GOOD job to our friends at AU!
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today announced that it has settled a lawsuit over a California school district?s decision to teach a course promoting creationism.Americans United, with assistance from the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP, filed suit against the El Tejon Unified School Districtlast week, seeking to end a course called ?Philosophy of Design? that promoted creationist ideas, including ?intelligent design.? The course, taught at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec by special education teacher and soccer coach Sharon Lemburg, relied heavily on videos produced by fundamentalist Christian groups that espouse creationism.Under the terms of the settlement, the course will terminate one week early. The district?s board of trustees has also agreed to language stating, ?No school over which the School District has authority, including the High School, shall offer, presently or in the future, the course entitled ?Philosophy of Design? or ?Philosophy of Intelligent Design? or any other course that promotes or endorses creationism, creation science, or intelligent design.?
No, we do not view creationist videos, it was a video on the evolutionary theory but there was a random part where this old man was saying “There is no evidence to suggest that the Earth is more than 6000 years old.” Also, Intelligent Design is not mentioned in our books produced by the National Geographic Society (yay) so that is always a plus. Currently teachers are not required to mention Intelligent Design, but our “Intelligent” Governor, approves of forcing teachers to teach it. I’m not sure if he approves banning evolution teaching entirely. Recently I have been looking at the Texas Education Code and here is the official site http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/ed.toc.htm
It would be a great help if someone could find something that says that theories with no scientific basis that are just an illegal teaching agenda in a lab coat is against the code. I am in Texas if you haven’t figured that out already. Also here is a hilarious site supporting creationism
http://www.parentcompany.com/csrc/basics.htm
One part I’m interested in is the “Since the beginning all men have been without excuse if they have not acknowledged the Creator God, for the evidence is all around them in the created world (Romans 1:19-20). And modern science has revealed a vast web of evidence which supports the biblical record of creation.” What is the supposed ‘web of evidence’ is what I am wondering.
-J?r?me
J?r?me:
By random, I’m guessing there was nothing in the credits, no subtitle, no intro?
Sounds a tad subliminal to me, at least.
Yes there was nothing of the sort. It may have been subliminal
-J?r?me
An excellent post about evolution & creationism:
post 112 on this thread in a christian blog:
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/022130.html
Then A Miracle Occurs…
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol24/620_then_a_miracle_occurs_12_30_1899.asp
Then A Miracle Occurs…
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/archives/2004/04-05-10.html
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/110518.html
Thus it is surpassingly strange that half of Americans recently polled (2004) not only do not believe in evolution by natural selection but do not believe in evolution at all. Americans are certainly capable of belief, and with rocklike conviction if it originates in religious dogma. In evidence is the 60 percent that accept the prophecies of the Book of Revelation as truth, and yet in more evidence is the weight that faith-based positions hold in political life. Most of the religious Right opposes the teaching of evolution in public schools, either by an outright ban on the subject or, at the least, by insisting that it be treated as ?only a theory? rather than a ?fact.?
Yet biologists, particularly those statured by the peer review and publication of substantial personal research on the subject in leading journals of science, are unanimous in concluding that evolution is a fact. The evidence they and thousands of others have adduced over 150 years falls together in intricate and interlocking detail. The multitudinous examples range from the small changes in DNA sequences observed as they occur in real time to finely graded sequences within larger evolutionary changes in the fossil record. Further, on the basis of comparably firm evidence, natural selection grows ever stronger as the prevailing explanation of evolution.