Evolution fight shaping up in SAD 59

[jpak]

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=186909&ac=PHnws

The Maine Department of Education disagrees with an Athens school board director who wants School Administrative District 59 to drop evolution from its high school science curricula.

Director Matthew Linkletter argues that evolution is an unprovable theory and shouldn't be taught as fact. He's urged the SAD 59 Board of Directors to consider his view during its May 19 meeting in Madison, with a goal of removing evolution from science classrooms.

But David Connerty-Marin, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, says evolution must be taught because, in the state's view, it's a proven science.

"For our students to be prepared for college work and life in the 21st century, it's necessary," said Connerty-Marin.

<more>

[asteroid2003QQ47]

1. "Inherit the Downeast Wind"

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Fight over evolution looms in Maine school district

May 11, 2008
<>
Madison Town Manager Norman Dean, who taught science in Madison from 1962 through 1996 and once taught Linkletter, characterized his former student's proposal as "absolutely stupid."

"I thought we already had the monkey trial," he said, referring to the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee that tested a law banning the teaching of evolution.

Information from: Morning Sentinel, http://www.onlinesentinel.com/

ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2008/05/11/fight_over_evolution_looms_in_maine_school_district/
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Great material for a new movie; a mixture of Inherit the Wind and My Cousin Vinny.

Bill: We think they're trying to set us up as patsies, Ma. You know how corrupt it is down here in Maine.

Stan: They're inbred. They sleep with their sisters.

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Dorothy, You’re Not in Kansas Any More!

[mainer]

2. Unbelievable. In the blue state of Maine!

I read this article yesterday in the Herald and couldn't believe that this is happening in our state. "Evolution has never been observed"???

Maybe someone should tell the ignoramuses about the existence of little things called bacteria.

[Shorebound]

3. Right-wing's new argument

This is a prime example of the right wing's new way of argument -- anything that can't be "proved" must be "just an opinion" or "just an idea" and therefore untrue. It totally ignores scientific theory because it is, at its heart, a complete rejection of science in any area that challenges a faith-based view of the world.

What a bunch of maroons. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

4. Credit where it's due!

The non-thinkers of Maine have insured our place on the map, we are now right right beside Tennessee!
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In the middle of a hot July 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, a comparatively simple law suit turned into an important conflict between Fundamentalist religion and science. A local school teacher, John Scopes, had violated Tennessee law by teaching the theory of evolution. William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), a distinguished Democratic politician, orator, and statesman, joined the prosecuting attorneys; Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), the nation's most powerful liberal attorney, joined the defense. With their appearance, and because of their respective reputations, the trial all but ignored Scopes (although he was finally convicted and fined $100); the highlight came on the afternoon of the seventh day when Darrow surprised everyone by calling Bryan to the stand in order to expose the intellectual weaknesses in Bryan's Fundamentalism. For about two hours the two men faced each other in their shirt-sleeves.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/scopes.html

State v. Scopes: Trial Excerpts
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes2.htm

Day 7---< Clarence> Darrow's examination of Bryan
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/day7.htm

Q--You believe the story of the flood to be a literal interpretation?
A--Yes, sir.
Q--When was that Flood?
A--I would not attempt to fix the date. The date is fixed, as suggested this morning.
Q--About 4004 B.C.?
A--That has been the estimate of a man that is accepted today. I would not say it is accurate.
Q--That estimate is printed in the Bible?
A--Everybody knows, at least, I think most of the people know, that was the estimate given.
Q--But what do you think that the Bible, itself says? Don't you know how it was arrived at?
A--I never made a calculation.
Q--A calculation from what?
A--I could not say.
Q--From the generations of man?
A--I would not want to say that.
Q--What do you think?
A--I do not think about things I don't think about.
Q--Do you think about things you do think about?
A--Well, sometimes.

Laugh or cry, Shorebound?
How about laugh AND cry!?

[asteroid2003QQ47]

5. End Times

"It is not coincidental that at the time the leading
sector of the economy was assumed by finance and oil
(a declining global resource) that right-wing
Christianity emerges as a state ideology under
Republican rule. Phillips’ point is that an economy
that unduly relies upon an outdated, limited and
expensive source of energy, substitutes finance and
money markets over manufacturing and production, whose
foreign policy is defined by imperial overreach and
where religious dogma that denies science in the name
of biblical inerrancy has the upper hand among a
sizable part of the population, these are markers of
national crisis leading to national decline."
--Kevin Phillips' AMERICAN THEOCRACY Debt and Capitalist End Times
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/3886/1/201

Could hastening the "End Times" be what these nutters led by
Athens school board director, Linkletter (and GWB) are up to?

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Belief in God 'childish,'...: Einstein letter

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.