Texas State Board of Education Votes To Require Students to Analyze and Evaluate Evolution

AUSTIN, TX--The Texas State Board of Education today voted to require students to analyze and evaluate common ancestry and natural selection, both key components of modern evolutionary theory. The surprising vote came after the Board failed to reinstate language in the overall science standards explicitly requiring coverage of the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories.

"The Texas Board of Education took one step back and two steps forward today," said Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute. "While we wish they would have retained the strengths and weaknesses language in the overall standards, they did something truly remarkable today. They voted to require students to analyze and evaluate some of the most important and controversial aspects of modern evolutionary theory such as the fossil record, universal common descent and even natural selection."

According to West these changes to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills means that teachers and students will be able to discuss the scientific evidence that is supportive as well as evidence that is not supportive of all scientific theories.

"Analyzing, evaluating, any additional scrutiny of evolution can only help students to learn more about the theory," said West, who is associate director of the Institute's Center for Science & Culture.

Regarding frogs, I am not suggesting that they all survived the flood, and I am sure that several species were driven to extinction. However, I am also convinced that speciation (evolution? :) occurs much faster than we suspect. To wit, the sheer number of breeds of dogs that we have today. While in most cases the dogs will revert back to muts if left alone in the wild, some barriers have been erected between the breeds because of sheer size and physiology.

Where we (me the creationist and what I understand to be the typical Macor-Evolutionist) disagree is in the arrival of the different kinds, e.g. frogs, cats, dogs, ducks, finches, camels, etc. I believe they were created from dust on the 5th & 6th days, the Macro Evo believe they all descended from a common ancestor. Whenever I do the research, if one ignores the dating of rocks, the whole hierarchal tree of life system, IMHO, is completely arbitrary and circular, based on the premise that evolution occured. I am not questioning taxonomy per se, but rather the arrangement of "ancestor" and "offsrping" genus'. Amphibians are a good exampl of that.

The lack of a coghesive gelogic column in one place, the overthrusting of "older" layers on top of "younger", and the discovery of "living fossils" (amongst other things) gives me serious concerns about the validity of said system. Hence, my desire to research this whole dating methodology for myself.

[[So now we have all these creationists bleating about trying to claim that “oh yeah, microevolution happens, but not macro.”]]

This is far superior and far more scientific than bleating about how microevolution is hte same as macroevolution when it clearly isn’t.

[[Really? Wow. Although you continue to explain to me how it’s been shown a billion times right here on Free Republic, bastion of top flight scientists, I still don’t understand.]]

No- you can do your own homework- sick and tired of carying your weight for you only to have you simply ignore it

[[Your odd hangup with evolution is borne solely from your particular brand of Christianity]]

Hmmm- Semms my myraid posts would argue otherwise- but agian- you’re free to ignore hte evidneces if you like- just don’t expect to make such false claims and get away with it.

[[You accept the creationist construct of “microevolution” but refuse to acknowledge that such things (which is what all of evolution is based upon - that is, tiny changes in allele frequencies) over sufficient time yield larger, more noticeable changes.]]

These ALL still fall under microevolution- if you don’t understand the difference between Micro and macroevolution, I’m not goign to waste time here explaining it to you when it’s been explained many many many times here on FR.

[[Again, you and your ilk damn well didn’t accept what you now call microevolution 10 yrs ago;]]

Were you born a liar? Or did you just grow into it gradually? Micvroevolution was discovered before Darwin even began to ponder it himself- By a relgious person no less. I’d say that puts acceptance at well over 10 years ago-

[[But then the science became simply overwhelming for the creationists so two things happened: 1) A subset made up ID/IC, mostly for profit of course and 2) Accepted parts of the TOE, careful to snip out those parts which would - for whatever goofy reason - chip away at their idea of their God, mostly for profit of course.]]

This ignorant statement deserves only a pointing out that it’s ignorant and detached fro mthe facts and fro mreality- When you feel you want to step it up a little bit, and discuss issues civily- you just lemme know- till then I’m writing you off as irreleventto any serious discussions about science- Perhaps you can go play with your friends over on DC, and you can all spew ignroant statements al lday long and slap each other on the back pretending it amounts to soemthing- but here- we discuss science

[[What I meant by “how” they were constructed is more than that—i.e., not just “the mousetrap is made of a hammer with a spring and a bar to hold down the hammer and a trigger to flip the bar,” but “first a wire is bent to make the hammer, then more wire is wound around it to make a spring, then the hammer is attached to a block of wood...”]]

So basically what you want to nkow is how an evolutionist constructs intelligent design to explain away intelligent design? Miller did that very hting- I explained how he constructed intelligently designed constructs while trying to dismiss intelligently designed IC.

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