Dover Penn ID trial
 

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2><b>Introduction by Luke T.: &nbsp;</b><i>
The genre: Drama. The setting: a courtroom. The cast: Theologians, scientists, teachers, lawyers, parents, politicians, and a judge. The plot: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. The prize: A classroom filled with young minds.

If this story begins to sound familiar to you, just remember the time is not 1925. The place is not Tennessee. The image is not black and white. This is 2005 in Dover, Pennsylvania brought to you in full living color.

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This is being discussed in Politics but this link provides transcripts that are certainly worth a read (or at least a skim) particularly those from thursday and friday.

http://aclupa.blogspot.com/

Good it appears I can edit.

The original link was posted by Mojo in Politics. A belated thank you and full credit.

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2><b>Moderation Action by Luke T.: &nbsp;</b><i>With permission from the American Civil Liberties Union, JREF is now hosting the entire set of the Dover ID trial transcripts here</i></font></td></tr></table>

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2>Moderation Action by Luke T.: Edited to remove remarks which do not contribute in any significant way to the topic and are not in keeping with the aim of the Forum Spotlight.</font></td></tr></table>

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2>Moderation Action by Luke T.: Edited to remove remarks which do not contribute in any significant way to the topic and are not in keeping with the aim of the Forum Spotlight.</font></td></tr></table>

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2>Moderation Action by Luke T.: Edited to remove remarks which do not contribute in any significant way to the topic and are not in keeping with the aim of the Forum Spotlight.</font></td></tr></table>

<table cellspacing=1 cellpadding=6 bgcolor=#666699 border=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color=#666699 size=2>Moderation Action by Luke T.: Edited to remove remarks which do not contribute in any significant way to the topic and are not in keeping with the aim of the Forum Spotlight.</font></td></tr></table>

I asked Darat to sticky this so that we can all keep track of the developments in Dover, to which request Darat has thoughtfully acceded.

I may point out to our Euro and Anti-podal buddies that this case is of great interest to you. I personally (and yes, Darat, this is a personal attack) believe that the fundimentalist christian mindset that is pushing for this ID stuff is not discriminably different from fundimentalist Moslems. They know "TRUTH" and they can brook no disagreement. First the US then secular Europe. And, please, no arrogant "it can't happen here" crap. These guys have taken the NRA model and applied it to wackey (:)) beliefs. That is: get a mailing list of "true believers". Make them feel like they are part of a crusade. Have them vote in a block. Focus them on a single issue. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Secular Europe is in their cross hairs (to mix a metaphor or rather to modify a metaphor so that it is punning, not modify, make it a pun contextually...you know what I mean).

Anyhoo, I'd like to keep this thread on Dover/Kansas ID but if anyone cares they can starat a thread on ID outside of the US.

Personal attack on me how? :confused:

I think Ed ment that this was an attack, that he was making personaly. the atack seemed to be aimed at fundi X-ians.Your not a secert, part time right wing fundi are you?, when your not being expelled from the labour party for your radical left wing views, that is. ;)

Which ones are thursday and friday? Day 5 and 6?

Don't worry, we (as in "we degenerate Euros") are perfectly aware that all things wackey originating in the US will eventually arrive over here. :D

Yes. The cross of the Lady Professor was not posted yet.

It seems like a lot of pages but it goes quickly. Focus on the cross tho'. The direct is pretty much what we know already.

This dwarfs the enormity of Jerry Lewis by ... by ... oh, Flo, it's you :)

Think that at some point (and I mean this in a non-perjoritive way) baby boomers are going to retire. At some point the social safty net is going to spring a few holes. People are going to be restless. This is the kind of stuff that breeds political oddities. I might also suggest that with your growing moslem population the islamists could find some common ground with the fundies here (much as Orthodox Jews and fundies are of a mind on this issue here).

I take some (although not much) comfort in the fact the the film "What the bleep do we know" made it over to the UK and vanished without trace.
This does not mean that we can be content that ID, or another form of it won't rear it's ugly head, especially as our Minister for Education, Ruth Kelly, is a member of Opus Dei and is in a great position to foist dogma into schools should she so wish.

lets not forget that we already have state funded schools in the UK teaching 6 day young earth creationism. The English have nothing to feel smug about (both schools are in England) our government already pays for some kids to be taught fairie tales along side real science.

And the current government is set on encouraging more faith schools.

yes, but encouraging truly independent, church funded faith schools, isn't nearly the same scandal as the 95% state funded city academies, including Emanuel college in Gateshead. A couple of grand got a Fundy used car salesman a lot of young minds to poison, and there is nothing stopping even more bizarre groups scraping together the very small amount of cash needed to sell their belief system to impressionable minds and get the state to pay for most of it. In some cases the UK has already lost battles the US hasn't even had to fight yet. At least there seems to be organized opposition in the US, over here more people seem to care abbot what is going on in Pennsylvania and Kansas than on our doorstep.

Tell you what: In 50 years, I've never, ever met a fan of Jerry Lewis in France or Switzerland. I only recently discovered he was awarded a medal for culture :eek: (but Madonna and Stallone also got one from our senile president, so ... ), which is rather funny since no single European kid knows who he is and what he's done (thankfully, and I certainly don't intend kids in my family to ever know).


I'm afraid you're partly right, as has been seen when the Satanic Verses were published: you could suddenly find the all churches (including the fundamentalists, extreme-right and royalists catholics, etc.), together in bed with the most vocal islamists ...

At the same time, I don't think the growing moslem population is so much a problem per se as is their (perceived and/or real) marginalisation in economic and social terms, which make them easy prey to extremists. The problem is exactly the same with those tempted by the religious right extremists.

Yes. They're fast learners in parliament.
Think central Scotland. Think Northern Ireland.
It's never to early to start training bigots.

Perhaps the problem is that the Church of England has lacked extremist, fundamentalist, waggly beard bigots for so long that the folk down south have forgotten what religious bigotry is like.

Lets wait for Charlie III to be crowned, then we can chop his head off and start another round of Catholic / Protestant warfare. The Muslims can hold the jackets.

Some fascinating links on ACLU site:

A "creationist science" text book becomes an "intelligent design" textbook in the course of a year.... http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/sixslides.PDF

You mean there might be soemthing wrong with letting this bloke run a school?.

Wow...you can see it evolving, with more fit phrases being selected by environmental pressure...and quite obviously, no intelligence behind it at all.

That looks like a nice man. Who is he ?





P.s. I concur 100% with Soapy Sam's comments re central Scotland and Northern Ireland. I grew up in the former, and have witnessed the religious bigotry first hand.

They must have learnt the process from the snake-oil salesmen who managed to turn their miracle cancer drugs into miracle aids drugs almost overnight ...

You mean miracle cancer and aids "dietary supplements".

Judging from the photo in today's Grauniad Stephen Green is working on the beard aspect of his presentation, but it doesn't look sufficiently waggly yet.

James Anderton had quite a good one though.

Over here, cures haven't yet morphed into dietary supplements. I accuse our lack of evolutionnary pressure (through the predatory habits of lawyers).

Defendant´s case is up next week and dont you know it, one "expert" witness is...Michael Behe of irreproducible...sorry, "irreducible complexity" fame. This is going to be good, clean family entertainment! :D :D

I think Brown indicated that Johnson was going to be called as well... :D

Oh, it will definitely be interesting. One of the nice things about courts is that the rules are set up that a witness can't change the subject or wriggle out of a line of questioning that itsn't going his way, unlike a debate. Michael Behe is a brilliant debater, but I suspect he's going to get his ass handed to him, on a plate, with a side of chips.

If you read Behe's expert report, he is presenting the same-old, same-old examples of irreducible complexity, including the flagellum and the blood clotting cascade. If you check out Miller's testimony and expert report (same ACLU site), Miller has already presented a pretty damning analysis that those are not, in fact, irreducibly complex, complete with PowerPoint animations and a a few citations to Science, Nature, and Cell -- apparently (something I didn't know already) blood clotting has been known not to be irreducibly complex since 1969!

So I can see the question from the attorney during cross now. "You testified that with a single factor missing, blood clotting cannot occur. You have heard Dr. Miller's testimony that dolphins are missing such a factor, and that their blood still clots. Do you disagree with Dr. Miller? Do you agree that this fact was published over thirty years ago? Are you incompetent not to know this, or were you perjuring yourself?"

Is it just me, or do things like this get anyone else all worked up to the point they're all "GRRARRRR... SKEPTIC SMASH!"?

I canceled my membership to the ACLU when I found out about them supporting NAMBLA, but this is a good cause and I'm glad they're fighting for it.

The state should not require you to advertise for a specific company's book.

Sounds like the Day 8 transcript, when available, is going to be epic.

Oh, in some ways, it already has. Bear with me for a moment.

In the Netherlands, schools have a fair amount of autonomy in setting their own curriculum, but the bottom line is that every secondary school student--regardless of whether he or she attends a public or a religious school--must pass a final exam, the content of which is set by the state (i.e. the ministry of education). Now, I didn't take biology all the way to the final exam, so I didn't find out about this until recently, but the Dutch state exam curriculum for biology (or any other physical science) omits any mention of evolutionary theory. This is primarily as a result of continued pressure from hardline Calvinist activists who don't want their kids exposed to any idea which contradicts Genesis. As a result, it is possible to pass through the Dutch education system without ever hearing the word "evolution" (the main reason I didn't know this was because my school did teach evolution, but then, I went to a very good school).

What I'm trying to say here is that many of us have no room to be smug about Creationism in America. Just because Creationists are less noisy elsewhere doesn't mean they don't exist, or affect your child's education.

(Note that while I live in the US now, I am in fact a Dutch national.)

I'd just like to point out that I don't post in Politics any more than I have to...

:D

I've just noticed that the day 6 afternoon session transcript is now available on the ACLUPA website. It includes the first part of Barbara Forrest's cross-examination.

Thank you, I don't check every day.

Any idea when the creationist dudes are testifying?

Interesting audio analysis is also available, e.g. Nick Matzke´s take on the Forrest hearing.

Nor do I, or I might have noticed it when it went up on Thursday!

Behe testified today. Transcript not available yet, but several good reports are.