Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The books the Dover School Board doesn't like

Early in March, the Debunk Creation mail list donated a collection of science books to the Dover high school library, to counterbalance the anonymous donation of 58 copies of Of Pandas and People. Pands was intended to be used as a supplemental textbook, and to promote Intelligent Design / Intelligent Origin Theory (ID-IOT) as an "alternative" to evolution.

In response, some 23 books were selected as a donation, and sent early in March.

Although the school board accepted Pandas without much fuss, they've been extremely reluctant to accept this donation of 23 books, many of which have been bestsellers, all of which are written for the layman. The excuse has been that the board has to ensure that the books aren't too advanced for the high school students.

In case any high school students are reading, here is a list of the books the Dover School Board doesn't want you reading. Please stay away from them, lest you encounter things too advanced for you.

...anyone who is not a high school student can read the rest of the message in the full text...

  1. Climbing Mount Improbable Richard Dawkins
  2. Finding Darwin's God Kenneth R. Miller
  3. Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science by Peter Atkins
  4. Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives by Robert T. Pennock (Editor)
  5. Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
  6. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins
  7. The Antiquity of Man: Artifactual, Fossil and Gene Records Explored by Michael Brass
  8. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins
  9. Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan
  10. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  11. Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism by Robert T. Pennock
  12. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen William Hawking
  13. What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr
  14. Thread of Life: The Smithsonian Looks at Evolution by Roger Lewin
  15. Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi
  16. This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World by Ernst Mayr
  17. The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
  18. The Pattern of Evolution by Niles Eldredge
  19. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program)by Kip S. Thorne
  20. Evolution : The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
  21. Genome by Matt Ridley
  22. Evolution by Mark Ridley
  23. Wandering lands and animals by Edwin Harris Colbert

This has been a public service announcement by the Rite Wing Technopagan

"Allowing harm to continue unchecked is not 'harming none'. Rather, it harms everyone." — Doreen Valiente

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