Any court, conservative or liberal, could see through the I.D. smokescreen. I suspect they didn't want to have to issue a conflicting ruling if someone wanted to teach other creation stories as science, like that the world was created from an egg, or that Damballah, a serpent, moved his coils thus creating the hills and the valleys. Or that he created the stars and planets from the earth which emerged in the heavens, etc.

There are many diverse stories and beliefs about how the earth was created. They are interesting subjects in philosophy and religions classes. I'd rather have Science classes stick to science, not political agendas disguised as science.

Those darn liberal progressives...LOL

Funny how progressive liberals agree with courts, say governments courts are good when they say you can kill an unborn human life, cannot kill a bird egg, go against itelligent design (God), etc. Oh that's right, there is no right, just relevance.

But they are bad when they show liberals lost an election.

How about them super delegates?

Fortunately, the courts have seen through the trojan horse of the ID movement. It is a vehicle to attempt to force the inclusion of religious belief, specifically creationism, in science classes. Teaching a belief system belongs in religion and philosophy classes, Sunday Schools, and Church.

Funny how the scientists aren't suing churches to force them to teach only science. LOL.

"God can be and is responsible for evolution. That is not so hard to accept, is it?
Now if he could just fix Sandwich! LOL--It's a joke. Ha"

Accepted, but there is no tie in for Man. Such as we are from anythingelse, fish, ape, toad, etc.. No fossil exist. No problem with earth was created from a mass and molded by the Hand into what it is today.

Uppity scientist like the one on "Expelled" thought creationism was nuts but that we could have been developed by "perhaps space aliens" was possible. There is such a thing as being educated beyond your intelligence level.

And I am fixed....no, not that way. By the water and the blood years ago. Then later away from new age progressive socialist Democrat thinking.
And you can fix a sandwich however you like it. Lettuce, tomatoes, ham, chicken, wheat......

You are correct, Ragman, in citing that Newton's "law" of gravitivity is in fact a theory.
When studying gravitation, those who want to see the entire picture should also study other "theories" that do shed some light on the topic:
Alternative theories of Gravitation:Historical alternative theories
Aristotelian theory of gravity
Le Sage's theory of gravitation (1784) also called LeSage gravity, proposed by Georges-Louis Le Sage, based on a fluid-based explanation where a light gas fills the entire universe.
Nordström's theory of gravitation (1912, 1913), an early competitor of general relativity.
Whitehead's theory of gravitation (1922), another early competitor of general relativity.
Recent alternative theoriesBrans-Dicke theory of gravity (1961)
Induced gravity (1967), a proposal by Andrei Sakharov according to which general relativity might arise from quantum field theories of matter.
Rosen bi-metric theory of gravityIn the modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) (1981), Mordehai Milgrom proposes a modification of Newton's Second Law of motion for small accelerations.
The new and highly controversial Process Physics theory attempts to address gravity The self-creation cosmology theory of gravity (1982) by G.A. Barber in which the Brans-Dicke theory is modified to allow mass creation.
Nonsymmetric gravitational theory (NGT) (1994) by John Moffat.
The satirical theory of Intelligent falling (2002, in its first incarnation as "Intelligent grappling")
Tensor-vector-scalar gravity (TeVeS) (2004), a relativistic modification of MOND by Jacob Bekenstein.
Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitat...
Likewise, if Newton's formulation of gravity is just a theory and other theories exist, then certainly the evolutionist scientists shouldn't be afraid of someone presenting alternative theories of the Big Bang from a creationist point of view.
Mind you, I do not espouse Raymond Smith's creationist point of view, I just think that evolution should be QUESTIONED, as it is just a theory. If that means that creationism is to be brought up, let's talk.
I'm not afraid of it and want to totally squelch it, even though I disagree with it. You say creationism is not science, yet these people do point out some scientific "problems" which science cannot explain, such as the origin of species whose early fossils are not evident in the beginning stages of the earth.If there is no merit to it, in all its different forms, science will disprove "creationism."
Censorship isn't needed.

Gravity is also a theory. But I am sure it is an accepted theory.
Creationism, is hardly science.

Hello Penthor,

Actually, in the print edition, Raymond's column appeared not in the "op ed", but in the "Faith" section, which is a Saturday feature. There are guest columns from many of the local congregations- Baptist, non-denominational, Lutheran, and Moslem. This week had a commentary I enjoyed reading from the new Orthodox Church in town.

Although people can certainly disgree, he was well within his bounds to put forth his point of view, as the Advocate has asked for this input from the locals.

Also, we should remember that evolution, which I support in part, is still a theory. There is plent of evidence for micro-evolution, or the evolution within species, but the historical support for macro-evolution is incredibly lacking. Scientists have not been able to find the evidence to support one species evolving into another, or to find the explanation for new species seemingly coming out of "nowhere."

Louisiana recently passed a bill that allows teachers to bring up opposing points of view to evolution and the origin of life/species, including creationism, and cloning. Sounds fine to me.

Shame on you Raymond Smith for distorting the truth and making misleading statements. Your cause of trying to convert non-believers is just. I would defend any person’s right to believe what they want and to exercise free speech. However, in an OpEd you have a responsibility to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” (as do the Advocate editors do to screen for truth, within reason). As has been pointed out you fall short of this requirement.

I suspect that in the end, your argument is not only directed at converting non-believers, but also at compelling society to require that your belief become part of our educational and governmental frameworks. While I will fight for our right to believe as we wish and utilize our right to free speech, I will fight equally ardently to defeat your desire to have all children subjected to these distortions in our public schools, or have our public monies (i.e. taxes) committed to uphold, advocate, or support belief in any faith.

Please, continue to believe as you want and use free speech to convert others to your beliefs. However, let’s keep the discussion on an accurate, truthful and honest plane. To do otherwise calls into question the veracity of your statements and draws the reader away from the real issue.

God can be and is responsible for evolution. That is not so hard to accept, is it?
Now if he could just fix Sandwich! LOL--It's a joke. Ha

Thanks MaryAnn....I think really and truly we agree on most things at some level. I just never have been able to understand the horrible feelings on both sides when there is such obvious harmony in these two concepts. In my opinion you almost cannot have one without the other.

Science makes no sense without God.....and creationism is unbelievable without science.

I wish people who complain about something would at least go see something they discredit. I saw "Expelled". It was much better made than anything Michael Moore has attempted. And much more thoughtful than the scare doctor Al Gore's attempt at false science thought.

And yes, I have seen all of the films by all of them.

Hello SouthTexas,Happy Fourth of July to you and everyone else.
I agree with you. (Second time in the last month or so!)The way I see it, scientists are about the business of finding out what God has created.
I can say that at least for a good deal of Christians, science and "religion" are not at odds. Some of history's greatest scientists- Newton, Pasteur, Gallileo, Copernicus, Faraday, Bernard, and Heisenbergy, were all Christians.
I was reading an essay lately by Thomas Williams, LC, which says that Christianity is not against science, just an absolutist reading of science. Science can never explain the meaning of life, how people should treat one another, or explain love.  Given.... many people don't care about these questions.
As far as Raymond Smith's own brand of "creationism" I do not support all of it. He's a great guy, and I do know him, but I think that reasonable people can disagree reasonably.

I am ever puzzled by the belief of so many people that it is either creationism or evolution. Why can't there be both. I believe God created everything and he fine tunes it all through evolution. You cannot argue with evolution....there are just too many absolute proofs....neither can you argue with the belief that a greater and wiser power is conducting this symphony called earth and man and development of everything therein.

Why are we humans gradually losing our wisdom teeth....because God has realized that we no longer need them. Why have we lost most of our body hair over the years....because God realizes we don't need it anymore. I have a real problem with the conflict. THERE IS NO CONFLICT.

Oops - my first paragraph was supposed to read: "Raymond Smith apparently missed the Dishonesty Institute's instructions to religious people to never admit in public that the "Intelligent Designer" is the Creator God of Genesis, but is instead an anonymous entity."

This writer uses the usual creationist tactic of quote out of context. In this case, he gave truncated quote from Darwin which completely mischaracterizes Dawin's frame of mind. On the eye, here is the complete quote:
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility."

This is a standard creationist ploy and, indeed, makes up what is known as "creation science."

Raymond Smith apparently missed the Dishonesty Institute's instructions to religious people to never admit in public that the "Intelligent Designer" is an anonymous entity, not at all to be mistaken for the Creator God of Genesis.

There's a good reason for this, of course. The 2005 Dover trial (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_trial ) was disastrous for intelligent design creationism, as the Federal judge ruled that it is blatantly not science but religion. The judge also stated in his decision, "It is ironic that several of these individuals (sworn witnesses), who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie (under oath) to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the Intelligent Design Policy." These religious fanatics have lied to us before, and they will continue to lie to us. Remember that.

(For further proof, Google the term "cdesign proponentsists" and follow where it originated. Prepare to be both amused and disgusted.)

Mr. Smith parrots another lie of the Dishonesty Institute's, that "...quite a number of scientists are now admitting that evolution is hard to swallow and they do see the hand of an Intelligent Designer at work." Sorry, Raymond - that's simply not true. There are about a half-million scientists, and the Dishonesty Institute has gathered a list of 704 of them (many of them not even biologists) who "dissent against Darwinism," and then trumpeted this as proof that "...quite a number of scientists..."

And then Raymond mentions the execrable anti-science movie "Expelled." Please, take a look at http://www.expelledexposed.com to see the non-stop lies and distortions of "Expelled" exposed and explained.

But "Expelled" is right about one thing: Yes, "scientists" who propose theories based on intelligent design creationism ARE expelled, just as doctors who support the demonic possession theory of disease are expelled, just as astronomers who support the theory that the sun rotates around the earth are expelled, just as geologists who support the theory that the earth is 6,000 years old are expelled. Get the picture?