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Monday, September 26, 2005
Order a bench warrant for God...
Also suitable for Alchemy 101 
Intelligent Design goes on trial in PA. today:
Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about "alternatives" to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design.
[...]
With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.
What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.
Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.
"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."
For Mrs. Hied, a meter reader, and her husband, Michael, an office manager for a local bus and transport company, the Dover school board's argument - that teaching intelligent design is a free-speech issue - has a strong appeal.
"I think we as Americans, regardless of our beliefs, should be able to freely access information, because people fought and died for our freedoms," Mrs. Hied said over a family dinner last week at their home, where the front door is decorated with a small bell and a plaque proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring."
Which, of course, has nothing to do with science. Science is not a democracy.
My daughter goes to a private Catholic high school and they discused ID last year. According to Casey, her teacher described it in a nutshell: it's crap. But then this is a high school that is proud of the fact the 98% of it's graduating seniors go to college so maybe they have ulterior motives...
(Added) From the comments (click on the timestamp): Jay from Needles on the Beach
"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."
Disassociative idiots, the lot of them. I just spent a week not talking to these folks (and God, I'm cranky), who were all, to a person, nice, fairly courteous, had terrible fashion sense and were stone stupid. They were almost completely incurious about the world and, instead of engaging in it, they actively sought out anodyne catchphrases in lieu of conversation. They may as well have worn bumper stickers on their asses.
God is an easy answer to the question "how did man become man?', but it's not a good one, unless we want to infantalize every bit of knowledge (which they do, because ultimately, if God is the answer for 'design' than She's the answer for everything else.) we as humans possess, so that these well-meaning fucktards can conflate Freedom of Speech with the scientific record.
It's the ludicrious thought process of fools like Mrs. Hied that must send teachers into raging alcoholism.
Her mindbending 'fairness' forces her to believe the following fallacies: That people fought wars and died to protect our freedom of speech (which war, exactly? I suppose Lenny Bruce died for our sins, but it wasn't exactly Iwo Jima.), that because people died for freedom of speech all speech is equally valuable and truthful, that because all speech is equally valuable and truthful, it should be taught (say, let's bring back that Green Cheese theory of the moon!) and that since this should be taught, it reaches the standard of 'freely accessed'.
I'm surprised that she can walk without falling over. And I'm sorry this sounds so elitist -- but I can't stand it anymore. And, in the interest of fairness, 95% of the speakers at the anti-war rally made me want to drain the mini-bar, they were so vapid. I'm really cranky.
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