{"id":388,"date":"2008-01-14T20:00:08","date_gmt":"2008-01-15T01:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=388"},"modified":"2008-08-05T21:03:42","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T01:03:42","slug":"david-gibbs-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=388","title":{"rendered":"David Gibbs strikes again"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association had submitted a legal memo to the Florida Board of Education a while ago trying to claim that evolution is a “belief system.” (previous post on who this guy is here<\/a>.) Well, he’s still around and making some noise again. According to the St. Petersburg Times education blog, The Gradebook<\/a>, the legal firm is updating that legal memo and will ship it to the BoE again. Gibbs whines about evolution being a fundamental concept in biology, which it is no matter how he complains. And based on this, he tries to argue again that:<\/p>\n

“Making this gigantic jump moves the evolutionary hypothesis from the realm of science into a philosophical faith-based belief system,” Gibbs continues. “It has fallen into the same trap of which science has accused religion. It posits its entire interpretive rationale on something which is unobservable and untested.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A representative from the ACLU puts Gibbs in his place:<\/p>\n

“He claims that teaching science, based on well-accepted theories backed by factual evidence, is somehow promoting a particular religion in public school,” [Becky Steele] told The Gradebook in an email. “To see how cockamamie that is, imagine them arguing that the Establishment Clause would be violated by teaching a calculus class that only expresses the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcworldview’ of mathematics without any sense of the divine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association had submitted a legal memo to the Florida Board of Education a while ago trying to claim that evolution is a “belief system.” (previous post on who this guy is here.) Well, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-6g","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=358","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":0},"title":"Here’s why you need to get involved","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Recap: Florida's public school science standards from 1996 are being completely revamped. The current standards don't mention evolution, but the new draft standards do so prominently. This has stirred up the anti-evolution crowd, including several education system decision-makers. The real story here is that the science standards overall have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":425,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=425","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":1},"title":"Another lawmaker, the same old lawyer, and a theory","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"An Associated Press article popped up on the Orlando Sentinel website this evening. The state Board of Education was having a conference call with state legislators concerning class size stuff when a panhandle lawmaker couldn't resist the urge to say a few words about evolution in the state science standards.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":403,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=403","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":2},"title":"Taking apart Gibbs and Grubbs","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Gradebook has a follow-up post about the Gibbs and Grubbs \"legal\" memos [previous post on this here]. This time FSU law Professor Steven G. Gey is featured, and he completely rips apart Gibbs' and Grubbs' arguments. It's a good read well worth a few minutes of your time. Here's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Analysis\/Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Analysis\/Commentary","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":390,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=390","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":3},"title":"The slow burn memo","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A previous post announced that Mr. Gibbs would be releasing an updated version of a legal memo cautioning the state board of education against getting too cozy with evolution in the new draft of the state science standards. It turns out that his partner in crime Francis Grubbs is the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":352,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=352","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":4},"title":"Those not in favor of good science education, raise your hand.","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[I will bump this post up about once a week so as to always be on the front page. Latest bump: Feb. 15.] For your convenience, here is a list of the 12 counties that passed anti-evolution resolutions: Clay, Jackson, Baker, Hamilton, Holmes, St. Johns, Taylor, Madison, Lafayette, Nassau, Washington,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":895,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=895","url_meta":{"origin":388,"position":5},"title":"You’ve got to be kidding me …","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"State Sen. Stephen Wise of Jacksonville announced through an article in the Florida Times Union that he plans to file a bill this legislative session to require evolution to be balanced with a discussion of intelligent design. Yes, require. Not just allow, but to require. Of course, we have to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"ID Creationism\" bills '09"","block_context":{"text":"\"ID Creationism\" bills '09","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=27"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}