Posted on 06/15/2005 10:22:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
TOPEKA, Kan. - A discussion about how evolution should be taught in public schools degenerated Wednesday into personal attacks among State Board of Education members.
The board is reviewing proposed standards drafted by three conservative members designed to expose students to more criticism of evolution in the classroom. During the discussion, four board members who want the standards to maintain their existing evolution-friendly tone assailed the proposal.
Bill Wagnon told the three conservative board members they were the "dupes" of intelligent design advocates, who presented what Wagnon said was bad science during public hearings in May.
"It is all based on absolute and total fraud," Wagnon said of the proposal.
But one of the three board members, Connie Morris, lectured the board's four moderates for not attending the public hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life, that all life has descended from a common origin and that man and apes share a common ancestor.
"Had you attended, you would have been informed," Morris said. "You would be sitting here as informed individuals and not arrogantly calling us dupes."
Conservatives have a 6-4 majority, so much of what the three members proposed — if not all of it — is likely to survive.
The board didn't make a decision Wednesday about the standards, but it told a committee of educators to review the proposal. Board Chairman Steve Abrams, another one of the three members who drafted the proposal, said he also intended to have a second, external review it in July. That suggests the board won't vote until at least August.
Besides Abrams and Morris, helping draft the latest proposal was board member Kathy Martin.
The ongoing debate over how evolution should be taught has brought international attention to Kansas. The four days of hearings in May attracted journalists from Canada, France, Great Britain and Japan.
The standards determine how fourth-, seventh- and 10th graders are tested on science. They currently describe evolution as a key concept for students to learn before graduating from high school, treating it as the best explanation for how life developed and changed over time.
The proposed standards don't specifically mention intelligent design, except to say the standards don't take a position. But advocates of intelligent design, which says some features of the natural world are so complex and well-ordered that they are best explained by an intelligent cause, organized the case against evolution during the hearings.
Many scientists view intelligent design as a form of creationism, and national and state science groups boycotted the public hearings, saying they were rigged against evolution. As a result, no scientist testified in favor of evolution.
State law requires the board to update its academic standards regularly, setting up this year's debate over evolution.
In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards, bringing international condemnation and ridicule to Kansas. Elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservative Republicans recaptured the board's majority in 2004 elections.
Battles over evolution also have occurred in recent years in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Circulated Monday was a newsletter from Morris, in which she derided evolution as an "age-old fairy tale," sometimes defended with "anti-God contempt and arrogance." She wrote that evolution is "a theory in crisis" and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!"
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On the Net:
State Board of Education: http://www.ksbe.state.ks.us
Had you attended, you would have been informed," Morris said. "You would be sitting here as informed individuals and not arrogantly calling us dupes." 
a newsletter from Morris, in which she derided evolution as an "age-old fairy tale," sometimes defended with "anti-God contempt and arrogance." She wrote that evolution is "a theory in crisis" and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!" Hey Connie!
Teaching the theory of evolution in State-run public schools is really just another means of effectuating the bogus, non-existant Constitutional 'law' that separates Church from State. The bottom line is that we are fast becoming a humanistic society which sanctifies science, sex and self, as they gradually bury God under the rubble of what was once the American way.
and yea I mean what if alchemy is actually true? Why do chemists feel they can ignore it?
So do I. I will never let them diminish my faith so much as one iota.
Personally though, I don't care what some scientists think. What troubles me is how the public school system teaches their theories as though they were the undeniable truth. These people want to separate Church from State by burying the Church and their teachings and replacing them with 'science'.
and abiogenisis is spontaneous generation wrapped in silk. I won't swallow that one.
"Personal attacks"?
How "unusual" for any discussion of evolution.
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