LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY exotic_princess)

Article here, from USAToday

Exerpt:

The civil rights lawsuit filed by Calvary Chapel alleges that the 10-campus University of California is trampling the freedom of "a religious school to be religious." UC rejected the content of courses such as "Christianity's Influence in American History" and "Christianity and Morality in American Literature."

In court documents, UC says the free-speech clause of the First Amendment gives it the right to set admission standards. "What we're looking for is this: Is the course academic in nature, or is it there to promote a specific religious lifestyle?" UC spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina says.

The university rejected some class credits because Calvary Chapel relies on textbooks from leading Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book. A biology book from Bob Jones University presents creationism and intelligent design alongside evolution. The introduction says, "The people who have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second."

UC says such books would be acceptable as supplementary reading but not as the main textbook.


Your thoughts?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Scientists have figured out how bees fly, putting another nail into the coffin of Intelligent Design.

Proponents of intelligent design, which holds that a supreme being rather than evolution is responsible for life's complexities, have long criticized science for not being able to explain some natural phenomena, such as how bees fly.

Now scientists have put this perplexing mystery to rest.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Apparently, Texas is slated to be an ID battleground in the near future, if Governor Perry has his way.

( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
January 11, 2006
From The New York Times

A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.

The course at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, which serves a rural area north of Los Angeles, was proposed by a special education teacher last month and approved by the board of trustees in an emergency meeting on New Year's Day. The 11 parents are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the course, which is being held during the session that ends on Feb. 3. ( More sneaky Xian bullshit )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

From AlterNet

On a recent Tuesday evening, Moshe Tendler, an influential Orthodox rabbi and Yeshiva University biology professor, ambled onto the stage at Kovens Conference Center in North Miami. A stately figure with a wispy white beard and heavy glasses, he surveyed the 300-strong crowd of scientists and intellectuals -- most clad in yarmulkes and dark suits with tallith tassels dangling about their waists -- and urged them to spread the word that Darwin was wrong. "It is our task to inform the world [about intelligent design]," he implored. "Or the child growing up will grow up with unintelligent design Unintelligent design is our ignorance, our stupidity."

This may seem an unlikely message from a prominent Jewish biologist. After all, intelligent design theory -- which holds that life is too complex to be a fluke of evolution -- has been crafted primarily by evangelical Christians and spurned by most scientists. ( This is like a virus..I suppose the Muslims are next )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

She sure sounds like a Dominionist to me...

http://www.ldnews.com/fastsearchresults/ci_3334340

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dark_rekhet)

As a Cincinnati native, I can honestly say that this disappointing. I view museums as a place to learn about the truth, or artistic expression. Now almost right in my own backyard we are having a "Creation Museum" being built. It will be interesting to see how many schools end up taking day trips to this museum instead of our natural history museum.

answersingenesis.org/museum/

It just baffles me that these people can say that the earth is only 6,000 years old, be able to proclaim it as the truth, and have so many people believe it when the overwhelming majority of experts say otherwise.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lihan161051)

Stumbled across some rather strange sites on the sidebar to Heavens Above, which I tend to browse now and then to look up useful satellite stuff. One of them looks pretty suspiciously like what we may get to look forward to in terms of scientific revisionism, the other just makes me wonder what they're up to.

http://cosmicfingerprints.com/

Seems to be trying to prove more or less a different flavor of "intelligent design", or at least disprove non-supernatural theories of the origin of the universe. Very heavy religious overtones, and a peculiarly cumbersome design style that seems to want to *force* the reader to jump through lots of hoops to cut to the chase, some topics requiring downloading audio and playing it back, others requiring various other tedious interactions with the site to dig stuff out of it. Overall, reads about like the self-published book on "squaring the circle" from the 1900's I found in a library one time that was printed in all caps in 72 point type, all hundred-odd pages of it.

http://thesurfaceofthesun.com/

May actually be scientifically legitimate, but after slogging through the first site, the aggressively defensive attitude of the author threw up some red flags.

Both were kind of interesting, seems like if "intelligent design" ever gets a foothold we may have to watch out for a lot of copycats in other fields of science ..

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY reannon)

A fascinating and extremely detailed article, going into all aspects of the ID ruling and where classroom teachers can go from here.

"The real danger is not that teachers will start teaching creationism," says geologist Warren Allmon, the director of the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, N.Y., which features an exhibit on evolution seen by thousands of school kids every year. "It's that they will stop, or reduce, the teaching of evolution. Many now just assign [students to voluntarily read] the chapters on evolution and don't cover it in class, in order to avoid controversy."

Later in the article, the writer visits a three-part lecture series where students would hear from an evolutionary biologist, a young-earth creationist and an advocate of intelligent design. Interesting that of the three speakers, the biologist was the least interesting and least effective in describing the viewpoint. It leads to an interesting question in this issue: are more and more people falling for intelligent design because evolutionists simply aren't selling it as well?

There's a good bit in the article about that, how the Seattle-based Discovery Institute that essentially kick-started intelligent design managed to take what was considered a fringe pseudoscientific religious theory and make it front-page news in 10 years of masterfun spin and public relations. Meanwhile, evolutionists have often declined to even debate the issue, claiming that to debate it gives ID legitimacy. That might be so, but relegating the stage to ID means they win by default, as the only voices being heard are theirs.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/21/teachers/

(Salon will require you to watch a brief ad before reading it. It's worth it.)

Per breaking news on CNN that is just now hitting the wires, a federal judge has now ruled that "intelligent design"--aka barely-disguised "Young earth" creationism--cannot legally be taught in the Dover school system in Pennsylvania:

"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said.

Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY njtech)

Doonsbury weighs in on ID vs evolution

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89) I actually saw this bumper sticker on my way to work at the Naval Base and no one said a thing.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's a hilarious riposte to all the Intelligent Design stuff:

Inscrutible Malignity: The Controversy

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/11/creationism.professor.ap/index.html

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's an interesting mainstream take on the whole ID thing:

Fantasy Island
The dwindling refuges of creationism.
By William Saletan
Posted Friday, Dec. 9, 2005, at 8:05 AM ET

KEY WEST, Fla., Dec. 6—Sunday morning, as snow approaches Washington, I throw a swimsuit in my travel bag and fly off to Key West. Twice a year, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Ethics and Public Policy Center bring journalists to this hedonistic outpost to talk about faith and values. It's an odd trip from cold to hot, from secular to pious to prurient. Everything feels upside down. Maybe that's the point.

Our first topic is creationism. In Washington, reporters look at the polls—42 percent of Americans think life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time—and fret that fundamentalists are running the country. But in Key West, historian Ed Larson invites us to look at it the other way. Darwin's Origin of Species, flanked by Biblical criticism, positivism, Marxism, and Freudianism, blew traditional beliefs and mores off their hinges. Conservatives and some progressives saw an oncoming dark age of materialism, relativism, and eugenics. Radical ideologues like H.L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow scorned faith. Denominational universities turned modern. After the Scopes trial, the media abandoned churches. E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and other anti-prophets have declared war on faith in the name of science. Neuroscientists are trying to reduce consciousness and religious belief to biology.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

"Can't you understand that if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it, and soon you may ban books and newspapers."
-Henry Drummond. Inherit the Wind.

While the play is based on the Scopes "Monkey Trial" and great dramatic license was taken, the above quote is as relevant today as when the words were written and spoken in the 1960 film. We face a weird combination of McCarthyism and anti-Evolutionary rhetoric from the Right and the Domionistas

The play also asks:
Henry Drummond: "That first day, what do you think it was; 24 hours long?"

Matthew Brady: "The bible says it was a day."

Henry Drummond: "Well, there was no sun out, ah, you know. How do you know how long it was?"

Rhetorical, but perhaps, we can ask such questions of our domionista friends...

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ns_kumiho)

TOPEKA, Kan. -- A University of Kansas professor who drew criticism for e-mails he wrote deriding Christian fundamentalists over creationism resigned Wednesday as chairman of the Department of Religious Studies.

Paul Mirecki stepped aside on the recommendation of his colleagues, according to Barbara Romzek, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

( Read more... )

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Creationism_Professor.html

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89)

What is the latest on the ID trial in Dover and when can we expect to see the findings on the case.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ns_kumiho)

Dr. Paul Mirecki hospitalized after beating

Douglas County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the reported beating of a Kansas University professor who gained recent notoriety for his Internet tirades against Christian fundamentalists.

Kansas University religious studies professor Paul Mirecki reported he was beaten by two men about 6:40 a.m. today on a roadside in rural Douglas County. In a series of interviews late this afternoon, Mirecki said the men who beat him were making references to the controversy that has propelled him into the headlines in recent weeks.

( Read more... )

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Thanks oktoberain!

Edit:

vendaz originally reported this on LJ, his post here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/vendaz/74095.html

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY reannon)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/02/creationism.class.cancel.ap/index.html