinion just to keep you happy or to avoid using ‘talking points.’
SDott
ID is religion in a labcoat, but many arguments against ID are of the “this could have been designed better” variety, but such arguments fail. Intelligently designed doesn’t require things to be perfectly designed or for them to be designed in a way that lets us discern the reason for the design.
The biggest problem for ID is that, like god, the theory is infinitely recursive: it posits that anything complex must be designed by an intelligent designer, thus the designer must also be designed, and so on and so on…
John Cole
I preferred the stupid but sometimes amusing DougJ to the asshole who willfully attributes the worst to the people he disagrees with.
DougJ
In fairness, John, I also willfully attribute the worst to the people I agree with.
DougJ
And, John, you spouted Rove talking points on Katrina. I’m sorry, I like you, but you did.
jg
Michael Moore’s minutemen?
DougJ
Actually, jg, I thought that was funny. The flame-inducing jokes are cool. It’s the Rovian sleight-of-hand tricks that are lamentable.
Defense Guy
You bastard. Report at once to Nancy Pelosi for your flogging.
Alex
ID belongs in a philosophy class,
not in biology. Whats so weird and
strange about that?
John Cole
DougJ- No, I didn’t, and it really pisses me off that you keep insisting I did. I came to my own damned conclusions.
Maybe my reaction to ‘where are the feds’ nonsense comes from some personal experience with the military in disaster recovery, recognizing how difficult it is to move large groups and how difficult it is to set up an area of operation in a DISASTER AREA.
Maybe my belief that first responders and the state and local government comes from the idea that my first reaction was ‘Why the hell didn’t the mayor get them out of there,’ which was followed by my reaction ‘why the hell did he send them there with no food or water?’
You and I can disagree on those reactions/beliefs, and you and I can argue about the principle of subsidiarity, but quit attributing that which I come to on my own as some sort of willingness to adhere to ‘talking points.’
In short, quit being a petulant ass.
JG-
Umm. Those would be Michael Moore’s talking points:
And those remarks came in April 2004, contra what some would have you believe, well after the insurgency had been identified as a group of terrorists who were willfully killing innocents.
But, since we are using DougJ’s rule, I guess you are in for a penny and in for a pound and believe those statements.
A. Pastafarian
Hey! Don’t forget that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the real source of all those intelligent designs! If those folks in Dover think that they can only slip in their own version of creationist claptrap, they have another “think” coming.
We, card-carrying members of the Reformed Pastafarians of America (Marinaran Snyod) will sue the school district to ALSO include the Pastafarian Gospel, with its pirates and its noodly appendages and so forth and so on. And we will make sure everyone follows our loose moral code so that all people can enjoy our Pastafarian heaven with its beer volcanoes and stripper factories and so on and so forth.
Besides, if these IDers think that they can force schools to teach that the universe might have been created by an intelligent designer (not named, of course, but clearly the Christian god), then they also have to allow Pastafarian Gospels to be proclaimed as well. How else will the children know these things? Unfortunately, there is a bunch of folks who belive that this intelligent designer is actually Cthulhu, the Old One who entered our universe through an abomination in space-time; and another group thinks it was actually aliens from Rigel 17, who dropped by in their spaceships to tinker with the DNA of an ancestral bacteria 2.5 billion years ago. So it gets a little complicated. We’ll be cutting down alotta trees to print the new multi-volume textbook for high school biology class. It will weigh about 75 pounds.
But I have no doubt that Pastafarianism will win, in the end. We have His Noodly Appendage to guide us. All praise the FSM! RAMEN.
docG
This fourth generation Kansan sends his thanks to the Dover Area School District. May the stupidity spotlight continue to shine in your direction.
DougJ
I understand it pisses you off. Sometimes the truth hurts. And do I accuse you of this about other stuff? No, not very often, at least.
And the Michael Moore comparison is silly. He is not the right-hand man of the leader of the free world. Karl Rove is. You know that’s a lame trick. To pretend that Michael Moore, George Galloway, and the rest are important people. (Same with the creationists by the way). Sorry to be a jerk about this, but it’s a lousy trick you play like that and you know it. That said, I like this blog and I like your take on things for the most part.
Krista
Man, if my kid went to that school, I’d be royally pissed. Why do people not realize that one’s faith is personal and private, and if taught, should be taught within the family, not at school. I’m agnostic, and my man is an atheist, and we fully intend to let our kids make up their own minds about what they believe, but if anybody tries to indoctrinate them, I will NOT be impressed.
srv
DougJ, John, Kettle meet Pot, Pot meet Kettle.
You know, the real problem we have today is that we don’t have a Carl Sagan to fight the evangelical witchcraft. I personally saw Philp Johnson panhandling creationism back in the 80’s. If I just had video of it. The ID folks would cringe.
It’s like the LaRouche followers. I love arguing with these 18 year old kids. I just start quoting Lyndon in 1985, and they have no idea what I’m talking about. You know, like Reagan was a Soviet mole and all. But I can’t argue with the evangelicals. It’s like bathing a cat.
John Cole
DougJ- If anyone is playing any trick, it is you, who is trying to tie my legitimate opinions into the specter of evil ‘rove-speak.’ You brought him up, you tried to make the claim that all I do is spout talking points, and now you are trying to claim I am playing games.
I have wasted enough time on you. What does Nancy Pelosi want you to say next?
WhoSays
When will people understand that the theory of evolution has NOTHING to do with the origins of life? Fundies don’t like evolution mainly because the bible says the earth is only about 6000 yrs old. So evolution cannot be the explanation for anything.
jg
You used it to get the base riled up. To me that a talking point. Keep the base on message, Michael Moore is an asshole. Its a weak example but I don’t pretend to be the best arguer here. Yes I did just make up a word.
John S.
Check out the meaning of the word gestalt, John.
You may think that you’re only stating your own thoughts, but like it or not, whatever news, radio, blogs, etc. you digest – whether knowingly or unkowingly – registers itself into your psyche. So when you go off on a rant, it is only natural to presume that such talking points issue forth from you.
And this phenomenon isn’t relegated to just you. It is something that happens to everyone.
docG
Genesis:
ID says: life is too complex to occur by evolution, an intelligent designer, that is not God, is responsible for life. So explain to me again why so many fundamentalist Christians are pushing Intelligent Design in schools. Methinks someone is dealing from the bottom of the deck.
srv
docG,
Creationism didn’t work out. So, Plan B: ID. Wrap it up with enough pseudo-science and confuse the kids in science class.
It’s the Christian thing to do.
Defense Guy
DougJ
That, he has no power defense you keep using is lame. It doesn’t freaking matter that these people have less ‘power’ than the president, so stop pretending it’s some sort of great defense. It’s lazy.
John Cole
Of course they do, but I find it bizarre that when watching the people at the Superdome, all the people on the left immediately thought – “Why, see! George Bush’s crony appointment has screwed all those people with a lackadaisical and indifferent FEMA response.”
Because that is so much more a natural opinion than my ‘talking points,’ which were “Why the hell did the city send all those folks to the ‘shelter of last resort’ that had insufficient food and water?”
And I am the one effected by Gestalt? I am the one spouting talking points? It is wholly unreasonable for me to come to this conclusion on my own, without being influenced by Karl Rove’s mindrays?
Thomas Paine
Actually, there are more arguments in favor of teaching UNintelligent Design. Witness all the acts of “God” such as Katrina, Rita, and all the holy wars fought in God’s name. And how about God senind his angel of death to kill innocent Egyptian children (aka Passover)! Very smart!
John S.
John-
I don’t why you get so pissy over these things. I suppose it is because you only half read people’s comments after you stumble across someting that irks you.
Perhaps you missed the end of post where indicated (in bold, no less) that Gestalt affects EVERYONE. It affects you just as much as “everyone on the left”. Can you not realize that there is validity to both the accusation that Bush’s crony botched things AND that the local government also botched things? Can you also not realize that these notions stem from the zeitgeist that exists on either side of the political spectrum?
In the case of liberals, they are awash in anger towards Bush for his many misdeeds and therefore reacted in kind. In the case of conservatives – including yourself – they are awash in the notion that Bush is infallible and therefore someone else is to blame. I am not saying thay you are a mindless automoton, but you must realize that you are in fact influenced by the company you keep.
And incidentally, what is with this concept that either one side or the other can only be right? Quite frankly, there are meritorious points on BOTH sides to be heard, but when the other side is marginalized in favor of the supremacy of another, anything that has merit gets tossed in favor of winning.
John Cole
John S.-
I wasn’t being pissy.I wasn’t trying to be pissy.I just find it funny that Doug J. would think I am spouting talking points, but the opposite reaction was just heartfelt beliefs.
John Cole
And there is no chance in hell I think Bush is infallible. I am not sure how you can read this site for more than a week and still be under the impression that I think Bush is infallible.
Defense Guy
Get that John. You are a product of your neocon bastardly fiends you president Bush lover you. If you wish to become an independant thinker, you must first be a DEMOCRAT!!!!! Then your anger will only be a reaction to some presumed first cause or a rightous act against the evil other. Either way, you’ll be covered.
Convert, Convert, CONVERT!
John S.
John-
I don’t think you DO think Bush is infallible. I enjoy your site, and that is why I keep coming to exchange in ideas with you and the others that come here.
I am just stating my belief that we are all deeply influenced by the things we interact with, and that to some degree we say and do things which may not actually originate within ourselves, that’s all.
Sometimes we ALL spout talking points, whether intentionally or not. At the end of the day all that really matters is if one can offer up a rationale to support what they think (even if it came from someone else), and generally speaking I find that you do.
John S.
DefenseGuy-
Don’t be so fatuous.
Defense Guy
John S
Just saying, having your eyes all the way open rather than just prescribing ‘elevated status’ to one side based on your current placement on the spectrum is a better place to be. If that is not your intent, then your words make lie of your argument.
I prefer to be phat – u – ous, mah shnizzle fo dizzle.
srv
My Balloon-Juice Wiki entry:
John has a blog and hates evangelicals and neuvo-republicrats. , but loves all other things Republican (don’t ask me what that means today, I can’t get inside that mind). He gets moderates and leftists to read his blog, and then jerks their chains occasionally with tried-an-true rants to set them off.
DougJ jerks Johns chain. John gets huffy.
Some Thursdays everyone is nice to each other.
John S.
DefenseGuy-
Please indicate ANYWHERE in the course of my exchange with John that I indicated one side of the spectrum was better than the other.
I would refer you to what I actually said (rather than what you seem to be inferring.
Cassidy
Don’t comment much, but SRV, that was awesome.
joe public
It’s a silly and overworn joke, but I heard that the Union of Concerned Duck-billed Platypus are raising their webbed feet in protest over this notion of “intelligent design.”
Or, to put it into internet parlance:
DBP: ID? WTF?
Nelson Muntz
You sleep with them John, and you get up smelling like rat turds.
Ha Ha!
Defense Guy
John S
No problem.
Nope, no discernable bias there.
DougJ
Through arguing about this.
Defense Guy, I am sure you understand my point is not a “defense” of these people but an accusation of Rovian misdirection on the part of John.
It is a little disappointing that John’s reaction to being argued with is to call people names and say he’s through with them. But he does get a lot of silly complaints, so I guess I understand.
I won’t continue this — you’re welcome to have the last word if you like.
DougJ
BTW, I don’t think of any of you thinks Bush is infallible.
John S.
DefenseGuy-
And what bias would that be? That those on the extreme Left think that everything Bush does is wrong and those on the extreme Right think everything Bush does is right?
That equates to me advocating one side over the other? Sorry, but you’re REALLY grasping for straws, there.
I’ll leave you with the real thrust of my position:
If you would rather win than make a meritorious point, be my guest.
DougJ
I said I was through with this argument and I am, but I wanted to clarify one thing. John says “you tried to make the claim that all I do is spout talking points”. I did not make this claim and think no such thing. I think that in *this one case* you were spouting talking points. Probably in a few other cases. But it is not *all you do*.
Defense Guy
DougJ
Last words: You suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. You mean like that?
BTW – Bush is not infallible. Rove on the other hand? Touched by an angel that one.
rayabacus
The problem with ID is it left out the intelligence part when the ID crowed was designed. There is no way in hell any sane, rational, logical human could accept that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
DougJ
DG, many liberals do in fact subscribe to the dogma of Rovian infallibility. Can’t remember who came up with that phrase but I like it.
Defense Guy
The part I pointed out is ripe with bias. I will take you at your word that the second part contains what you wish to be the meat of your argument and leave it at that.
As an aside, your quote is really a false dichotomy, as there are many other possibilities. I may just want to drive you up the wall for one, or perhaps I want to win by making meritorious arguments. Perhaps I’m testing your logic circuits for my sooper-secret breed with a supermodel program. I’ll let your imagination run with the possibilities.
ZAP
I love “Intelligent Design”. It makes Americans look like complete idjuts to the rest of the world, and anything that does that is a good thing. Which is why I totally support Dubya now that I realize that his dastardly plan is to completely destroy the Amerikkkan empire by 2008 (who could possibly do a better job than he has?).
rayabacus
Ohh, ME! Ohh, ME! I’ll take the test. Oh, PLEASE!
John S.
Alas, you lack the ability to drive me up a wall. If I were foolish enough to allow you to get to me, that would be my entirely my fault.
And since when do conservatives make arguments that have any merit?
=P
Defense Guy
Perhaps a winner take all, to the death game of drunken mousetrap is in order. Then we’ll see who’s arguments are the most grounded in reality.
Tim F
It pains me to say it but DougJ’s first post was more or less what I had in mind. Minus the sentence fragment about ‘talking points,’ since it brings on a flame war and simply repeats the point of the first part of the post. Talking points exist and we might as well make some effort to know who’s pushing them and who isn’t.
These ‘fringe’ actors are the power players in today’s Republican party. The rest of you, fiscal conservatives, libertarians and such, ride steerage. Of course, after PATRIOT I/II and the recent spending binges you already knew that.
It was the city’s job to keep people alive long enough for the storm to pass through, about 24 hours. Once the storm passed it was up to FEMA to bring in the food, water, generators and transportation. That was how they wargamed it and that was what FEMA promised the local officials. I don’t hold any love for Ray Nagin, but let’s be realistic about who was responsible for what.
John S.
Death-match style Mousetrap?
You’re on!
John Cole
MY understanding is that FEMA tells cities and states that it will take 72-96 hours to get there, and this may be the heart of the problem. I don;t know for sure, but I don’t think it is the responsibility to ‘bring in’ the food. I believe they are to coordinate the distribution, but the state and local authorities are to take it from distribution sites and dristribute it. FEMA only has several thousand employees- I think they rely on the local governments to do the actual distribution.
That is where the breakdown most likely was- not to mention what I consider an inexcusable breakdown in communication.
ppGaz
Does anybody know what this thread is about?
Tim F
They have contractors that meet most requirements. That keeps their permanent staff small and gives them some flexibility. This underplayed aspect of the story hardly makes the federal government look any better – that was the point of the ‘busgate‘ story I emailed you a day or two ago. Much of the decay at FEMA happened at the contracting level, where contracts were handed out to inexperienced cronies who had no experience and did no planning. I have no doubt that the bus story is only the tip of a very large iceberg, which will also include what happened to the generators that FEMA promised and the FUBAR food and water distribution.
I have no doubt that it takes time to respond to an emergency. FEMA exists to cut the time delay and increase the scope of the response so it hardly seems unfair to point out that they failed to do that. Under James Lee Witt they almost certainly would have.
diane
never presumed while I was on a school board that I knew enough about a subject matter to write a curriculum.
Where is the state school board association?
ANd the national school board association?
Why are they not saying something?
Narvy
Dude, it’s already there. They are oh so reasonable about evolution within a species. They only have two scientific (yeah, right) points: Biological structures are too complex to have evolved from simpler structures, and New species don’t evolve from old species.
I’ve tried reading Dembski. His prose makes my head hurt.
Narvy
Don’t forget that it’s also untestable and unfalsifiable, which makes it much better than something that’s “only a theory”.
Narvy
Well, this doesn’t indicate unintelligence. It took a lot of intelligence to design the meteorological mechanics of a hurricane. The Designer may have had a perfectly intelligent reason for flattening LA and MI and etc. Violent vengeance isn’t necessarily unintelligent, it’s just violent and vengeful.
And the angel of death thing worked. How dumb is that?
Narvy
Is anyone else on this thread as amused as I am by John and DougJ trolling each other?
Narvy
Yes. It’s about Intelligent Design and Unintelligent Argument.
Narvy
Why? 6K years ago the ID put his design into production and made a lot of stuff to look really, really old.
Oh, wait. I missed all those adjectives before “human”.
John S.
Or, Earth was one of those projects – like the ones that sit in the garage – for the ID, and it just sat for a few aeons before it decided to do something with it (experiments are fun!).
Or, perhaps folks could somehow fathom that a day to ID is equivalent to several millenia for us. But really, this is all just philosophical conjecture…
So then why the hell are we talking about Science class?
Oh.
Narvy
Why don’t the ID proponents apply their logic to the origin of the universe? There are no facts, only theories, and none of them are consistent with the Bible (the one favored by evangelical Christians). I don’t understand why they’re not demanding that the six-day theory be taught in science classes.
Defense Guy
Yeah, but you’ll be singing a different tune when it’s a 4 day work week.
ANTI-HERO
so it seems to me like it is some kind of honor not to take a side and be neutral. What do you want fot being neutral, a medal? If you like bush try your damnest to defend him but take note that in doing so you are associating your self with fascism, theocracy, and corporatism. Then take not that when defaming him you associate your self with with socialism, the welfare state, and environmentalists. In George W.Bush’s U.S. there are only 2 colors, black or white. There is not place for grey, not anymore anyway.
uli
I swear I will start a campaign to bring to schools the teachings of voodoo and witchcraft. These subjects could be easily integrated into a math program, since few people understand math. If that is successful, we could add tealeaf and palm reading and tarot. The students would be well diversed – wow!!! What a great idea.
Barb
The teachings of Voudun (Voodoo) and Wicca (witchcraft) would be a good idea, but not in math. Pagans have math ability from fabulous to none, just like everybody else.
I would also like to see the teaching of Tarot, as it is rich in literary and historical concepts. Astrology, however, does take some math capabilities, so it would have to be an advanced class.
What’s all this about rats? They tend to vote Libertarian.