http://www.jhunewsletter.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/16/4329fa241bc98
Insidious design: the growth of an anti-science
By Patrick Kennedy
Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Sept. 16, 2005
In the eyes of certain scientists, politicians and swaths of the
American public, intelligent design -- the belief that select
developments in natural history point to the existence of a higher
power -- just might be the breakthrough biological discovery of the
new century. I find this theory somewhat hard to believe. After
several weeks of research, I have been unable to locate a single
scientific experiment that might be used to validate, or even test,
the theory of intelligent design. Yet at a number of universities
and institutions, professors continue to promote this bogus,
unscientific theory. … Yet, the "teach the controversy" approach --
the idea that intelligent design deserves classroom treatment as a
valid challenge to Darwinism -- is actually a perversion of such
eminently reasonable policies. Protections on academic freedom
assume an adherence to progressive and well-founded intellectual
subject matter. Those are criteria that intelligent design's quack
explanations, experiment or no experiment, will never fulfill. So
will intelligent design go down in scientific history along with
such other learned fields as sorcery, astrology and voodoo ritual?
In my next column in this series, I will delve deeper into the
ideological climate that spawned the latest challenge to Darwinism
and how -- politically and philosophically -- it has found a home
with the American public. Still, intelligent design is not without
value. According to Cunningham, studying intelligent design has one
important function in the classroom: it is the perfect
demonstration of what a scientific theory is not.
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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