In addition, Professor Behe
agreed that for the design of human artifacts, we know the designer and its
attributes and we have a baseline for human design that does not exist for design of
biological systems. Professor Behe’s only response to these
seemingly insurmountable points of disanalogy was that the inference still works in
science fiction movies.
Sick:
In the midst of this panoply, there arose the astonishing story of an evolution mural that was taken from a classroom and destroyed in 2002 by Larry Reeser, the head of buildings and grounds for the DASD. At the June 2004 meeting, Spahr asked Buckingham where he had received a picture of the evolution mural that had been torn down and incinerated. Jen Miller testified that Buckingham responded:
“I gleefully watched it burn.” Buckingham disliked the mural because he thought it advocated the theory of evolution, particularly common
ancestry.
Given, say Dembskis obsession with putting Darwin's head in a vise and pile driving him one has to wonder about this violent streak among creationists and ID proponents.
Better yet, should the guy have been allowed with miles of a child?
Scary:
Remarkably, the 6-3 vote at the October 18, 2004 meeting to approve the
curriculum change occurred with absolutely no discussion of the concept of ID, no
discussion of how presenting it to students would improve science education, and
no justification was offered by any Board member for the curriculum change.
Furthermore, Board members somewhat candidly conceded that they lacked sufficient
background in science to evaluate ID, and several of them testified with equal
frankness that they failed to understand the substance of the curriculum change
adopted on October 18, 2004.
In fact, one unfortunate theme in this case is the striking ignorance concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members. Conspicuously, Board members who voted for the curriculum change testified at trial that they had utterly no grasp of ID.
Actually, now I'm starting to wonder why they were put in charge of determining educational curriculum:
Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology
class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or
organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for
consistent but unwelcome advices from the District’s science teachers who
uniformly opposed the change.
Or:
While there is no requirement that a school board contact any of
the afore-referenced organizations prior to enacting a curriculum change, in this
case a simple glance at any one of their websites for additional information about
ID and any potential it may have to improve science education would have
provided helpful information to Board members who admittedly had no
comprehension whatsoever of ID.
Although the case was largely about ID the underlying story is about a board of education that failed in its duty to promote education. They displayed a total lack of concern about what would be the best way to educate the children of Dover. Even more appalling, their behavior was the exact opposite of the open minded critical examination of facts they were trying to foster.
