Unintelligent Design

Top images of 2006

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At the end of every year you always see the lists of top images and stories of the past year.  Here are a few of the images I am looking forward to seeing at the end of 2006:

-George W Bush being convicted at his impeachment trial

-Karl Rove’s perp walk and subsequent conviction in the Valerie Plame leak case

-Republicans loosing control of both houses of congress in November

-Tom Delay convicted on all charges in his corruption trial

-the final US troops returning from Iraq

-the RIAA announcing all file sharing lawsuits are dropped and previous settlements are refunded

-Record companies announcing they will never use DRM again and repudiating the DMCA

-prices of online music downloads being reduced to the point ($.20-$.25 per song) where file sharing of music becomes pointless except for old out of print recordings.

-More people listening to podcasts than Clear Channel radio stations

-The Thomas Moore Law center is disbanded and all intelligent design efforts are abandoned.

-Software and business model patents are ruled invalid and are permanently rejected

Clearly some of these items fall into the realm of fantasy (like the RIAA giving up on drm),  but some are definitely things that could happen this year.  What are some images or stories you would like to look back on come December 31 2006?

Some Common Sense

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So clearly the judge in the Dover, PA, intelligent design lawsuit is an “Activist” judge. U.S. District Judge John Jones today ruled that ID is not science but rather a supernatural explanation for the origin of life and is nothing more than a thinly disguised version of biblical creationism. He was quite open in his criticism of the ID proponents:

Jones condemned the “breathtaking inanity” of the policy of the board, all but one of whom have now been ousted by local voters. “Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective,” he said.

Jones said the students and teachers of Dover High School “deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”

Fortunately the members of the Dover school board who put this policy were ejected by the voters this fall, so hopefully this case will not get appealed. Undoubtedly other similar cases will follow, particularly in Kansas that has a statewide rather local policy on ID. Lets just hope that the same kind of rulings follow.

Which fork is the dead end! 2

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This morning Mark Maynard has a good post over here about selling evolution. The question that scares me is which human development fork is the evoulationary dead end? Is it the faith-based unintelligent designers or the reality based community? A recent poll by CBS news shows the majority of Americans reject evolution:

cbs news evolution poll

It appears that the rational person is headed for extinction at least in the United States. On the other hand, looking at the bigger picture of what is happening in the US economy and the US place in the world, maybe a more accurate assessment would be that the US as a whole or at least as a powerful country is the evolutionary dead end. Clearly with the religous right and corporate America continually pushing for the dumbing down of Americans at every turn, America will quickly turn into a third world country with a third world standard of living. Unless we make some radical changes in the direction that this country is going and quickly, America’s best days are behind it!

What, No ID? 6

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Sofia had her first day of high school today and brought home a bunch of papers to sign today with all the class rules and marking procedures. As I perused the syllabus for her biology class, I saw stuff about dna, genetics, evolution, etc. There was no reference to unintelligent design whatsoever. What do they think this is the 21st century or something? And where is the flying spaghetti monster? Come on lets get with the program.

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory 2

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Found this link tonight from doc searls blog:

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

As usual the onion is brilliant

More Alternative Theories 4

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I found this link on sivacracy.net. If you are going to teach unintelligent design then you should not be restricting the theories that are taught.

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.read the rest of this

Dan Gillmor on Faith as Science

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Dan Gillmor had a good post yesterday about Shrub’s recent comment that Unintelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution in schools. As usual Dan has hit on a very important point in there. Why aren’t business leaders up in arms about the damage that republican policies are doing to the education of our kids and the future or our economy. I have no doubt that actions of the shrub administration will lead to a declining standard of living for our future generations in this country unless of course you happen to be part of the republican upper class. What amazes me is the continuing belief by so many poor and middle class voters in this country that by voting for the gop they will eventually benefit and be part of the republican class. In fact the policies that they are voting for only push them further down not lift them up. And unfortunately most democrats don’t seem to have the backbone to stand up and tell it like it really is because they mostly depend on campaign contributions from corporate interests. They provide enough support to both sides to maintain the facade of 2 party state in this country when in relaity what we have is a 1 corporate interest state.