Posted on 01/23/2009 9:39:39 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Texas State Board of Education Votes To Require Students to Analyze and Evaluate Evolution
By: Staff
Discovery Institute
January 22, 2009
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.
Have you ever looked into the assumptions, conjectures, postulations and guesses that surround the so-called fossil record? Finding bones in the dirt, arranging them to fit in with some sort of preconceived idea of the correct hierarchy, and then drawing lines to show the correct "lineage" complete with dates gained from various methods, is proof enough for you. However, not everyone agrees, to wit:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
Believe what you want, but I would be concerned about a "science" that stifles debate. Ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis?
If I recall correctly, you have no background in biology, chemistry, microbiology, or biological chemistry; isn’t that correct?
I studied evolution and related subjects as half of my Ph.D. work, six years of classes (physical or biological anthropology is the general subject area). In addition to evolution that included lots of bone courses, human races, primatology, and anatomy, as well as peripherals such as statistics. I did a lot of work with multivariate analyses of human skeletal remains, and I am still regularly called by local coroners when they have bones that need identification. I once testified as an expert witness in a murder case.
Undergrad work included a lot of various science courses, with five semesters of chemistry being the largest block. No biological chem, but some organic.
But on the internet none of this means anything. Here you are what you post, and everyone starts out equal.
If your posts are full of errors and you fail to correct them you will have little credibility. If you post nonsense in place of science you will have little credibility. If you quote mine or otherwise try to deceive you will have little credibility. Even posts loaded with grammatical and spelling errors detract from one's credibility (he said, hurrying to use the spell checker).
That is exactly what I found reading the journals also. At the base of their evidence that is what you have, alot of nothing.
Holy cow. No “proof” in an interview. No footnotes or lab work or field work or methodologies at all. Just a bunch of conclusory answers to the interviwer’s questions. How stupid do those so-called scientists think we is?
Nevertheless, I’m impressed. Given your apparently enormous font of knowledge and thorough grasp of the science, however, I have to wonder why you aren’t publishing devastating critiques of the pure “gobbleygook” being spouted by the medical researchers, geneticists, and biologists who authored those 109,000 articles you breezed through. You’d be doing modern medicine a great service (not to mention exposing the whole of the clearly fraudulent science community).
By the way, given your obvious expertise, what exact “weaknesses” of evolution would you teach high school kids?
You continue to demonstrate that you have no idea how the science is done.
However, not everyone agrees,
Not everyone agrees with what? What does "the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life" have to do with our ability to determine which bones are older than others?
Ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis?
Yeah. He's the guy who made a breakthrough in our understanding of how diseases are transmitted, and whose insight has been confirmed and extended by mountains of research since then. Kind of like Darwin. But maybe we should encourage students to "analyze and evaluate" germ theory, or even teach them its "strengths and weaknesses"?
Except that the ToE is a theory supported with forensic and circumstantial evidence. It’s not at all in the same league as the really hard sciences like chemistry and physics, where things like acceleration, velocity, the chemical properties of the elements can be tested using the scientific method.
The ToE is not a fact.
Notice how neatly they have the whole system sewed up?
How is teaching kids to look critically at science "further undermining the teaching of basics in American high schools"?
Aren't scientists supposed to be objective? How do you expect to teach kids to look at something objectively if you demand that they just vomit back theory taught as fact?
Yep.
Yeah. He's the guy who made a breakthrough in our understanding of how diseases are transmitted, and whose insight has been confirmed and extended by mountains of research since then.
Keep going. You forgot the part about his treatment at the hands of the established medical/scientific community. You know, how he was mocked, ridiculed, derided for merely asking them to wash their hands.
Peer review thought he was crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
He was dismissed from the hospital and harassed by the medical community in Vienna, which eventually forced him to move to Budapest.
Semmelweis was outraged by the indifference of the medical profession and began writing open and increasingly angry letters to prominent European obstetricians, at times denouncing them as irresponsible murderers. His contemporaries, including his wife, believed he was losing his mind and he was in 1865 committed to an asylum (mental institution).
What a stunning endorsement of the scientific community.
1. Plausibility of abiogenesis, which is a neccessary requisite to evolution.
2. Descent with modification has never been shown to create a new genus. Countless generation of e.coli and fruit flies, with all of the interferance man can muster, has still only produced bvariation on the theme of the same animals, e.coli and fruit flies.
That should be enough to give any thinking person enough to question the whole silly construct.
So your conclusion is that contradicting established science proves the validity of an idea? And that any notion that's out of the mainstream should therefore be discussed in the classroom?
I'm not arguing that new ideas should always be rejected. But let's look at what Semmelweis did: he observed a difference in mortality rate between two clinics. He carefully winnowed down the possible factors until he isolated one he thought might be significant. He devised an experiment to address that one factor, and the experiment showed a dramatic result. From that he developed a theory about how disease spread. He was wrong in the details, since he didn't know about germs, but right in the concept.
So what's the creationist or ID experiment that will isolate the influence of God or the Designer? (I'm sorry, I don't know which anti-evolution camp you're in.) What test should we perform, and what result should we look for? That's how you overturn the ToE (and if you do, they'll be celebrating Jimmyray Day in another 150 years).
Basic creationist claptrap. Color me surprised.
In post 61, his point was about science that stifles debate.
Believe what you want, but I would be concerned about a "science" that stifles debate. Ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis?
Yeah, we heard about Semmelweis, but you neglected to address the open-mindedness of the scientific community to his out of the box thinking.
Speaking from experience as an advanced-degree holding organic chemist, I can assure you that organic chemistry is entirely and completely unbeholden to evolution in any form.
I think the scientific and medical community should have been more open to Semmelweis's ideas. So what? That doesn't prove anything about the validity of other "out of the box thinking." Semmelweis brought experimental results that were ignored, and they shouldn't have been. But show me where creationism has brought similarly strong experimental results.
They all laughed at Edison
And also at Einstein
So why should I feel sorry
If they just couldn't understand the reasoning and the logic
That went on in my head
...
Oh they used to laugh at me
When I refused to ride on all those double decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top
So what? So it proves that nothing has changed in the scientific community in many years. They sure are dogmatic about discouraging any out of the box thinking.
So is it your opinion that any out-of-the-box thinking should be encouraged, to the point of being added to the curriculum? The experience with Semmelweis means that attempts at setting standards should be dropped altogether? We all know some good ideas weren't accepted at first--that doesn't mean that all ideas that aren't accepted are good.
Like I said, I'm not arguing for the dogmatic rejection of new ideas. Bring an idea, form a hypothesis, devise and conduct an experiment that can distinguish the hand of God from the actions of nature--knock yourself out. I don't see creationists doing that, though.
That pretty much explains why you have such little credibility on FR.
Just what university has a PHD program where approximately 1/2 is devoted to evolution and related subjects; especially sine there can be no experimentation regarding macro-evolution?
Just what university has a PHD program where approximately 1/2 is devoted to evolution and related subjects; especially sine there can be no experimentation regarding macro-evolution?
You asked a reasonable question and I gave you a serious answer. I should have known better.
If you have nothing more than ignorance to offer, post to someone else.
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