If the schools teach “secularism” as well as they teach math, what do the True Believers worry about, anyway?

Isn’t it ironic that we base our entire science of evolution on the teachings of a man who starved himself and his wife to death, choosing to only eat “the food of the gods� sugar cane, believing that it held all of the nutrition necessary to sustain life.

Wow, I didn’t know that!  Who was this man and why have I never heard of him, Rev?  Every day and every way, I am learning more about the evilutionists and their Fallen Friends…

Some folks are just plainly confused…

The biggest deception of all is that most of you don’t think secularism is a religion.  Guess what, the Supreme Court says it is.

Actually the Supreme Court ruled that “Secular Humanism” was officially a religion for tax purposes, but “Secularism” is not the synonymous with “Secular Humanism.”

As Sadie points out in her reply you might want to be sure you understand the definition of the words you’re using.

The dear reverend just doesn’t get it. Secularism is a view or position while religion is a complex “belief system” founded on spiritual priniciples that are unprovable. This is the danger in this whole argument. In order to refute illogical positions logic must entertain lunacy and thereby grant the credence that religion believes equals legitimacy. Just because a sane person speaks to a “crazy"(loosely used)person does not make the crazy person sane. It can make the sane person crazy through.

Judge John E. Jones, III, has ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District.

“ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause and to preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.”
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“the citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

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It’s nice to see that common sense has scored a victory in Dover.

Woot! Truth scores another goal!  About time!

There was a good article about the trial in the Dec.5 New Yorker, which made the outcome seem inevitable.  It’s unfortunately not available online, but there’s an interesting interview with its author, Margaret Talbot, here.  A sample:

(Q)Some of the board members who voted in favor of mandating the teaching of intelligent design in Dover admitted to having no definition of what, exactly, it is. Did you get a sense of why they voted the way they did? Did they view intelligent design merely as a lesson in critical thinking or did they believe in it as a theory?

(A)I would say there was a certain amount of, to put it delicately, disingenuousness in how they presented these arguments in court. Several of the board members said they thought they were promoting good pedagogy, critical thinking, the chance to learn about another theory, and so on. But at the board meetings, one of the members had said, for example, “Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for Him?� and “This country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such.�

Some of the better quotes from the Judge’s decision:

“Accordingly, the one textbook to which the Dover ID Policy directs students [of Pandas and People] contains outdated concepts and badly flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case.”

“As we will discuss in more detail below, the inescapable truth is that both Bonsell and Buckingham lied at their January 3, 2005 depositions about their knowledge of the source of the donation for Pandas, which likely contributed to Plaintiffs’ election not to seek a temporary restraining order at that time based upon a conflicting and incomplete factual record. This mendacity was a clear and deliberate attempt to hide the source of the donations by the Board President and the Chair of the Curriculum Committee to further ensure that Dover students received a creationist alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. We are accordingly presented with further compelling evidence that Bonsell and Buckingham sought to conceal the blatantly religious purpose behind the ID Policy.”

“Moreover, Board members and teachers opposing the curriculum change and its implementation have been confronted directly. First, Casey Brown testified that following her opposition to the curriculum change on October 18, 2004, Buckingham called her an atheist and Bonsell told her that she would go to hell.”

“The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

I read the lead stories on the NY Times, CNN, and FoxNews websites.  I am amazed how apologetic and supportive the FoxNews writer is towards ID and its advocates.  The writer argues that support for ID is growing, but doesn’t mention that support is not growing within the scientific community.  In fact, the judge clearly slaps down the idea that ID is a scientific theory, and he does so with the proponents’ words.  A well thought out, well written decision on the whole…

Read the decision in the case and you’ll find out that many of the Dover School Board members didn’t even know what the acronym ID stood for, much less what the basic idea behind ID was, and yet they voted to support it.  They said were pressured by two board members who called them unpatriotic and unchristian when they questioned putting ID in the curriculum.  Disgusting…

Best news I’ve had all week.

For a less apologetic and supportive view of ID, and some well-earned gloating about the trial, also check out Pharyngula, where PZ Myers and his legions of death-ray armed squids are (predictably) gleeful.

Zilch, zilch… Don’t pay attention to these secularist websites. The Discovery Institute explained it all - it’s an activist jugde whodunnit.

Elwed- that wily Judge Jones anticipated just such a whodunnit, and penned in his ruling:

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Kudos to Judge Jones.

I remember reading something about a judge doing something like this yesterday, I’m not sure if it was this specific case or something else- I know it was in Penn.

In whatever case who wants to bet we’ll be hearing about “activist judges” soon…

It was, indeed, this very case. We’ve been discussing it further in a couple of other threads which you’ll find listed in the side bar.

And the cries of “activist judges” is already coming from the IDiots at the Discovery Institute.

“The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won’t work,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading think tank researching the scientific theory known as intelligent design. “He has conflated Discovery Institutes’s position with that of the Dover school board, and he totally misrepresents intelligent design and the motivations of the scientists who research it.”

No big surprise there in either the condemnation as it being the work of an activist judge or in the fact that they’re quickly trying to put some distance between themselves and the former members of the Dover school board that they at one time were quite supportive of.

Remember, it’s only an activist judge if the other side wins.

Uh I hate it for ya. But I can prove for a fact that the bible has a scientific philosphy in it’s scritpure. It starts with the Budded staff of Arron, the 3 tree’s of Genesis and the keys to death and hell. The budded staff of Arron is the crystal base structure of a hexagram after the zero point is broke and the 4 outer sphers are pulled into place by the magnetic flux of the center sphere. When this happens you get what is known as the Torus Knot 3. The staff or axis of the torus knot 3 is then visualized into the concept of having the crystal base structure and it’s sphere’s around the staff itself.
And bet your ass i can go much further with it than you’ll ever wish I could.

The contention was not that the Bible has no scientific principles(not philosophies)in it. The contention was that Christianity, religion, etc. are based upon spritual positions/beliefs/tenets of faith that are unprovable and therefore not scientific. An attempt to show that Aarons staff, Numbers 17, is an example of hexagram geometry and thereby scientific in nature is presumptuos as best. And how you draw this conclusion from an OT scripture is laughable. Once again, missing the point. The fact that people in scripture walked from one place to another implies the basic concept of gravity; however, this does not make the scripture science or even scientific in nature.
What’s even funnier about the position most xian religionists take, is that the positions aren’t even their own, nor do they understand the roots of the stories. Their theft of the folklore of the Jewish peoples(Palestinian, Israeli, Bedhouin, and other desert nomadic tribes) and other cultures have many corrolaries that can be traced and are drawn from other cultures; Greek, Babylonian, Roman, etc. Many of the ceremonial and written beliefs are compromises by cultural factions; winners versus losers, in order to appease the masses. This is fact accounted for and documented through history by the cultures that created the xian religions(you can’t even agree amongst yourselves what’s(right/wrong/true). Even your god is as conflicted as you; do I love them or do I hate them, do I kill or do I command killing to be wrong. Most don’t even bother to research the books available; Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagent,the Apocrypha, etc. What is sad to see is the intollerance and ignorance of Dark Ages and crusades is alive and well in many xians. Upward goes the cry “Will you confess your sins? If not then you will die. Even if you do, you will die just not as horribly."Why does logic have to die? Shouldn’t it make sense if you belive in it?

Raven, you can’t even spell “scientific philosophy” properly let alone prove there’s any of it in the Bible. Take a remedial English class first and then come back and explain how scientific the Bible happens to be.

Raven Kreetin - What the fuck does a Torus Knot have to do with the bible?  Using your mentality we could apply any number of geometric principles to all writings and declare them sacred.

I’m afraid you’re confusing scientific philosophy and/or principle for symbolism.  Besides, everyone knows Aaron’s staff budded because he was horny.

Aaron’s staff ... Torus Knot… blah blah… whoopdie do!
The Buddhist Pali canon contains the full blueprint for a working Type 40 TARDIS! Try to top that!

Uh I hate it for ya

Good thing! We were so worried about how hard of a task “hating it” would be.

And bet your ass i can go much further with it than you’ll ever wish I could.

Thanks, Raven, you already have.
Btw, did you know that a torus is a doughnut?  This proves that Homer Simpson is God.

This proves that Homer Simpson is God.

Oh, well then we’re really fucked!...Still, Mr. Plow beats the True Believer rendition of God any time of day.

I would think that scientific philosophy comes in when you can take a geometric working formation that represents a creation theory and place into a philosphical statement, as the bible does on more than one instance.
And after the Vesica Piscis flowers out to the crystal base structure and the zero point is broke to the level that it causes a flux in the center sphere and pulls the 4 outer sphers of the base structure of a hexagram into place the Torus Knot 3 is created.
So whenever you pricks can understand a little about creationism and the fact that as soon as creation takes place life evolves to the strongest reflection of itself as it can, which is mankind, you might not have the broomstick up your asses so far.
And as you said the torus is a doughnut, but more importantly it’s the dimple effect. When the sphere’s of the Metatron come together as the base structure is the center core of the Metatron. This is kinda like the Big Bang Theory.
And it’s all over the bible. Oh btw Jesus was Adam. heehee. 1st corinthian 15 45-47. Your GOD’s the Devils kid. hahaha. Mammon.

How about a poll. RK is

[ ] a troll
[ ] sincere
[ ] other (please explain)