We Came From Monkeys, Part 9503

Here we go again. The kook right is once again trying to hi-jack our science classes and dumb down our children.

The ACLU, Americans United for separation of Church and State and eleven parents are fighting the Dover Area school district of Pennsylvania in Federal Court. The Dover Area school district requires ninth graders to hear about intelligent design in their biology classes.

OK, let's go over this one more time. Evolution is s scientific theory. A scientific theory is a model or framework based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning that helps to predict or explain a phenomenon. Scientific theories develop from observable facts, rather centuries old literature.

As Steven Hawking describes it "a theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations."

Intelligent design satisfies neither one of those requirements. It's just embarrassing for us a country that we are continuing to debate this silliness. Our country is struggling to keep up with the other countries in science and technology and our tax dollars are being pissed away fighting this same fight that should have been put to bed eighty years ago with the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Even the condom-hating anti-choice Catholic Church is with the reality-based community on this one.

Earlier this month a top Roman Catholic cardinal critical of evolution
branded scientific opponents of intelligent design intolerant and said
there need not be a conflict between Darwin's and Christian views of
life's origins.

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a top Church doctrinal expert and close
associate of Pope Benedict, said Darwin's theory did not clash with a
belief in God...

This really should be a no-brainer. Teach sound scientific theories in science classes and teach religion in religious classes.