Category: Positive

December 21, 2005

Judge throws book at Dover Board in ruling

On December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III, In The United States District Court For The Middle District Of Pennsylvania, ruled that the Dover District School Board violated the US Constitution when they changed the 9th grade Biology curriculum to include Intelligent Design (ID).

Some of the members of the Board who voted for the change didn’t even know what ID was all about.

The Judge also took to task some members who lied under oath and tried to cover their tracks when the change caused some issues for the community.

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December 20, 2005

Victory for real science in Dover, PA

Judge in Dover case rules in favor of the parents who wanted to keep ID out of their children’s classroom

“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

Jones wrote that he wasn’t saying the intelligent design concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed, saying its advocates “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors.”

But, he wrote, “our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”

More later —

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December 15, 2005

Cal Thomas gets it on “war” on Christmas

Cal Thomas, a conservative columnist, has gone against his conservative brethren. Both in a recent column and on the FOX News Channel, Thomas complained about the efforts in support of “Merry Christmas”. In his column titled “Not so silent night”, Thomas writes:

“The effort by some cable TV hosts and ministers to force commercial establishments into wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas” might be more objectionable to the One who is the reason for the season than the “Happy Holidays” mantra required by some store managers.

I have never understood why so many Christians feel the need to see and hear “Merry Christmas” proclaimed to them at stores by people who may not believe its central message. While TV personalities, junk mail letters and some of the ordained bemoan the increasing secularization of culture; perhaps some teaching might be helpful from the One in whose behalf they claim to speak.”

So we may not agree with everything Cal has to say but at least on this issue he gets it.

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November 21, 2005

There is No God

This morning an essay Penn Jillette wrote appeared on the NPR website that sums up how we non-believers find a purpose in life especially when this life is all we have.

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November 4, 2005

Vatican reaffirms Evolution

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”

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November 1, 2005

Two Bits: Thank God we have a godless Constitution and one fake argument

I offer two short items I came across on the Internet yesterday. One is a positive item and the other is an example of the issue facing this country. Posted on the Charlotte Observer website on 10/31 in the op/ed section was a book review and commentary on “The Godless Constitution” by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore and a letter to the editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, on 10/31, takes “Secularists” to task for mixing microevolution and macroevolution.

Read the postTwo Bits: Thank God we have a godless Constitution and one fake argument