Theory isn't science, teachers group says (Tom Monaghan is baaack!)

[Bozita]

frontpage article, below the fold

Monaghan is a major financial backer of the Thomas More Law Center.


http://www.freep.com/news/mich/create6e_20050606.htm

Theory isn't science, teachers group says

BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

June 6, 2005


The national debate over how life began is landing in the quiet southwest Michigan village of Richland, where the school district is threatened with a lawsuit over teaching the theory of intelligent design in science classes.

-snip-

Critics, including the National Science Teachers Association, call it nothing more than a thinly disguised version of creationism and a back-door attempt to get religion into public schools.


"It's the religious right that's pushing this. This is mixing religion and science," said Gerry Wheeler, president of the association.


The issue worked its way into Gull Lake Community Schools, which includes Richland, when two middle school science teachers, Julie Olson and Dawn Wenzel, put a book on intelligent design called "Of Pandas and People" on the district's annual textbook list. Wenzel and Olson also added a lesson including "Of Pandas and People" into the district's binder-thick science curriculum. The school board subsequently approved both.

-snip-

more...

[meganmonkey]

1. When you live in Ann Arbor, he never seems to go away...

:eyes:

[realisticphish]

2. yet another reason

why ann arbor sucks :evilgrin:

but seriously, that is fucked up. It makes me want to tear out my brain, because i just do NOT understand

[meganmonkey]

7. Say what you want about U of M, but leave Ann Arbor out of it, pal!

:D

I actually went to school in Ohio, so I am relatively neutral. Not that Delaware, OH was very impressive...

Plus you have Phish in your name. So you must be okay. I miss them. :(

[realisticphish]

9. well

we just lump M*ch*g*n in with ann arbor :)

Delewares a beautiful area, some nice fuckin houses up there

and if figures: not too long after I got into phish, they broke up :banghead:

[annarbor]

18. What does this have to do with Ann Arbor?

Monahan's dumb, pizza spinning ass was born in Ypsilanti!
Ann Arbor

[realisticphish]

19. notice the logo in the sig....

[SW FL Dem]

3. Same thing in SW FL where he is

building a huge Catholic university.

[Dudley_DUright]

10. Good article about "Ave Maria University" and Monaghan

I was interviewed recently for a front-page story in The New York Times on the plans of Mr. Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza and a multi-millionaire Catholic layman, to build a new Catholic university outside of Naples, Florida, in a town to be newly named Ave Maria, after the university itself.

Mr. Monaghan not only hopes to create a first-rate Catholic university, but also one with a Division I football team. Some years ago, the Reverend Jerry Falwell expressed the same hopes for his Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, but so far, no luck.

Most of my interview with The Times reporter was devoted to Mr. Monaghan's perceived need for a new Catholic university. Unfortunately, the paper quoted me only on the relationship between Monaghan's political and religious views.

The entire quotation read as follows: "Tom Monaghan has the agenda of a right-wing Republican, and he happens to confuse that with the teachings of the Catholic Church. I wish he had spent this money the way a really good Catholic would: helping the poor, helping inner-city schools, which are being suffocated through lack of money; helping the aged and the infirm. Those are the teachings of Jesus."

more...

http://www.the-tidings.com/2003/0307/essays.htm

[meganmonkey]

11. Yeah - he started his Ave Maria law school up here

but IIRC, it isn't going over very well so he is moving operations. I'm very sorry you have to deal with him too. He's a creep.

[Inland]

4. Don't need to know science to deliver pizzas. What does

Boy Pizza King Tom care about their futures?

[noonwitch]

8. He wants more conservative voters in the future

You have to start teaching that kind of ignorance when they're young for it to stick through adulthood. If they start thinking they were created by a trial and error process, they might start voting for "libruls" and "librul causes".

My mom always said that the catholic church was opposed to birth control because they wanted more catholics so they could rule the world. Granted, mom is totally anti-catholic, but I get the point. I think it applies to this-create more conservatives.

[Supersedeas]

5. what will Julie and Dawn Freep-a-like slip into your local curriculum

while no one is looking?

Pay attention people...these theocrats are on the war-path.

[short bus president]

6. Theory isn't science?

Gotta stop teaching kids about Gravity and all those other pesky "mere theories," too, I suppose...

:eyes:

[LiberallyInclined]

12. read the post, not just the subject line-

the "theory" referred to is the "theory" of intelligent design.

[Dudley_DUright]

16. But they should not even be using the word theory with ID

since any scientific theory has to be falsifiable, and ID is most definitely is not. The belief of ID would be more accurate.

[LiberalFighter]

20. I agree... I didn't want to duplicate the posting so I checked first

They are trying to twist the facts so that people believe that theory is not scientific

[Sandpiper]

13. I guess Physics will have to drop

General Relativity, Special Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. Yeah. Isn't gravity still a theory?

What will freepers do without the weapons of mass freedom which quantum physics provides? Smite their enemies with soup ladles?

[TruthTeller]

17. Extremely Funny--LOL! eom

[jwcomer]

15. People are fighting this the wrong way.

The best way to get creationist to stop backing Intelligent Design is to tell them that ID and the Theory of Evolution both agree that man evolved from apes. The only difference is the in ID, an 'intelligence' (i.e. God), decided we should evolve from apes and made it so.

In my experience, this shuts the fundies up as they explicitly do not believe that we evolved from apes.

The way I see it, ID is step forward in the debate of evolution. Here we now have fundies agreeing (though unwittingly) that man descended from apes. It's progress in a certain sense.

[Inland]

21. Yes, that's not bad.

ID, although it is bad science, only posits a god setting the evolutionary machine in motion. But it still discredits biblical inerrancy. The fundamentalists are interested in biblical inerrancy, not some deism.

[Roland99]

22. Theory isn't science, teachers group says (ID coming to Mich.)

Theory isn't science, teachers group says
Opponents say intelligent design is like creationism
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/create6e_20050606.htm

The national debate over how life began is landing in the quiet southwest Michigan village of Richland, where the school district is threatened with a lawsuit over teaching the theory of intelligent design in science classes.

Intelligent design holds that the universe is too complicated to have been created by accident, as the theory of evolution implies. Consequently, there must have been some sort of "intelligent designer" behind creation. The question is whether intelligent design is science -- or religion?

Backers say the theory is not creationism because it doesn't speculate about the identity of the designer.

Critics, including the National Science Teachers Association, call it nothing more than a thinly disguised version of creationism and a back-door attempt to get religion into public schools.

And right in time for DeVos to take over the helm.

Michigan is going to have its hands full with IDiots for a while.

[deadparrot]

23. Is anyone else sick of the phrase "intelligent design"?

Fucking doublespeak, I say. :puke:

[Roland99]

26. That's why I call them IDiots

Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=T284UgHBXl&isbn=081353433X&itm=9

[starroute]

27. I could go for "stupid design" myself

Take, for example, the anhinga -- a diving bird whose feathers aren't waterproof, so it has to sit in the sun and dry off betweeen dives, or else it drowns.

Evolution does just fine at explaining the anhinga -- it's in the process of evolving to a new lifestyle.

But if you don't accept evolution, the only possible alternative is that the anhinga is the result of stupid design.

[longship]

24. Unbelievable.

These idiot cretinists have their heads so far up their arses that they are looking out their own mouths.

"Theories are science!" they scream. (unless, of course, the theory is a Biblical literalist interpretations, then the theory is... ***TRUTH***).

Rubbish! Utter rubbish.

[Dudley_DUright]

25. IDiots

I like it!

[BlueEyedSon]

28. "Divine Design" isn't science.

:puke: