Posted on 03/03/2008 1:10:09 AM PST by Kurt Evans
... Next year the Texas State Board of Education will be writing the science curriculum standards for Texas public schoolchildren, and Huckabee may bring enough conservative fundamentalist voters to the polls on March 4 to swing the balance of power on the board to the supporters of creationism...
It is his efforts in Fort Worth that concern advocates like Miller; there SBOE District 11 member Pat Hardy, a former schoolteacher, curriculum adviser and moderate Republican, is facing a challenge from fellow Republican Barney Maddox, a urologist and ardent supporter of creationism. With no Democratic candidate on the ballot, Tuesday's winner will take a seat on the contentious 15-member board. Maddox, who declines media interview requests, has posted his writings on the web at sites like the Institute for Creation Research and has called Charles Darwin's work "pre-Civil War fairy tales"...
Given the Lone Star state's influence as the second largest purchaser of textbooks nationally, any changes likely would have had a ripple effect across the country. Miller says she is concerned that if the social conservatives gain the upper hand they may try to reassert that influence by drawing up a conservative curriculum that would necessarily have to be addressed in textbooks. "One vote, one member, could be the difference"...
But it is not only the impact of Huckabee's socially conservative supporters on the SBOE election that has raised concerns in some quarters. Longtime Texas Republicans like Royal Masset, a former political director of the Texas Republican Party, fear that if moderate Republicans leave the party to support Barack Obama — and there is some local polling in major urban areas to suggest that may happen — it will reinforce the hold the social conservatives and the religious right has on the state party's apparatus...
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
By remarkable coincidence, I posted a Barney Maddox article here at the beginning of December—having no idea who he was—in defense of Congressman Hunter and Governor Huckabee. Now three months later Time runs a story suggesting Governor Huckabee’s presidential campaign may help Maddox win a pivotal seat on the Texas State Board of Education.
This is really a remarkable coincidence.
Honest science defends Hunter and Huckabee:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1934898/posts
“The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs the affairs of man [Romans 8:28]. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice [Matthew 10:29], is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it [Psalms 127:1]. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel [Genesis 11:1-9].”
—Benjamin Franklin, arguing the need for prayer at the Constitutional Convention
“Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
—John Jay, a Founding Father and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Pledged Delegate Count:
http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/gopdelegates/index.html
Huckabee Issue Positions:
http://mikehuckabee.com/?FuseAction=Issues.Home
Huckabee has no business trying to impose his religious beliefs upon scientific disciplines.
Well, Kurt, you finally accomplished something with your endless Huckabee posts: I was critical of Huckabee, but not strenuously opposed. Now, however, I see him as a genuine P.O.S. for trying this.
“Now, however, I see him as a genuine *** for trying this.”
Trying what?
Maybe this is Time,( a liberal rag) stirring up peeps like you. Maybe there are board members voted on somewhere else, I don't know. I don't see how Huckabee would change anything anyway. Most in Texas don't believe in evolution anyway and vote for whoever they want. I'm sure if Obama brings out the pagans, the school board will remain insane. Most of them wear Che T shirts and believe we came from monkeys. No sane person ventures into Austin anyway.
Darwinism is junk science and religion has nothing to do with it. The biggest group of people in opposition to evolution is probably mathematicians, at least on a percentage basis, and not fundamentalist Christians.
“Huckabee may bring enough conservative fundamentalist voters to the polls on March 4 to swing the balance of power on the board to the supporters of creationism...”
“Now three months later Time runs a story suggesting Governor Huckabee’s presidential campaign may help Maddox win a pivotal seat on the Texas State Board of Education.”
Governor Huckabee’s campaign is doing so much good just by existing. McCain can’t lock up the nomination on Tuesday even if he wins every delegate available. If Governor Huckabee picks up even a handful of Texas delegates, he can stay alive at least through Pennsylvania on April 22. That would probably be good for America even if he had to scale back the campaign:
http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/gopdelegates/index.html
You see him as a genuine *** for trying to get his supporters to the polls.
Got it. Thanks.
...to swing the balance of power on the board to the supporters of creationism...
I'll take a wait and see, then.
"Darwinism" is a science? Who knew? Where can I take a course? What, do I sign up for Darwinism 101, 102 to start off?
Actually "Darwinism" is just about anything creationists disagree with. And yes, it has everything to do with religion.
About 99% of the time when you see the term "Darwinism" it is used by a fundamentalist. Scientists generally do not use the term.
I find citation free statements like yours highly entertaining.
And, since Texas is big state, it’s kinda nice to get students from there out of the competition for jobs in biology.
That’s because the doctrine is snaffed so bad that they keep on having to come up with new versions of it every twenty years; the latest is called “punctuated equilibria”, or “punk-eek”. Nonetheless textbooks typically lag behind the propaganda mills by about 40 years and are still pretty much stuck on Darwinism.
Last night I was happy to hear talk radio host Bill Cunningham say that he was going to vote for Mike Huckabee in his primary.
That's what it might look like from the outside, or when one gets his scientific information from websites like Answers In Genesis.
You might try studying the theory of evolution some time and see what it is based on and what it actually posits.
ping
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is impossible to have a religiously neutral education. This axiomatic.
The fight over Darwinism and Evolution is merely one example of the conflicts that arise when government compels education in its government owned and run schools.
Solution: Begin the process of completely privatizing universal K-12 education. Do this and all the acrimony over evolution and Darwinism ( and hundreds of other issues) will evaporate like dew on grass on a hot summer’s morning.
Government schools are a freedom of conscience and First Amendment abomination.
The Theory of Evolution is an hypothesis that a small simple organism managed to acquire new information in its genetic code allowing it to gradually change over millions of years, its descendants eventually becoming all the creatures we see today, including humans. This is not to be confused with evolution which is organisms changing according to a selection or corruption (mutation) of information already within its genetic code, such as Darwin's finches: genes for short beaks and long beaks in finches is present in its genetic code, the beak which predominates depends on environmental factors such as food availability.
We know evolution (not the theory) occurs because it is observed, and we have a reasonable amount of knowledge that explain how these changes occur. The Theory of Evolution, on the other hand, is an extrapolation upon evolution saying that since we know organisms can change, sometimes dramatically such as getting poodles from wolves, it is reasonable to expect an amoeba can, over time, become a tadpole, and can eventually allow an organism to gain the information to sprout feathers and fly up into the sky.
This is an unproven assertion and is a leap (off a cliff) in logic. Granted, it is a possible explanation, an explanation perfectly acceptable if there are is no god and matter has always existed, or it poofed out of nothing into existence then somehow combined itself over time to form planets and stars and water and just happened to form life from unlife, somehow.
The only other reasonable alternative is a supreme intelligence, God, who was not created and who has always existed and who arranged all the hydrogen and atomic particles into their respective categories to form planets, stars, and yes, humans too, and that this God loves his creation just as as parent (a non-dysfunctional one, mind you) loves his child.
The Theory of Evolution directly contradicts what the bible says about God creating humans and all life, and this is why it is so heavily argued against being taught as a fact in school.
It is my opinion that this Theory is insignificant considering the whole of biology and is not worth the time to teach in the public schools. It should be relegated to an advanced biology class in college so that a student who then learns about the theory can more appreciate the details pertaining to it, and can make up his or her own mind whether God created life or natural processes caused life to happen.
As for me, after looking at the world around me I can only conclude God created all life, for a blind, mindless organism such as a maple tree could never design for itself an aerodynamic seedling to be dispersed in the breeze. To design such a seedling requires intelligence and a knowledge of wind currents and wing structure. Even Natural Selection must be designed, for to be able to select the better of two options based on the current circumstances you must have intelligence to make such a decision otherwise it is random selection.
Also, consider the spider: it spins its web in the dark, not using its eyes for the task, and it spins the web correctly the first time. Who taught the spider to spin? It has a brain smaller than a grain of sand, and its mother dies before the spiderling is born so it isn't taugh how to spin. I can only conclude that a high intelligence, with knowledge of structural engineering, among other things, programmed the spider with this knowledge.
You can trot out supposed transitional fossils as "proof" of the Theory, and you can mass-produce from the universities myriads of minutia claiming "it's true! see all these papers!" to try and snowball me into believing it hook, line, and sinker, kind of how lawyers do with their massive tomes of drivel, but my good conscious and common sense says it just ain't so, no more than Kipling's "Just So" stories.
“McCain can’t lock up the nomination on Tuesday even if he wins every delegate available. If Governor Huckabee picks up even a handful of Texas delegates, he can stay alive at least through Pennsylvania on April 22.”
For the record, that was technically true. According to the New York Times count, McCain is still 39 delegates short of officially locking up the nomination.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.