The MF image at the top of the screen is entirely the work of Stefan, I'm afraid. I didn't even like the purple when it went up.

If you're squeezing, then so will I: Have you considered a move to Pennsylvania?

Oh, it's one little town, Felix. Don't have a cow. I thought you did the graphics, though.

For the record, though, Sterling, do you approve or disapprove of Dover's action?

I respect a local school board's right to set curriculum. And I believe that the development of a national consensus on an issue required that some parties or entities take the leading edge.

the development of a national consensus??!?? Sterling, we had a national consensus. We had a trans-national consensus. Hell, I'd say we had a global consensus: everywhere that science is taught, evolution is taught as an integral part of science. From Mexico to Malaysia, from Libya to Latvia, the general acceptance of evolution within the scientific curriculum has been utterly uncontroversial. But suddenly a bunch of evangelicals in southern Pennsylvania represent the "leading edge" of a scientific debate? No, Sterling, I don't think that Philadelphia school districts are remotely the right place for such a debate to happen. Scientific journals, maybe. High-level conferences, even. But a school district's scientific curriculum must comprise generally accepted scientific knowledge. Schools, as opposed to universities, should be the last place that science gets amended. If you're going to teach something as science in school, you'd better be certain. And "maybe the Universe is God's blog" is not, by a long shot, certainty.

We never had a national consensus.

OK, Sterling, if there was never even a national consensus that schools should teach science in their science classes, can you give me one example of "the development of a national consensus on an issue" through competing rival implementations?

This dark green color for the headings is hard to read. Let's move on from the military look shall we.

There has never been a national consensus on evolution.

As for competing rival implementations: the English language. At the time of the Revolution large parts of several states spoke German - nearly half the population of the colonies by some estimates, and Dutch was still the common tongue in the Hudson River Valley (and parts of New Jersey). French was common also.

You will note that today, none of those languages are widely spoken - just a little piece of Pennsylvania still speaks German. You will also note that the United States does not have an official language.

I don't know why you're getting your panties in a bunch over this, Catfish. In case my comments haven't made it clear to you - I.D. is a COMPROMISE position. The very fact that former creationists are taking it up shows that they believe their position to be untenable.

Jame, the color was sampled from the Euphrates in the satellite image of Falluja that is currently our banner.

(Sterling, so you want to thank Christ, Felix and Stefan in that order?)

Is there a national consensus on the theory of gravitation, or do heavier objects still fall faster in some counties?

I think 9.8 m/s^2 is taught everywhere, even though there are variations in gravitation throughout the U.S. Good point.

Hey Sterling, I think you might have just come up with a whole new branch of science -- Compromise Theory! Take two rival scientific theories, and then simply compromise on the one in the middle! Is light a particle? Is it a wave? Hell, why not make it a particle going up and down in a wave form, rather than in a straight line? They're all just theories, not facts, right?

Well, Felix, neither creation nor evolution can be proved at this time. Both have adherents and justifications, and much social and cultural weight hangs on the outcomes of either being taught. There is also the very real possibility that the truth lies somewhere between the two. So I don't see why compromise is so abhorrent in this situation.

I.D. acknowledges natural selection, genetics, microbiology and materialistic principles governing the day-to-day function of life. Is total materialism so important to you - nothing of the spirit permitted - that you would ignore the distance Christians are traveling to reach a tenable compromise? Or are conservatives the only ones capable of compromise?

"Both have adherents and justifications, and much social and cultural weight hangs on the outcomes of either being taught."

Sterling, you do realize MemeFirst is slowly but surely turning into a Postmodernist that Derrida would be proud to claim as his own?

"Is total materialism so important to you - nothing of the spirit permitted - that you would ignore the distance Christians are traveling to reach a tenable compromise?"

All the Christians I know think ID is stupid. They're not traveling anywhere. (Admittedly, I don't know that many.) In any case, Evolution is compatible with spirituality, just not the kind that involves an angry old man with a white beard sitting in heaven, regularly sending meteors our way.

The next thing you know, Sterling will be telling use there is no such thing as 'truth', and that 'Sterling' is merely the aggregate of a number of contingent discursive structures that, when viewed singly, reveal contradictions and limitations that cannot resolve themselves into a comestible whole, regardless of the hegemonic ideologies that emanate from the putative unified identity.

I think Sterling was put on MemeFirst to do God's work.

I believe there is objective truth. Vis-a-vis life's origins, however, we don't know what that truth is. So why not be flexible?

I believe there is a truth, but we just can't see it? Christ, I feel like I'm talking to some stoner in the collge coffee shop after Philosophy 101. Let me guess, you're one of those people whom, after misusing a word, says hippie shit like, "That's not what I mean when I say that".

We don't know lots of things, 99. You don't see high schools teaching superstring theory as fact, because we don't really know yet. Likewise evolution - all the fossil record tells us is that there have been changes.

We don't know much for a fact about how those changes occurred.