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Does stopping discussion of ID in Brit schools violate the Equality Act 2010?

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A British Christian media outfit asks

Are the BHA and BCSE Campaigns in Breach of The Equality Act 2010?

The British Humanist Association is boasting that they have stopped Intelligent Design and Creationism from being discussed in free schools. They claim that the ‘Government has changed ‘Free School model funding agreement to ban creationist schools.’ If so, is the Government even in breach of its obligations under the Equality Act 2010? Of course the truth is probably more subtle than the BHA claims. But you can read about their campaign here.

The Equality Act 2010 makes some interesting demands. “The act covers nine protected characteristics, which cannot be used as a reason to treat people unfairly. Every person has one or more of the protected characteristics, so the act protects everyone against unfair treatment.” The protected characteristics include religion or belief.
“The Equality Act sets out the different ways in which it is unlawful to treat someone, such as direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation and failing to make a reasonable adjustment or a disabled person.

More. Could be. We’re no experts at UD News. But it may not matter. Discrimination against Christians is accepted worldwide and is rarely countered effectively by Christians.

For example one of us remembers giving a plenary address to Canada’s Christian writers a couple of years ago, and bringing up the explicit persecutions of Christians by “human rights” tribunals in that country. Only to discover that most Christian writers knew nothing about infamous Section13 that was used to ensnare journalists who talked openly about Islamization – and they cared less. Those unfortunates *who fell down the ‘crat hole fell down the memory hole also, among their fellow Christians.

British Christians must be made of much sterner stuff to preserve civil liberties for themselves or anyone else (assuming any still exist in a nannycrat state).

*They fought back and won (they were and are dedicated monotheists). But it was a terrible and lonely battle, and a stark lesson in the dangers of depending on the consumers of useless piety even for comprehension, let alone support.

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Comments
Ah, I've just got it: "nannycrats". Denyse, you really need to break that abbreviation habit!Elizabeth Liddle
January 18, 2012
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To defend science education, by making sure that high school students never hear that there are brilliant evolutionary biologists who think that the neo-Darwinian explanation of radical changes in biological form given in their textbook is completely inadequate?
Why would they want to do that? What incentive would they have to prevent students from hearing that a scientific theory has serious challenges?lastyearon
January 17, 2012
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To defend science education, by making sure that high school students never hear that there are brilliant evolutionary biologists who think that the neo-Darwinian explanation of radical changes in biological form given in their textbook is completely inadequate? Right. The best interpretation of "NCSE" is "National Center for Selling (Neo-Darwinian) Evolution." Or it might be "National Center for Scientists Emeritus" (since its star performers appear to no longer do productive research in their scientific fields, but stump the country doing educational politics instead). But it doesn't matter in the long run, because the ongoing permeation of all branches of modern biology by physics, engineering, computer science, and information theory approaches will soon render the mid-20th-century evolutionary theory championed by Scott and Miller a quaint survival from a bygone era. As they say in the movies, I'm outta here. T.Timaeus
January 17, 2012
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Why would the NCSE have any interest in limiting science education? Its sole purpose is to defend it.lastyearon
January 17, 2012
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Here's an article on the NCSE's website about an example of a bill introducing "critical analysis of evolution" into science class in Florida: http://ncse.com/news/2009/02/antievolution-legislation-florida-004627 And here's a nice article on of these efforts being defeated in Ohio: http://ncse.com/rncse/26/3/critical-analysis-defeated-ohio The pattern that is repeated in all instances of anti-evolution legislation or public policy: 1- It is religiously motivated (or politically motivated to appeal to a religious base of support) 2- it is worded carefully in response to previous case law barring religiously motivated anti-evolutionism from being taught in public school science class. 3 - It is opposed by the vast majority of science teachers in the state or school boardlastyearon
January 17, 2012
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I'm probably repeating myself, but I see "teaching the controversy" as part of a history of science class, rather than a science class. I took four years of science in high school. Ninth grade was an overview, with a lot of historical context. Tenth grade was Biology, eleventh chemistry, twelfth, physics. I didn't take the optional Advanced Biology. If I were in charge, I would advocate using my ninth grade class as the model for kids not planning to go on in science. Teaching science in a historical context leaves room for discussing controversies in their historical context.Petrushka
January 17, 2012
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Plutocrats? Bureaucrats? Autocrats? Alleycrats?Jon Garvey
January 17, 2012
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It is a worldwide conspiracy against The Christiansvelikovskys
January 17, 2012
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Yeah, but this is the UK. The nearest thing to your Democrats is the Labour Party and they aren't in power right now. It just seemed a weird comment, and I wondered if I'd misunderstood the abbreviation.Elizabeth Liddle
January 17, 2012
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Democratsvelikovskys
January 17, 2012
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Timaeus Thanks for your interest in my PhD. It is not in philosophy. It will be in the department of web science at Southampton University. It is a four year programme. During the first year we do a partly taught MSc and do not have to settle on our thesis subject until the end of the year. I have whittled it down to four choices none of which are remotely connected to ID.markf
January 17, 2012
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Can anyone help?Elizabeth Liddle
January 17, 2012
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markf (6.3.1.1.2): I understand your point. Obviously if by "natural" explanation of origins you mean one in which God is not *in any way* involved, then of course, Denton's explanation is not entirely "natural." But remember how this discussion began. I was correcting a statement quoted from a Wikipedia article which said that Behe's work implied that "natural" mechanisms could not drive evolution. But of course Behe never said or implied that. He said that Darwinian mechanisms alone could not drive it, but that did not imply that he thought that no purely natural system could. I've now explained what I meant by that, with the example of Denton. Behe is fully aware of the logical possibility that every single evolutionary change might take place without any divine intervention, entirely in terms of the natural causes explicated by science. But to ask what put nature into the shape where it had the power, unaided by divine intervention, to produce life and man, then of course you have to explain who put the intelligent planning in there, and so a Mind of some kind is necessary to get nature going. But anyone reading the Wikipedia article would infer that Behe was implying, not the need for a Creator of nature alone, but *also* the need for periodic interventions or miracles. (Remember, this is the same Wikipedia which calls Behe and all ID proponents creationists, a term implying that God creates species through a series of special interventions.) Interventions or miracles are not something that Behe has ever explicitly called for or implied. A final point: in Denton the existence of God is not assumed, but inferred from the facts of nature, as he carefully sets them forth in his book. There is no religious commitment required to follow Denton's argument. Of course, for those who have made up their minds in advance that there is not, cannot be, or must not be, any kind of God [read: 95% of the specialists in evolutionary biology, and probably 90%, certainly at least 75%, of biologists overall], Denton's argument will be unacceptable. But to start with that kind of a priori is the most unphilosophical attitude imaginable. I assume that at age 60, any Ph.D. program you start will be for delight, and not for the sake of a job. So if I may ask, what will the Ph.D. be in? You say it's in an unrelated field, and you mentioned having done an undergrad degree in philosophy. May I infer that the Ph.D. will also be philosophy? But then, philosophy is not really an unrelated field to questions of intelligent design, since philosophy of biology deals with that question all the time. So have you suddenly taken up an interest in the history of the Incas or the sociology of deviance? T.Timaeus
January 17, 2012
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Timeaus No I have not read Denton. There are a lot of books about ID and it is not practical to read them all - especially as I am just starting a PhD (at the age of 60) in an unrelated subject. I find it strange to claim that the design is done by a God who is the cosmic intellect who assigned the universal constants, arranged the fundamental particles so that there would be the right chemical elements, etc. And then say this is a natural explanation. But I guess it all turns on what you mean by "natural" and I don't plan to get into that semantic debate again.markf
January 17, 2012
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markf: Thanks for your question. From the sounds of it, unless you are being coy, you have not read Denton's book, *Nature's Destiny*. I know that you have said you are "up" on intelligent design, but I don't consider anyone to be up on the subject until they have read ND from cover to cover. It represents a major strand of thought within intelligent design. (If you insist on using "ID" with capitals only for the Discovery people, then use lowercase "id" for Denton, but he is still a design theorist.) So I urge you to read this book. Who does Denton think is doing the designing? Well, he uses the word "God," with the understanding that he is not specifying the God of any particular religious tradition, but a sort of generic Creator -- so his view is compatible with many different religions, including a rather colorless Deism. But Denton has no interest in promoting religion as such. God is the cosmic intellect who assigned the universal constants, arranged the fundamental particles so that there would be the right chemical elements, etc. How does God design? Design is a mental act, not a physical act, so it would take place internally, within God. There wouldn't be a physical or scientific explanation for how God can think. I believe that you mean, probably, not how does God design, but how does God actualize his design? Well, he actualizes it by creating the compressed matter which will undergo the Big Bang, and all the associated laws and constants. That's God's only physical act. After that, all happens naturalistically, with no interventions or miracles of any kind. But when things get to the stage of organic evolution, the driving mechanism is no longer Darwinian, but frankly teleological. The first genomes are geared to, in the fulness of time, produce man. If you want to know how he argues all this, you will have to read the book. From what I have said, you will perceive that Denton, like Behe, accepts macroevolution. He also agrees with Behe in severely limiting the creative role of Darwinian mechanisms. (If anything, he limits them more than Behe.) The main difference between them is that Behe does not rule out the possibility of evolution's being supplemented by interventions, whereas Denton does. Denton prefers a wholly naturalistic model. But even Behe allows for the possibility of a wholly naturalistic model, so the two are not at loggerheads. Denton is hated by most evolutionary biologists for his earlier book, which bashed Darwinism and appeared (but only appeared) to endorse direct creationism. They hate his second book less, because it is evolutionary and naturalistic, but they still don't trust him, and of course, they can't abide teleology, design, and most of all, God, even a colorless Deist God who makes no moral demands on them. But that's their private hangup. Denton makes a very strong case for design, not limited to specific cases like the flagellum, but pervasive throughout nature at all levels, from the physical through the chemical and the geological and then the biological and finally the psychological -- the brain and intelligence of man. And the book is utterly free of all culture war material, containing no complaints about the moral depravity of Darwinism or blaming Darwin for Hitler or calling for the moral renewal of society against materialism or anything of the sort. It's a book about science, engineering, design, and a version of the anthropic principle, written by a man with both a Ph.D. in biochemistry and an M.D., and years of experience in research in the genetics of cancer. It's wonderfully broad and rich and one would have to have lost all sense of the wonder of nature not to find its cosmic scope and its detailed discussions fascinating and intriguing. In some ways I think it is the best id book ever written. Have a look at it. T.Timaeus
January 17, 2012
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I am intrigued by this natural/designed hypothesis. Who does Denton think is doing the designing? And how?markf
January 16, 2012
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Elizabeth: I followed these stories as they came out. Generally the story would first come to my attention on the Discovery site, after which I would click to the original news stories, opinion columns, or school board web sites. I cannot now remember all the states that were involved, or all the dates. It would take me just as long as it would take you to look them up. I would suggest starting on the Discovery web site and looking up states such as Kansas, Texas, and Louisiana for starters. That would probably link you up to articles on other states, eventually. And if you don't trust Discovery's account of the conflicts, you can always check the same references on the NCSE web site. Whether I have phrased the NCSE's position in exactly the words that the NCSE would like, I cannot say, but I have not knowingly misrepresented their position. I think you will find that when any local school board or state contemplated or proposed or enacted any policy change regarding evolution education or science education in general, the NCSE was there, and opposed not only to creationism (which was eventually banned by court action) but also to ID (not merely the promoting of it, but even simply explaining to students what it was), and also to language suggesting that evolutionary theory (often grouped with other controversial theories such as AGW, HIV-AIDS claims, etc.) should be taught critically. Of course, always the NCSE used the excuse that teaching evolution critically was a front for creationism (and for ID which Eugenie Scott regularly and knowingly misnames as creationism), but in some cases the proposed policy deliberately ruled out both creationism and ID as classroom subjects, meaning that "critical evaluation" of evolution theory would be limited to the sorts of criticism levelled by non-ID scientists, and even then the NCSE opposed the policy. And this was all the more absurd as the NCSE repeatedly claimed that there were no valid scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory; what then, was the worry? The teacher would just say: "Now we come to scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory. There are none. So let's move on to the next chapter." What would Eugenie be afraid of? She must have been afraid that some teacher would mention Margulis's critique of random mutations, or Gould's criticism of gradualism, or the mathematical critics of the Wistar Conference, or the like. But why would she want the students not to know about those criticisms? Was she afraid they would "misunderstand" them? That's pretty condescending toward both students and teachers involved, I'd say, and hardly the attitude of a real educator. As to your question about Darwinism vs. evolutionary theory generally, I cannot answer that in a general way. You would have to consult each state's or school board's proposals to see what language they used. Yes, the debate does often get bogged down in language, but no one has tried harder to set forth clear definitions and focus the argument on those clear definitions than the ID people. It is people like the NCSE leaders who confuse the language, by using phrases like "ID creationism" which make it impossible for people to correctly understand ID, or by saying "there is no debate over evolution among scientists" without clarifying whether they are talking about common descent or mechanisms. ID people have done a great public service by forcing the clarification of much of the language of the debate, but still the Darwinians diehards continue to misuse it. You will see above, for example, that a champion of the educational status quo (the same person who misused the term "vitalism") calls me a "theocrat" without knowing me or any of my personal views or even if I am a Christian, and without even defining "theocrat." Of course I am not a "theocrat" but a classic liberal on questions of religion and the state, but if the word keeps getting repeated in connection with me, people will start believing it, just as they start to believe "intelligent design creationism" when the NCSE and Wikipedia keep repeating over and over that intelligent design is creationism. All demagogues know that with repetition, lies and distortions can slowly become regarded as truths. Blurring language pays political dividends, and that is why culture warriors do it. I'll now exit this thread. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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lastyearon: I'm sorry that you did not accept my apology above, which was offered sincerely. Your accusation is unjust. I would not defend Christianity or any other philosophy or religion with a sword. I'm in favor of complete freedom of speech (barring obvious reasonable exceptions like not shouting fire in a crowded theater). And most emphatically I'm in favor of freedom of speech at the university, which is why I'm opposed to campus speech codes, of whatever contents and however well motivated. In the ID/Darwinist debates, it is the Darwinists who want to shut down on free speech, not the ID people. Careers have been destroyed because people have defied the Darwinian consensus; articles accepted for journals after passing peer-review have been pulled out before publication; the NCSE wants it to be illegal to mention the existence of ID in a science classroom; etc. Many of these cases are well-publicized; others, which constitute the largest part of the iceberg, are known to the ID community. Indeed, the closest thing I have seen in modern academia to "late 15th century Spain" is the attack on Behe's *Edge of Evolution*, which in tone and contents was more like a heresy trial than a scientific dispute. The vindictiveness against Behe, a vindictiveness which drove even Christian professors at Christian colleges to make vile accusations against Behe's character, has no historical parallel outside of Communist or Christian trials of doctrinal orthodoxy. And for those grad students and young untenured scholars who have agreed with Behe, the academic penalty has often been, as in the case of the Inquisition and the Communist trials, death -- that is, career death. So I would ask you not to lecture me on the dangers of repressing dissident speech. You have not paid the enormous economic and personal cost of employing free speech, as ID proponents have. You don't have the slightest idea what it really means to stand before authorities who can take away your livelihood and destroy your reputation merely because they don't like what you think. When you have had such experiences, then come back and talk to me about Inquisitorial Spain. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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Can you cite, specifically, where (or an example of where) the NCSE has "opposed the introduction of scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution into the classroom"? And do you mean "criticism of neo-Darwinism", which is a term sometimes used to describe a specific version of evolutionary theory, or do you mean "criticism of any aspect of current evolutionary theory", or something else? Because I think this whole debate regularly becomes totally bogged down by lack of clarity as to what is meant by "Darwinian evolution" or "evolutionary theory" or "Darwinism".Elizabeth Liddle
January 16, 2012
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It's theocrats like yourself that make it all the more important to defend science education.lastyearon
January 16, 2012
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markf: By Darwinian processes Behe generally means random mutation plus natural selection (the classic neo-Darwinian formulation). There is generally no ambiguity about that in his writings. Yes, he infers design, but he never says that the design has to be delivered via non-natural causes. For example, Michael Denton offers a model in which the design is delivered entirely through natural causes, and Behe gave Denton's second book a strong endorsement. The language of the Wikipedia article might well lead the reader to assume that Behe demands supernatural interventions, which he definitely does not. There is no requirement in ID of a violation of the causal nexus. What there is, is an insistence that, in addition to all normal physical causes, there are informational causes that can only be introduced by intelligence. Many other ID proponents, when expressing their personal views, seem to incline to the opinion that at least some intervention would be necessary in order for intelligence to guide evolution; hence, non-natural causes would have to intrude from time to time. But that is not a requirement of ID *per se*, and it is not a requirement set forth by Behe. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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Ugh...The ugly side of Christianity. Timeaus, your words are intended to cause harm. You'd gleefully defend Christ from heresy with the sword if you could. I know a time and a place you'd love: Late 15th Century Spain.lastyearon
January 16, 2012
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Timaeus
Just for the record, Behe never says anywhere that things could not have evolved naturally. He says that it is highly unlikely that they could have evolved via Darwinian processes alone.
He goes a bit further than that. He says that it is highly unlikely that they could have evolved via a combination of Darwinian processes (whatever that is) plus Margulis plus complexity theory therefore they were designed. (Darwin's Black Box ch 9). I don't want to get into a debate about what is natural but I would have thought that designed pretty much entails non-natural on most accounts of non-natural.markf
January 16, 2012
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lastyearon: Without being aware of champignon's comment below, I had already decided that I had been too violent in my language to you. I apologize for dismissing you so sweepingly in my last paragraph. I was not trying to demolish you as a person, but simply to express my strong objections to your approach, and I went overboard. If I may now put my objections to you in a more civil form, I would say that I don't think you are being responsible to comment on ID without having carefully read what ID authors have to say, and I don't think you have done that, and I therefore don't feel any obligation to reply further to you until you have shown by the insightfulness of your analysis of ID literature that you have done the necessary reading required to debate these issues. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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“Critical analysis” is, or should be, fundamental to science teaching. It underlies the entire methodology of science, that of hypothesis testing.
Of course there's no reason to enact a policy singling out evolution as a science that teachers need to critically analyze. Unless the real motive is to introduce religion masquerading as science into science class. Critical Analysis® of Evolution is a Discovery Institute campaign to promote religious anti-evolutionism as science. It's a relabeling of the same stuff that Creationism is made of, worded carefully to appear to be scientifically motivated. And that violates the U.S. Constitution.lastyearon
January 16, 2012
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Timaeus, Impulse control problems?champignon
January 16, 2012
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Elizabeth (3.1.3.1.3): You are right that it should not be controversial. Yet the NCSE has steadily opposed the introduction of scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution into the school curriculum. In fact, it has usually maintained that there are no scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution, only religiously-motivated criticisms. But this is simply false. There have been legitimate scientific criticisms of Darwinian ideas since 1859, and the scientific criticism of classic neo-Darwinism (which is the position of Miller and Scott, the two leading lights in the NCSE) has been mounting to a crescendo since the 1966 Wistar Conference. Of course, not all of these objections are suitable for inclusion in ninth-grade biology, but to leave ninth-grade biology students with the impression that no qualified scientist has ever questioned the capacity of Darwinian mechanisms, and that only religious nuts have ever doubted it, is to engage in propaganda, not education. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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lasyyearon quoting wikipedia:
From Wikipedia: Behe’s Irreducible Complexity, as he defines it, is a system “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”. These examples are said to demonstrate that modern biological forms could not have evolved naturally.
That is wrong. The last sentence should read: These examples are said to demonstrate that modern biological forms could not have evolved via accumulations of random mutations. An neither Nick Matzke nor Ken Miller has demonstrated that accumulations of random mutations can a construct new, useful multi-protein machine.Joe
January 16, 2012
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The problem is the theory of evolution cannot withstand critical analysis as it does not produce any hypotheses to test. For example how can we test the premise that the bacterial flagellum evolved via accumulations of random mutations? It cannot be done.Joe
January 16, 2012
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lastyearon (3.1.3.1.2): Yep, I'm right about your not having read Behe. Instead of citing Behe to explain his views, you cite the Wikipedia article on him. If you had read him, you wouldn't need to. And, aside from the fact that every single article on Wikipedia concerning Intelligent Design is a pile of fermented horse manure, filled with lies and distortions because written by violent anti-ID partisans (who reverse every single correction to their lies and distortions), if you had even the slightest scholarly training you would know that it is completely impermissible in academic debate to rely on secondary sources for an author whose primary sources are available. I thus infer what I had already inferred, i.e., that you have no serious academic training of any kind, or, if you do, it is in something technical like computer programming or economics, not something involving the interpretation of books and ideas. Just for the record, Behe never says anywhere that things could not have evolved naturally. He says that it is highly unlikely that they could have evolved via Darwinian processes alone. If you can't grasp the difference between those two statements, you don't have enough background in either science or philosophy to be qualified to even enter these debates, and you should remain silent until you have more understanding. The rest of your comments are a wild rant about Dover and ID. The fact that you cite the very partisan Nick Matzke as if his opinions are authoritative shows that you are't interested in taking a wide view, but only in toeing the anti-ID party line. You might as well ask Hitler for an objective opinion about Communism. And Behe has responded to Ken Miller's argument scores of times, as you would know if you had taken the slightest effort to do any research before mouthing off. His refutations have been clear and have destroyed Miller's criticism, which was always based on a misunderstanding of what Behe was arguing. If you are really interested in the truth, and not simply in maintaining what you already believe, you will hunt down Behe's rebuttals, one of which you can find in the Ruse/Dembski collection, though I suspect that you are of the Internet generation that does not read books but only web sites. You obviously made up your mind long ago about ID (probably within five minutes of first hearing about it), and, since you refuse to read any books written by ID proponents (which I can safely infer, since your idea of what ID teaches is completely wrong), you have rendered yourself immune to correction. But willful ignorance is still ignorance. Regarding Louisiana or any other state: critical analysis of all scientific theories is good science policy; it makes no difference at all who proposes a policy, if the policy is a good one. You are motive-mongering. As I indicated to markf, if one were to reverse all policies that originated in Christian motivations, we would have to go back to legalizing slavery. The question is what is the best way for science to be taught. The NCSE wants it to be taught within a very narrow understanding of science, an understanding that cannot withstand searching historical criticism, as Steve Fuller has shown. And the NCSE leaders are all people who have a personal academic stake in neo-Darwinism, having tied their reputations to its truth. They are indignant at the thought that the doctrine they imbibed as undergrads and have defended all their adult lives should be questioned. But science moves on. The new path of evolutionary theory lies with the Shapiros and the Newmans, and the Scotts and Millers will not even be footnotes in future histories of evolutionary theory. As for your note 5.1.1, I'm intimately familiar with the Dover Trial and the documents and arguments advanced there. Your trying to teach me about the Lemon test is like a freshman calculus student trying to teach Einstein math. Save your schoolmasterish lectures for someone who doesn't have a Ph.D. and hasn't studied the Dover material far more deeply than you have. Goodbye, lastyearon. I can honestly say that you are one of the most intellectually insignificant people I've had the pleasure (?) of knowing on the internet. You make Petrushka and Nakashima look like careful scholars, and that takes some doing. T.Timaeus
January 16, 2012
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