NOVA, the premiere science program on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) here in the US, will showing a timely and important show for those of us who support separation of church and state and Evolution this coming Tuesday November 13th.
Tag: Dover
Ohio’s Board of Education (OBE) in March of 2004 adopted a “critical analysis of evolution” model lesson after a long hard fought campaign between those who support real science and those who want to force children to learn religion in the public schools.
In light of the Dover decision and this new evidence of the behind the scenes manipulation, Americans United are prepared to file a lawsuit against the OBE.
The Board has been meeting with its legal team and is trying to decide if they will remove the lesson plan.
The OBE will meet next Tuesday January 10 starting at 8 AM in Columbus.
Help them decide in the next post of Secular Left
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.
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 —
God didn’t put a man on the moon or wipe out a majority of the world’s diseases. Science did. Praying didn’t increase crop yields which allows us to raise much more food than we really need on low amount of acreage. Science did. Going to church isn’t going to help us find a cure for AIDS. Science will.
The recent defense of Evolution in Dover wasn’t some conspiracy of secular humanists bent on corrupting “our children” but was conducted by believers who find the truth of science to be much more important than their religious beliefs.
Well it had to happen. As the trial in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District comes to a close this week, the defendants are doing everything they can to save themselves from losing the case. This includes changing their testimony, selective memory, and the ever useful – attacking the media. The plaintiffs in the case also questioned the school board on their hiring of the Thomas More Law Center to represent them. The center states as one of their missions: Defending and promoting the religious freedom of Christians.