ID and the Law
stcynic | October 16, 2006The Detroit News had a terrific op-ed piece by Harry Cook, an Episcopal minister and rector of St. Andrew's Church, and Sherwin Wine, the founding rabbi of the Birmingham Temple, both in the Detroit area. In it, they make the argument that weakening the teaching of science with religious beliefs wrapped in a lab coat is bad for us economically as we try to compete in a high tech world:
The issue is plain: If Michigan is not to become an educational, medical and economic backwater, scientists and citizens need to join efforts:
To demand the teaching of solid science in Michigan's public school…
stcynic | October 5, 2006Denyse O'Leary has a post defending Frank Beckwith's credentials from an anonymous attacker on her blog. The anonymous critic wrote:
Beckwith is not a law professor. He does not have the requisite education to be a law professor. He has no juris doctorate. Therefore, he can only teach at the undergraduate level. And even then, he can only teach the "philosophy of law." Not law itself.
Now, I fully agree with O'Leary that this is a silly and pointless attack on Beckwith. She is absolutely right to point out that he has a Masters in Juridical Studies from Washington University-St Louis, which…
stcynic | May 15, 2006I had a couple people email me this article from the Sacramento Bee about Phillip Johnson, the founder of the ID movement. One thing that jumped out at me about it was this statement:
Johnson said his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas. In fact, he said he opposed the efforts by the "well-intentioned but foolish" school board in Dover, Pa., to require teachers to present intelligent design as a viable scientific theory.
It's very similar to an earlier quote from Johnson that I wrote about in a post over two years ago:
But Johnson argues that forcing…
stcynic | April 13, 2006The American School Board Journal has a thorough and informative article explaining what the law says about evolution, ID and public schools. This should be mandatory reading for school boards and administrators who are confronted with teachers who want to introduce creationism into the science classroom. Perhaps we should start with Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher, who wrote in a letter recently that, "Since 1970, state law specifically allows public schools to teach "creationism" in conjunction with the theory of evolution." Well okay, Ernie, but since 1987, such laws have been…
stcynic | March 30, 2006Casey Luskin has an essay up on the Caldwells' lawsuit against UC's Understanding Evolution website, a suit that was dismissed a couple weeks ago. Luskin, like Caldwell, continues to make one glaring error in reasoning:
According to a Daily Californian article, attorney Larry Caldwell believes that by sponsoring the Understanding Evolution website "the state of California is taking a position on religious issues and advocating certain religious values, which is clearly a violation" of the Establishment Clause. Perhaps the most egregious example of such a violation is the title of a page which…
stcynic | March 14, 2006Larry and Jeanne Caldwell, lawsuit filers extraordinaire, have had one dismissed. They sued over Berkeley's Understanding Evolution website, claiming that it used government money to promote religious views. Timothy Sandefur wrote a response to that suit showing why it was clearly frivolous and apparently the courts agreed. Carl Zimmer reports that the suit has been dismissed. I don't have details on the dismissal yet, but I'll post them as soon as I do.
Update: Christopher Patti, the UC counsel who argued this case, was kind enough to send me a copy of the judge's order granting the motion…
stcynic | March 8, 2006Sorry about the lack of new posts, but I'm tied up at the moment with legislative issues here in Michigan. The house bill that includes language opening the door to ID was passed by the house last week and sent to the Senate. We are awaiting today the release of a separate bill by the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, which may or may not include similar language. We don't know at this point which of the two bills will be the final bill or what the language will be, so we are preparing our strategy in the dark at the moment. In the meantime, I'm getting calls from the press and we'…
stcynic | March 1, 2006A masonry contractor in Las Vegas has filed the papers to put an anti-evolution referendum on the ballot in Nevada that would actually amend the state constitution. The act would require teachers to teach several silly anti-evolution arguments, such as the claim that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself." The very phrase "mathematically impossible" is a nonsense phrase; presumably he means that the odds of the first cell evolving are extremely high, in which case I would ask him to produce a valid probability calculation to justify the claim. Even in…
stcynic | February 25, 2006The two bills that Sen. Chris Buttars of Utah has been pushing in that state legislature, one that is anti-evolution and one that would prohibit students from forming gay-straight clubs in public schools, may both be vetoed by the governor of the state:
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said for the first time Thursday that he'd veto a pair of controversial bills aimed at banning so-called gay-straight alliances in public high schools and at controlling what students are taught about evolution.
"If they look and feel like they did in earlier incarnations, I will veto them. We'll have to see what they…
stcynic | February 16, 2006Frank Beckwith, a friendly rival on the question of intelligent design and the law, was a speaker at the Greer-Heard Forum that included many other prominent peopel on both sides of the ID question. The Baptist Press News has a report on his presentation, which a reader emailed me this morning. Beckwith, for those who may not know, is the associate director of the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor and, as such, his views deserve to be taken seriously. And if you're beginning to suspect that my praise is setting him up for criticism, you're correct; I like Frank, but I really…
stcynic | February 15, 2006As I've discussed many times, the ID movement has changed its strategy regarding the policies they are advocating to be adopted by school boards and legislatures. They know that any hint of the phrase "intelligent design" is going to be struck down by the courts, especially in light of the Dover ruling. In fact, they knew this before the Dover ruling ever came down. The big switch really began in Ohio in 2002 in an attempt to make the target too small for our side to attack successfully. Thus, you now have them advocating policies that would not teach ID explicitly.
In one place they may…
stcynic | February 15, 2006The press release says:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio today sent a letter to the Toledo Public Schools demanding that they cease allowing staff to teach intelligent design in science classrooms throughout the district.
"Intelligent design has been proven to be nothing more than a thin cover for those who wish to teach creationism, a faith-based idea of human origins endorsed by certain Christian denominations, in science classes," said ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Jeffrey Gamso. "While people have a right to teach their religious beliefs to others in churches, mosques, synagogues…
stcynic | February 14, 2006The Ohio State School Board today voted 11-4 to remove the "critical analysis of evolution" lesson plan that was advocated so forcefully by the Discovery Institute and other ID advocates in 2002. Cue screams of outrage about "dogmatic Darwinists" (or "Stalinists" or the "Darwinian priesthood" or whatever today's favorite hyperbole is) from John West and Casey Luskin in 5...4...3....2...
Update: Well that only took about 4 hours, here's the DI's response. I'm kind of disappointed, to be honest. Bullies? That's the best they can do is call us bullies? I was really hoping for Atilla the Hun or…
stcynic | February 14, 2006Ohio's State Board of Education votes today on whether to rescind its earlier approval of a lesson plan that was pushed by the Discovery Institute to teach "criticisms of evolution". The New York Times has a report on the vote, which is expected to be very close. In the wake of the Dover ruling, Ohio Governor Bob Taft asked for a legal review of the lesson plan to insure that it wasn't inviting a lawsuit the state would lose. Meanwhile, the school board began to reconsider whether the policy was a good idea.
In 2000, the Discovery Institute pushed very hard to get the Ohio board of education…
stcynic | February 8, 2006Here is the actual text of the Wisconsin bill, which has not yet been assigned a bill number so is not available on the Assembly's website:
SECTION 1. 118.018 of the statutes is created to read:
118.018 Science instruction. The school board shall ensure that any material presented as science within the school curriculum complies with all of the following:
(1) The material is testable as a scientific hypothesis and describes only natural processes.
(2) The material is consistent with any description or definition of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.
Sounds perfectly…
stcynic | February 8, 2006I really like this idea:
Creationism or intelligent design could not be taught as science in Wisconsin public schools under a first-of-its-kind proposal announced today by Madison state Rep. Terese Berceau.
Under the bill, only science capable of being tested according to scientific method could be taught as science. Faith-based theories, however, could be discussed in other contexts.
Alan Attie, a biochemistry professor at UW-Madison, said the bill puts Wisconsin on the map in the ongoing controversy over evolution and intelligent design.
"We can be the un-Kansas," Attie said in an interview…
stcynic | January 23, 2006In Utah, there is a bill in front of the state legislature to require teachers to to offer a disclaimer when teaching evolution. That disclaimer would state that A) not all scientists agree on the theory of evolution and B) the state does not endorse the theory of evolution. In Michigan, there is a bill that would encourage "critical thinking" about scientific theories, but it singles out evolution and global warming as the only two theories mentioned for such treatment. This appears to be the next phase of the ID movement's legal and political strategy.
It should be obvious to any…