A date is set

Well folks, it’s time to mark your calendars. On January 14th Utah will enter the Dark Ages :^) From an article in the Deseret News, Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, is preparing a bill to “challenge the State Board of Education's position on teaching evolution”. At the moment he is keeping the wording of the bill under raps, but it doesn’t take a Sherlock to figure out that he is waiting on the outcome to the recent trial in Dover, PA. He plans to reveal the bill to the public at the conservative Utah Eagle Forum convention in January, a few days before the legislature opens.

Please post a comment on Utah’s Senate blog and let Sen. Buttars know what you think of his bill.

I noticed Duane Jeffery, professor of zoology at BYU, in The Daily Herald attempt to alert us to the coming plague:

Events of the past few days suggest that we should take a break from our discussion of DNA and human migrations, and turn instead to matters of science education.

The just-concluded trial involving Dover, Pa., ran from Sept. 26 through Nov. 4 -- a full six weeks of testimony and legal maneuvering considering whether "Intelligent Design" is a scientific theory qualified and fit to be included in public school curricula. For a trial with stakes so high, the case has received shockingly little attention by Utah media.

But because at least one local TV channel has now announced that Utah faces legislation in January similar to actions deployed in Pennsylvania, it clearly behooves us all to pay close attention.

Jeffery briefly summarizes the case in Dover, PA, then mentions,

Witnesses for ID could not establish any scientific contribution that their "theory" has made and could provide no example of how it could be applied to advance scientific research. Genuinely scientific ideas must meet those challenges.

ID is clearly vacuous and sterile. And therein lies the reason that every scientific organization that has addressed the issue has concluded that ID has no legitimacy and is undeserving of a place in the science classroom.

Think about it folks. If those folks out in Dover couldn’t show how ‘Intelligent design’ had made any contribution to science what makes us think we could do any better? Why would we want this taught in a science class? Do you really want ‘Intelligent Design’ taught in our schools?