MANN TALK: My Nominee for the Supreme Court
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/060102-mann-comment.html
HNN Huntingtonnews.net - WV, USA
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) – My nominee for Supreme Court of these
United States is a Bush appointed church-going, Christian Republican:
U. S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III. For one just to read and
hear the enunciation of his title and name is an exciting, esthetic
verbal balancing and a line of poetry, enhanced incalculable by his
decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. The issue was
whether or not the school board could introduce into the curriculum of
the Dover schools Intelligent Design and teach that evolution is among
some scientists a questionable theory.
Judge Jones, in short, ruled that Intelligent Design is not science
but is religion in disguise and thus is constitutionally prohibited by
the First Amendment from being taught in public schools on the ground
of the separation of church and state. But Judge Jones not only ruled
against the school board; he hotly scolded and reprimanded two of the
ID school board members for lying.
According to an article in "Church and State," one of the school board
members who advocated the introduction of ID into the curriculum, in a
disposition, under oath, deposed that he did not know the source of
the $850 the board used to purchase copies of an ID textbook called
"Of Pandas and People." But on the stand in the trial before Judge
Jones, he changed his testimony and admitted that the money had come
from fellow board member. Judge Jones smelled perjury; and when a
judge gets a hint of perjury in his court, he sits up from his throne
chair and takes notice. Judge Jones did just that and he began to
cross-examine the witness himself, a rare procedure in court trials.
The judge's hot cross-examination revealed that the board member had
lied and that, in fact, the money for the books had come from another
board member, who had previously testified in deposition that he did
not know the source of the money but on the stand he testified that
the $850 came from donations solicited by him at his church. Two
Christian board members and advocates of ID apparently perjured
themselves, perjured themselves so schools could teach religion
instead of science in classrooms. And they had passed the plate for
the means to implement their ID designs.
In view of the perjured testimony of the board members, the refusal of
three ID witnesses to testify on behalf of the board and the lack of
probative evidence whatsoever that ID has a scientific basis, Judge
Jones found for the plaintiffs on the ground that ID is creationism in
disguise.
Judge Jones probably was aware of the disguise before the trial began;
but if he wasn't and had happened to read "Evolution and Creationism:
A guide of Museum Docents," prepared for training docents and staff
members at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, N.Y., he would have
found rational support to rule as he did. Here are questions and
answer from the guide:
WHAT IS EVOLUTION? Organic evolution is the idea that all organisms
are connected by genealogy and have changed through time. (That is,
all life is related and has its origin in the original.)
HOW DOES EVOLUTION HAPPEN? Evolution is probably driven by several
processes, the most important of which is natural selection. Natural
selection is a process in which some individuals survive and reproduce
better than others because they have inherited characteristics that
help them to do so. (It is a process that has worked its will for four
billion years.)
IS EVOLUTION `JUST A THEORY'? A "theory" in science is a structure of
related ideas that explains one or more natural phenomena and is
supported by observations from the natural world; it is not something
less than a "fact." Theories actually occupy the highest, not the
lowest, rank among scientific ideas. (That is, evolution is a fact.)
HOW DO WE KNOW EVOLUTION OCCURRED? By examining fossils and comparing
them to organisms alive today. (We also know from the obvious
similarity of us with all else.)
DOESN'T THE COMPLEXITY/DESIGN OF NATURE IMPLY AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER?
Science deals only with the material causes of material phenomena.
Nothing we can observe in nature requires a supernatural designer; we
therefore defer to material processes to explain what we see in
nature. (Science sees earth, its laws, its means and ends, and sees no
Heaven therein.) IS EVOLUTION AGAINST RELIGION? No. Science deals only
with material reality; religion deals with the spiritual, the moral
and the ethical. (Science deals with nature; religion with faith.)
WHAT IS WRONG WITH TEACHING CREATIONISM AND/OR INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN
PUBLIC SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSES? Both creationism and intelligent design
have been tested as scientific hypotheses in the past, and both
completely failed. There is no evidence that they are valid scientific
ideas. In the absence of such evidence, they are clearly religious
ideas, and as such have no place in the science classroom. (Teaching
ID is to breach the wall between church and state.)
Judge Jones's ruling is a blow to Bush, who recently advocated that ID
be taught in the classrooms of this nation's schools, and a blow to
millions of Fundamentalists, including Preacher Pat Robertson, who
warned that the newly-elected Dover School Board, which was ready to
ban ID from the curriculum, might be smitten by God along with the
city of Dover for electing an anti-ID school board. And, I suspect,
for Judge Jones ruling in favor of evolution.
America, among the favored nations of the world, is without question
shackled with a population that is generally ignorant in matters of
science and most other matters of cosmic comprehension. Or worse it is
indoctrinated in matters of religion to such an extent that it is
hopelessly seduced by it and views some science as Satan's works,
including evolution. That a majority of this nation's minds can
believe that a god created this universe and earth and populated it in
six days with all of life, from viruses to violets and from apes to
saints, and that the same minds cannot believe that evolution of life
over a period of four billion years of natural selection could have
happened without an Intelligent Designer---reveals the subverting
nature, by religion, of reason and imagination. Anyone sane with the
help of chance and the will inherent in life possibly could have done
it in 4 billion years.
I advocate the nomination of Judge Jones because he has not allowed
religion to so diminish his rationality that he can agree with the
likes of Pat Robertson or of George Bush or of the Dover board members
who want children taught ID. His decision is a victory for humanism
and for reason, that faculty born of natural selection to perpetuate
the species Homo sapiens. Among that species are those who investigate
and think and also, unfortunately, are those who are enthralled by an
implausible hypothesis irrationally held, namely, faith.
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting
attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas
Chronicle in Summersville. Born in Charleston, WV, in 1921, he lives
in Hinton. The portrait accompanying this column is by Robert
Shetterley from his book "Americans Who Tell The Truth."
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
You are invited to check out the following:
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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