Intimidation Alleged on Intelligent Design

[MountainLaurel]

Another locale to mark off list of potential places to resettle.

Parents in federal court Tuesday described an atmosphere of intimidation and anger when school board members in Dover, Pa., last year decided to require high school biology teachers to read a statement that casts doubt on the theory of evolution.

Bryan Rehm, a parent who also taught physics at Dover High School, testified of continual pressure from board members not to "teach monkeys-to-man evolution." He said that the board required teachers to watch a film critical of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and that board members talked openly of teaching creationism alongside evolution.

The atmosphere became so heated that neighbors began to call him an "atheist with . . . a lot of words added on to it," Rehm said. He said that "it was turning into a real zoo" and that students were quarreling about evolution.

Rehm is one of 11 people from Dover, a small town south of Harrisburg, who want to block their school board from requiring the reading of that four-paragraph statement that criticizes evolutionary theory. The statement notes that "intelligent design" offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life -- namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen without the help of an intelligent hand.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701695.html

[ms liberty]

1. Damn these damn fundies!

Will someone please explain to these nincompoops that evolution is a proved theory... and intelligent design is an unproved hypothesis that by its very nature can NEVER BE A PROVED THEORY?

AAARRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[Arkham House]

2. Teachers Should Refuse--

--absolutely to teach creatonism, "intelligent design", or any facsimile thereof. I know it's easy for me to say--it's not *my* family's livelihood that I'm suggesting they endanger. But Christ--there comes a point where you have to stand up and take a stand. There are some things you should not do for money, under *any* circumstances. This seems like a good place to start to challenge these lunatics.

[MountainLaurel]

6. Welcome Arkham!

And I think you're dead on that this is not something true scientists should be going along with. The federal government has seen an exodus from agencies like the EPA, Health and Human Services, and Justice of people who were unwilling to suppress research findings at the command of the Bushistas, just because those findings did not match the party line. Hell, I work as a librarian, and I won't recommend that my students use government research as sources because so many of the federal Web sites were purged of all information that did not match the party line.

[Dr Batsen D Belfry]

3. Call Intelligent Design what it really is

American Madressa

DBDB

[castiron]

4. and that intelligent hand is mother earth herself, bozos

[Orrex]

5. This article is misleading, perhaps inadvertantly

To suggest that "Rehm is one of 11 people from Dover... who want to block their school board from requiring the reading..." is to suggest that Rehm belongs to a tiny, fringe minority.

It would be more accurate to say something like "Rehm, along with the entirety of the legitimate scientific community, objects to the tip-of-the-wedge pro-creationist strategy by which far-Right extremists are attempting to force fringe-Christianity into public education."

The article is useful in any case; thanks for posting it.

[Beaver Tail]

7. ID IS NOT THEORY

In Science a theory is a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

ID is Theology – BAD Theology. It cannot be tested therefore is not Science.

[BonnieJW]

8. Why don't the teachers

read it on the last day of school...in Japanese?

[elehhhhna]

9. The De-evolution of rightwingers when challenged--can it be used

as evidence of evolution?

Funny it deteriorated into a "zoo".

[Canadian Socialist]

10. One question about I.D.

If (and I say IF) I.D. is legitimate, and there was an "intelligent designer" - then who designed the "intelligent designer" - and then who designed the designer of the "intelligent designer". Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

[Orrex]

11. You've got it all backwards

The most fundamental of particles in the universe are so simple that they couldn't have occurred without a designer who is in turn so infinitely complex that he/she/it needs no designer.

See? It's simple.