Why does every state have to try their own creationism law?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Reading fail, AGAIN.

[Ronja]

OMFSM!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Great Thundering Ego!

[Thumpalumpacus]

And it's largely, if not wholly, stolen. So don't give the thief honors due to someone else.

Hmm, I hadn't read it put that way, and didn't realize it was lifted whole-cloth.

There are many pre-Jesus characters and his life is a construct of those. Religion freely steals from other religion, they have no honor among thieves.

And, from Doonesbury:

I think we're talking past each other here. I was talking about Seth's take on ID being interesting, not the Jesus story. My apologies; it seems I misunderstood you.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And my post didn't necessarily follow yours. But I disregard Seth routinely, so I was thinking of the larger picture, not his mythtaken views on the issue.

[Thumpalumpacus]

And there's another Atheist classic evasion fallacy. "Because science cannot observationally or experimentally prove the truth of a hypothesis it cannot therefore be true."

That's not what I wrote. I'll address the rest of your book when you do me the courtesy of addressing what I actually wrote.

[Seth]

Notice that Seth is claiming things produced by evolutionary biology's rules for his distorted and farcical version of Intelligent Design, using the lower case version in a disingenuous attempt to have some case, any case to back his claims up. This is why he is so ludicrous.

Deliberate manipulation of "evolutionary biology's rules" by intelligence to achieve a specified result qualifies in every respect as intelligent design. That you want to conflate the theistic notions of intelligent design with the scientific facts before us in order to disparaged the idea that life on earth could have been intelligently designed is merely an example of the ideological blindness and bigotry you suffer from.

That all you can do is hurl insults demonstrates nothing but stupidity.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You make up your own definitions to weasel. There's a reason I don't respect you, and this it is.

[Seth]

And there's another Atheist classic evasion fallacy. "Because science cannot observationally or experimentally prove the truth of a hypothesis it cannot therefore be true."

That's not what I wrote. I'll address the rest of your book when you do me the courtesy of addressing what I actually wrote.

You wrote: "The highly impractical matter of you finding the cradle of life on a random comet elsewhere in the cosmos renders this practically useless, because you cannot know."

I paraphrased what I felt was the intention of what you wrote, and I think I paraphrased it accurately. What you wrote was a fallacy, and a strawman, because I did not claim that finding "the cradle of life on a random comet" would prove anything. I merely pointed out that the panspermia theory holds that comets may be the source of the complex organic chemistry that, when disseminated on earth through cometary collision, evolved into life forms (or indeed may have disseminated living organic materials themselves which merely replicated here on earth).

This is one of a number of theories regarding OLE, and plenty of science money has been spent trying to determine if comets do indeed contain such materials. It's considered a valid scientific hypothesis even though there is no proof positive that this is the mechanism that seeded earth with the necessary components for life to emerge.

The point of mentioning panspermia is to point out that there are already valid scientific theories for the extraterrestrial origins of life, and that intelligent seeding of earth with primitive living organisms themselves by some extraterrestrial intelligence is neither inherently theistic or anywhere outside the realm of scientific possibility.

I'm not claiming that intelligent design DID happen, and I'm therefore under no burden to prove that claim, I'm merely attempting to make the point that it COULD HAVE happened and that no "God" is required for it to have happened, and that the proposition that it could have, or even did happen is not an inherently or inescapably religious and theistic proposition, it's a completely scientific proposition that's entirely plausible, but is as yet unsupported. But that it's unlikely or unsupported by the current evidence does not mean it's inherently a religious concept. And that means that teaching that controversy, leaving God out of it, does not violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause, and that therefore, it is perfectly appropriate under the Constitution and the law for a state or local school board to mandate that intelligent design (sans references to God, and sans a sub rosa agenda of inserting biblical creationism into the science classroom) be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

Whether my hypothesis of OLE is supported by evidence today does not detract from the purely secular scientific nature of the hypothesis, and therefore there is no constitutional bar to it being taught in public schools, which is the point of the thread's OP. Whether it is relevant or important to teach OLE to high school students as an alternative hypothesis is not a matter for science to determine, it's a political and social decision that lies in the hands of the states and of local school boards. There is no constitutional mandate that all information presented in a science classroom must be supported by some unspecified amount of science-approved evidence. School boards can require their teachers to teach whatever science they deem appropriate within the strictures and requirements of state not federal law for those students because they represent the parents of the children involved, who DO have a constitutional right to oversee what their children are being taught. If the state decides that teaching students pre-Copernican physics is appropriate, it's not up to the federal government or the courts to overrule that sovereign state decision.

Whether this is a wise thing for a state to do is a matter of federalism and democratic local control, in which the central government has no power or authority to dictate to the states what they can or must teach their citizens in state-owned public schools. However wise or unwise it might be to teach students pre-Copernican physics, so long as the state does not engage in "establishment of religion" in violation of the Lemon Test, the state legislature, as representatives of the people, have the sovereign right to teach whatever it deems appropriate in the public schools, notwithstanding the objections of Atheists or scientists or anyone else.

This thread asks the question "Why does every state have to try to have their own creationism law?" I'm directly addressing the OP by demonstrating that so long as a state or local decision on what science to teach and how to teach it does not "establish religion" according to the Lemon Test, neither the 14th Amendment nor the Constitution itself gives the federal government the power to interfere in a state's right to determine the educational curricula for its students.

As a state's rights issue, the direct answer to the OP is "because they are sovereign states and it's their decision to make, so long as they don't violate the Establishment Clause proscriptions on "establishing religion.""

To accomplish that answer it was necessary to demonstrate that "creationism" and "intelligent design" are not inherently or inescapably the same thing, and that teaching intelligent design as I suggest (call it OLE) DOES NOT contravene the Lemon Test and is therefore lawful to teach in public schools.

And I'm pointing out these facts as a demonstration of the ideological blindness and bigotry of religiously zealous Atheists who hold evolution up as matter of indisputable religious faith and will not hear any alternative theories or brook any dissent, no matter how firmly rooted in physics and science such dissent may be.

[Clinton Huxley]

To conclude - if science cannot validate ID, we need to redefine science, says the chap who's doesn't know the difference between herbs and homeopathy.

I think science sleeps soundly tonight.

[Seth]

To conclude - if science cannot validate ID, we need to redefine science, says the chap who's doesn't know the difference between herbs and homeopathy.

I think science sleeps soundly tonight.

Strawman. Science, you see, doesn't say we cannot validate ID, you do. You are not science, not by half.

[Tero]

Lenski proves evolution. Where is your experiment, Seth?

[Seth]

Lenski proves evolution. Where is your experiment, Seth?

Monsanto's labs.

[Tero]

Get Monsanto to sponsor your books, then. Otherwise ID will not be in it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You wrote: "The highly impractical matter of you finding the cradle of life on a random comet elsewhere in the cosmos renders this practically useless, because you cannot know."

I paraphrased what I felt was the intention of what you wrote, and I think I paraphrased it accurately.

Well, you didn't. Go look up the meaning of the word "practically". When you address what I actually wrote instead of a conveniently dishonest paraphrase, I'll return to this conversation.

I have never said that ID is impossible, and only a retard could glean that from what I wrote.