Posted on 10/10/2006 10:00:04 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
The State Board of Education on Tuesday approved public school curriculum guidelines that support the teaching of evolution in science classes — but not intelligent design.
Intelligent design instruction could be left for other classes in Michigan schools. But it shouldn't have a home in science class, based on the unanimously adopted guidelines.
"The intent of the board needs to be very clear," said board member John Austin, an Ann Arbor Democrat. "Evolution is not under stress. It is not untested science."
Some science groups and the American Civil Liberties Union had worried that state standards would not be strong enough to prevent the discussion of intelligent design as the course expectations developed over the summer.
Intelligent design's proponents hold that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher force rather than evolving from more primitive forms.
Some want science teachers to teach that Darwin's theory of evolution is not a fact and has gaps.
The curriculum expectations are being developed by the state board as Michigan moves toward stricter high school graduation requirements.
Starting with the class graduating in 2011, Michigan students will have to take four years of math and English, three of science and social studies and one each of physical education and arts. They'll also have to complete some type of online experience.
Two credits of foreign language also will be required, but that requirement will be phased in starting with the class of 2016.
I am also curious about this notion that the Bible is being suppressed...my husband happens to be looking for a particular Bible...and we have gone to several Christian bookstores in our area, who have an abundance of Bibles...we have also made the rounds of the used bookstores, one of them being a used bookstore that specializes only in religious books....and we have found many different Bibles in these used book stores as well...
And now with the Christmas season shortly upon us, we have already been receiving a lot of magazines, with their ads for Christmastime...and we receive any number of religious magazines, all showing their various Bibles for purchase for the holidays...
So certainly, one can buy a Bible, just about anywhere and buy any sort of Bible they want, from the fanciest to the plainest, from brand spanking new, to used...
So how is the Bible being suppressed?...
I have heard this charge before that the Bible is being suppressed, that Christians are being suppressed...so I took a drive one Sunday morning, to count the number of Chrisian churches in my area, and note how their attendance was, gauging by the number of cars in their parking lots...within less than a 1/2 hours drive from my house, there are at least 20 churches, I think my actual count was 22...all different denominations, Catholic, LDS, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, a couple of community churches, a few I could not tell, because their congregations are primarily Asian, and the denomination was written in their native tongue...and on Saturday, the 7th Day Adventist Church, a few minutes from my house, had their parking lot full on Saturday morning...
And the fella across the street from me, holds church in his home each Saturday evening, along with a rather large crowd of like minded believers...
So I also, do not see how either the Bible is suppressed, or how Christians in this country are oppressed, gauging by the number of religious bookstores, and churches in my area, with seemmingly very large attendances...
And just yesterday the Jehovahs Witnesses were making their rounds in my neighborhood, and the Mormons are regular about their making their rounds through my neighborhood as well...
So how does this tie into oppression or suppression?
Christians pay most of the taxes...
Is your response supposed to be in reply to something I asked?.
Nonsense. We will, however, defend it from the endless numbers of dishonest attacks that are made on it, just as honest people will defend Bush's Iraq policy against dishonest attacks on it made by Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, etc. And for exactly the same reasons.
Soon, they may be having 'evolution parades' to push their wares, like the homosexuals.
You might want to adjust your medications.
Why is the evo's NEED so great to push their philosophy?
We don't have any "NEED" to "push" it. We do however feel the need to defend good science from propagandistic attacks on it by people who are stridently pushing their *own* agenda and riding anti-science sentiments as a hobby horse.
Because that's what socialists do - they push their propaganda.
Tell me honestly -- are you actually so stupid as to think that being knowledgeable of evolutionary biology is somehow synonymous with being a "socialist"? That's just an incredibly ignorant concept.
Are you likewise clueless enough to think that evolutionary biology is "propaganda" isntead of a very well established field of science? Hey, go ahead and try to substantiate that goofy belief, this should be pretty amusing.
Can you imagine having thread after thread after thread about reading, writing, arithmetic, history, English and demanding that they be taught in schools?
Yes indeed, I could, if they were under as much attack as the science of evolutionary biology is from endless waves of know-nothing yahoos who only "know" as much about it as they've read in Jack Chick comics, creationist pamphlets, and Ann Coulter books, but gosh, that makes them "expert" enough to denounce 150 years of research and evidence as some kind of conspiracy to sap their precious bodily fluids or whatnot...
Yeah, there'd be plenty of threads defending math and reading if it was under that much attack, that often, from that many morons who had no compunction against lying about those subjects in a dishonest attempt to undermine publich confidence in them.
Call off the idiots with the pitchforks and we'll be more than glad to stop spending lots of time explaining why their rants are incorrect and fallacious, and why they're doing harm to the quality of education in this country (not to mention giving the public the impression that conservatism in general is as ignorant and reactionary as the anti-science loudmouths are).
Are we clear now?
Wow, what an enormously uninformed and false assertion. There's a vast amount of evidence for evolution.
Come back when you're even remotely familiar with the subject.
Don't mind him, he's famous for random outbursts like that.
I am an atheist... but it is not at all bothersome to have more than just one view.
There is no more evidence that life evolved here on the earth than there is for it to have been delivered or engineered by extraterrestrials...
How do evolutionists feel about teaching that life came from outer space? They already teach the Big Bang theory...
There is a more vast amount of information the earth is not from itself...
Ah, I see...could not make any sense out of what he was posting to me...I thought maybe he posted to me by mistake...
But I shall keep this in mind...thanks..
Why would you assume that Christians dont want their children taught evolution?...that seems to be what you are saying...
There seems to be this belief, that one must be a Christian, or must support evolution, but that one cannot do both...millions of self-professed Christians would differ on that score...
"but I've personally never been to a stag party where they showed films of dinoflagellate endosymbiosis in foraminifera plankton..."
I will personally see you get an invitation to our nexr showing - the sex can be REAL STEAMY.... :)
> So how does this tie into oppression or suppression?
Some Christians are not getting their way, exactly the way they want it, with everything they want. Taht is tantamount to "oppression" and "suppression."
Anybody who has ever seen an ill-raised 5-year-old screech about some toy his Mom doesn't buy him will recognize the symptoms.
Unanswered.
You: How does evolution account for the fact that humans have an appendix which serves no known purpose. Or tonsils?
The appendix is homologous to the end of the caecum - here's a discussion and some comparative anatomy. Basically, the caecum is an organ for digesting plants by fermenting cellulose. It is very small in people and some other animals. In fact, there are people who are born without one. (references at the above link). See this also.
Tonsils are part of the immune and lymphatic systems and help protect the rest of the body from bacteria. I don't have a reference at hand for its comparative anatomy or embryology, so I can't say how evolution "accounts for it".
-OR- you're humorometer is broken.. Lay off the Dumberol..
Or better try a different brand..
You can, of course document the existence of an "evolutionistist movement", can't you?
Last time I checked, the ToE was simply an important part of the science of biology. The only "movements" I'm aware of are anti-evo activist groups like AiG, DI, and ICR. Of course scientifically-literate people oppose them, but that hardly constitutes a "movement", just a defense of the teaching true science from those who would pollute it with untestable hypotheses and made-up controversies.
Then they could not really be Christians either... Many millions more would agree their should not be educational welfare or affirmative action for one point of view...
They favor the Government School Monopoly because they know it is the best way to indoctrinate other people's children.
This is why they are so interested in keeping Government Schools so powerful and coercive. It is the liberal's best weapon and their ideology agrees with the far left of Hollywood and the ACLU.
There have been numerous threads where phonics vs. "whole word" reading and Ebonics were discussed. There have also been discussions of Afrocentric "history" and "new math".
Teaching ID as though it were science is similar to teaching Afrocentrism or Ebonics - watering down the curriculum to flatter some interest group and make them feel good about themselves. It's basically affirmative action, and conservatives should oppose it.
ID can be discussed as a case study in the scientific method, and creationism can be discussed as a philosophy or theology; but you are not permitted to teach them as science until actual science adopts one of the other of them, which seems extremely unlikely at the present time.
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