Talk:Edwards v. Aguillard

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[edit] Removed section "Consequences" because it was entirely POV

This section was so thoroughly contaminated by POV that there was little to save, so I just removed it.

• The claim that what the section describes is a "consequence" or "effect" of the ruling is POV. One side in this debate claims that the other side is just creationists in disguise who are trying to get around court rulings by not mentioning God. The other side, however, includes (besides an unknown number of such cryptocreationists) people who sincerely believe that random mutations and natural selection alone cannot explain the evolution of life, and who don't think that this implies the existence of a personal God, let alone a specifically Christian one, let alone a literal reading of Genesis. So the intelligent design movement can't be described as merely a consequence of the effect a certain ruling had on Christian creationists.
• The formulation "the supposed 'intelligent designer'" implies that proponents of intelligent design necessarily believe in such a designer, but not all of them do.
• "Of Pandas and People" is not a creationist textbook. It's an intelligent design textbook which is accused by one side of the debate of being a cryptocreationist textbook.
• The book does not attack evolutionary biology. It claims that evolutionary biology cannot provide a full explanation of the biological facts by assuming only random mutations and natural selection, but must instead invoke the hypothesis of intelligent design, which is not in conflict with evolutionary biology as such, only with the currently dominant view in evolutionary biology that such a hypothesis is unnecessary.
• The formulation "This form of creationism, known as intelligent design creationism" again claims that intelligent design is a form of creationism, which is merely the opinion of one side of the debate.

Removing the section consequences was wrong. Were there no consequences? If you think something is POV, improve it. Your comments are very wrong. ID is trying to get creationism into the classroom through into the back door, and there is plenty of evidence to back that up. I do like the word "cryptocreationist". — Dunc|☺ 21:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to sign my previous post.

I'm sure there were lots of consequences, but I don't know the details of them. The claim that the ID movement is merely a consequence of this court ruling is POV. If you feel it's important to mention this opinion, it needs to be clearly marked as an opinion. I don't know of any non-controversial claims about the ruling's consequences.

You simply repeat the claim that "ID is trying to get creationism into the classroom through into the back door", without responding to my argument that the movement includes different kinds of people, cryptocreationists and others. If you have evidence that a sufficiently overwhelming majority of ID proponents are cryptocreationists to justify identifying them with "the ID movement", please point to it.

You reinstated the entire text, including formulations whose criticisms you didn't respond to in your post. I'm not going to re-revert right away, but I would expect you to respond to the reasons for my changes when you revert them.

I had explained why I removed instead of improving -- it seemed that very little non-POV content would have remained. If you think that some or all of what's there is important, it needs to be clearly marked as a particular opinion, and where possible balanced by the opinion presented on the other side of the debate.

Joriki 21:55, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you don't know the details of the consequences, the point of the article is to inform you of them. You did seem to think that Edwards did not rule that teaching "creation science" was illegal!!?!?!?. Your other points are of similar standing, though FWIW:

• Have you read Barbara Forrest's testimony on the Dover Panda Trial? It contains plenty of evidence that OPAP is creationist textbook in which references to creationism were changed to "intelligetn design" as a direct result of the Edward's decision.
• Why does the narrative on Darwin on Trial start at the end of Edwards v Aguillard?
• Why does Francis Beckwith think that teaching ID would not violate the establishment clause ?

And you also clearly haven't a clue what ID is (which is fair enough it is fairly nuanced), but those of us who have been following this controversy closely and fortunately do know what we're talking about. But, remember 3RR won't you?— Dunc|☺ 09:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

re: consequences. IMO it's probably better to say something along the lines of: The ruling has made it impossible to teach fact claims whose truth depends to any extent on religious assumptions, so that any constitutional attempt to teach theories more consistent with the bible (including theories whose scope only encompasses disproof of evolution or necessity of a creating intelligence) would need to be well supported scientifically and devoid of clear religious motivation. Since adherents claim ID is consistent with these principles, opponents claim that it is a variant of creationism which has arisen expressly for this purpose. -- snaxalotl

[edit] Edwards v. Arkansas?

In the Kitzmiller ruling [1], this case is referred to as "Edwards v. Arkansas, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), five years after McLean...." Is the judge confusing the case with Epperson?—Wasabe3543 18:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)