School Board Promoting Intelligent Design Defeated in Dover, Pennsylvania

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 6:41pm

From Reuters:

"Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes.

The board of Dover Area School District in south-central Pennsylvania lost eight of its nine incumbents in an upset election that surprised even the challengers, who had been hoping for a bare majority to take control of the board.

The new board, which includes teachers, opposed the incumbents' policy of including intelligent design in science classes.

The ousted board was the first school board in the country to implement such a policy. The challengers also criticized what they called arrogance and secrecy by the incumbent board.

For the last six weeks, the teaching of intelligent design has been challenged in federal court by a group of Dover parents. They said the concept is a religious belief and therefore may not be taught in public schools, because the U.S. Constitution forbids it. They also argue that the theory is unscientific and so has no place in science classes.

Bryan Rehm, one of the winning board members and a former teacher at Dover High School, said the new board will hold a public meeting to decide the precise future of the policy. He said intelligent design will no longer be a part of the science curriculum, regardless of how the court rules."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051109/sc_nm/election_usa_evolution_dc

[Plum]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 6:46pm

Like I said before, the people have spoken. And not all of them have such a hard time realizing that an untestable, completely non-specific idea isn't scientific by any stretch of the imagination.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 6:58pm

If you want "Intelligent Design" taught to your children, why don't you just enroll them in Sunday School in your church? That way, everyone wins.
The base argument of these fools pushing this concept as a sciense is the claim that evolution (conveniently named Darwinism so it, too, can sound like an evil religion) somehow disputes or discounts theories of intelligent design.
It's so refreshing to know, outside the increasingly stupid places like Kansas and, say, Texas, that people are wise enough to realize how simple it is to remove idiots and replace them with responsible adults.

[Plum]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 7:02pm

Funny how the Vatican thinks evolution and Genesis work together just fine- and you don't get much more religious than that.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 7:05pm

Don't you think the money "spent" on this case would have been better spent towards the students in this district?

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 7:07pm

Plum, ever spent any time in the incredibly religious parts of this country? I grew up there. To them, the Vatican is a false religion too.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 7:09pm

idolatry!

[Plum]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 7:18pm

cookie, some people are speculating that all the money Dover has spent defending its choice is one of the reasons the voters decided to stop teaching "intelligent design". It's just not worth the trouble in their view.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 8:39pm

C - this will save the money of paying lawyers to defend the Board's insertion of religion in science.

[hrh_annette]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 9:57pm

Did anyone happen to see Jerry Falwell, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Judy Gold "discussing" Intelligent Design this morning on the Early Show?It was kind of amusing to hear Jerry Falwell trying to fit the dinosaurs into ID.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 10:01pm

I can't imagine watching those three talking about anything -- let alone that early in the morning. Must have been surreal.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 10:09pm

Since when is Judy Gold an expert on Evolution and Intelligent Design?

Too bad I missed that convo...bet it was a barrel of laughs.

[hrh_annette]

Posted: 11/9/05 at 10:09pm

Well, on the left side of the screen you had Jerry spouting off about everythng that he believes to be the literal truth in the Bible. In the middle was Bill Nye Simply incredulous that anybody could believe in anything that Jerry had to say, and on the right side of the screen was Judy Gold making lame George Bush jokes. The best Bill Nye moment was when Harry Smith was going to ask him if ID had any scientific merit and Bill answered with a resounding NO before Harry could finish. I'm not sure why Judy Gold was there, I tuned in right after they introduced everybody.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 11/10/05 at 12:48am

now that's odd, as the state mandates the education state standards for every grade K-12, not individual districts. These standards can be found at state department of education websites......even if this had passed, it would not be legal....as again state standards are mandated by the state. And the state would have come in and negated it.......unless that state is Kansas, and we know what those crazy people did.....

[zzannahk]

Posted: 11/10/05 at 12:55am

so then some guy creates a new religion and demands that they teach it as theory

it has something to do with speghetti people

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 11/10/05 at 3:01am

Well, it's good that they ousted the crazy peopole and elected new board members who aren't blinded to logic.

I live in a southern, Bible-belt state, and sadly I'm not surprised at these sorts of issues. There was an outrage in my hometown over progressives trying to defeat this program where children leave school for a couple of hours a week and go do Bible study at a nearby church, while the children who aren't Chrstian or whose parents don't advocate using school time to teach religion stay at school and do busywork. Isn't that sort of unconstitutional? I mean, sure, they aren't forced to go, but it is an example of a public institution promoting one religion over others.

The "intelligent design" campaign is really infuriating to hear about, especially as a biology major. People who advocate it have absolutely NO positive evidence in favor of their theory, they can only point to things that they consider "holes" in evolutionary theory and say that since evolution can't explain every detail of biological history, we MUST automatically come to the conclusion that there is an Intelligent Designer. I would wager that most people who advocate "intelligent design" don't understand evolutionary biology at all. We can't have scientific facts interfering with our Creationist dogma and corrupting the minds of our children, now can we?

Umm... yeah, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it?

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 11/10/05 at 8:32am

I'm of the mindset that you can teach your kids that the evolution your kids learn in science is how God created the world from their Sunday school class.

It's REALLY about fanatics trying to convert the masses.

[lildogs]

Posted: 11/10/05 at 1:01pm

I never thought I'd defend "the children" a la Helen Lovejoy, but if people want to see America lead the world in technology and commerce, they have to accept the fact that the rest of the world wants to progress in the world of science. I was watching Inherit the Wind and it was disturbing to see the same arguments raging today that raged lo those many years ago. People need to understand that religion is a guide to living life, not defining it. This from the atheist.

[CarolynLaughter]

Posted: 7/9/24 at 12:03pm

This is a significant victory of scientific education! A Dover community has made a clear statement by electing a new school board that opposes the teaching of intelligent design in science classes. This change emphasizes the importance of separating religious beliefs from scientific education. 

Updated On: 7/11/24 at 12:03 PM