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Antievolutionists asked to review draft standards in Texas
The National Center for Science Education ^ | October 16, 2008

Posted on 10/17/2008 7:59:18 AM PDT by Soliton

Three antievolutionists have been appointed to a six-member committee to review the draft set of Texas state science standards, and defenders of the integrity of science education in the Lone Star state are livid. "The committee was chosen by 12 of the 15 members of the board of education, with each panel member receiving the support of two board members," as the Dallas Morning News (October 16, 2008) explains. Six members of the board "aligned with social conservative groups" chose Stephen C. Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Ralph Seelke, a biology professor at the University of Wiconsin, Superior, and Charles Garner, a chemistry professor at Baylor University.

Meyer, Seelke, and Garner are all signatories of the Discovery Institute-sponsored "Dissent from Darwinism" statement. Meyer and Seelke are also coauthors of Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (Hill House, 2008), which, like Of Pandas and People, is a supplementary textbook that is intended to instill scientifically unwarranted doubts about evolution. A recent review by biologist John Timmer summarized, "But the book doesn't only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book." Garner reportedly told the Houston Press (December 14, 2000) that he "criticizes evolutionary theory in class."

Meyer and Seelke also testified in the 2005 "kangaroo court" hearings held by three antievolutionist members of the Kansas state board of education, in which a parade of antievolutionist witnesses expressed their support for the so-called minority report version of the state science standards (written with the aid of a local "intelligent design" organization), complained of repression by a dogmatic evolutionary establishment, and claimed to have detected atheism lurking "between the lines" of the standards..

(Excerpt) Read more at ncseweb.org ...


TOPICS: Education; Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: creationism; evolution; id; scientism
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To: LeGrande
All you have to do is send a little bit of information faster than the speed of light and you would be correct. If you can't pull that little demonstration off then you would be wrong. Can you transmit information faster than the speed of light?

Yup...when I posted that, I told myself that you would respond to my post in a way that would harm your position more than I ever could, even before I completed my initial thoughts on compiling the post.

But what's fascinating is I didn't realize this until after I posted.

It seems I sent myself information so fast it happend before I even realized it!

I'm not sure light is an adequate way of measuring such a phenomenon.

681 posted on 10/20/2008 3:21:59 PM PDT by tpanther (All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke)
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To: LeGrande
Wrong.

No cite, naturally.

682 posted on 10/20/2008 3:41:21 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: LeGrande
They are when you try and claim Einstein believes in the same god you do.

No quote, naturally.

683 posted on 10/20/2008 3:42:16 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: tpanther

Atheists have their own Messiahs. You know, like Obama.


684 posted on 10/20/2008 3:43:56 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: tpanther
But what's fascinating is I didn't realize this until after I posted.

It seems I sent myself information so fast it happend before I even realized it!

When you pray do you realize that you are talking to yourself?

685 posted on 10/20/2008 3:50:13 PM PDT by LeGrande
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To: LeGrande
When you pray do you realize that you are talking to yourself?

When you post do you realize that you are talking to yourself?

686 posted on 10/20/2008 3:54:39 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: Mojave
They are when you try and claim Einstein believes in the same god you do.

No quote, naturally.

How many times do I have to ask you? Do you believe in an omnipotent God that cares about the actions of men?

687 posted on 10/20/2008 4:09:01 PM PDT by LeGrande
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To: LeGrande
How many times do I have to ask you?

You can beg and plead forever. My personal unstated beliefs aren't relevant to your lunatic assertion that light speed disproves God or to your misrepresentations of Einstein.

688 posted on 10/20/2008 4:23:44 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: LeGrande
When you pray do you realize that you are talking to yourself?

I've been blessed to have never been so confused as to think I was an atheist.

689 posted on 10/20/2008 4:35:27 PM PDT by tpanther (All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke)
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To: LeGrande; tpanther
When you pray do you realize that you are talking to yourself?

And you know this how?

Perhaps you could give us one good reason to believe you over the writers of the Gospels and Jesus Himself.

690 posted on 10/20/2008 4:55:54 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
Perhaps you could give us one good reason to believe you over the writers of the Gospels and Jesus Himself.

Since you failed to produce a single valid prophecy from the Gospels, I would say that speaks for itself.

I am at least smart enough to know that the future can't be predicted : )

691 posted on 10/20/2008 5:11:09 PM PDT by LeGrande
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To: metmom

The speed of light told him so. :)


692 posted on 10/20/2008 5:49:09 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: allmendream; Mojave; tpanther; Fichori; Arthur Wildfire! March; valkyry1
What gives you the idiotic idea that it took 31,500 generations for a SINGLE mutation?

How many were there then?

What were they?

At what rate did they occur?

How does that compare to the mutation rate in the wild?

As we have been told, stress increases the mutation rate. This was a carefully controlled experiment with (no doubt) just enough carefully controlled stress to induce an increased mutation rate but not too much that would end up killing off the populations, as could easily happen in the wild.

One mutation was controlled for and selected out in this carefully controlled experiment and for that experiment one mutation occurred that worked with the environment out of all those cultures and generations.

In the wild, stress isn't so uniform and controlled. It's just as likely to be not enough to trigger increased mutations, or too much and ends up killing off the population.

The question still remains of how reasonable it is to expect the perfect amount of stress to be combined with the right kinds of mutations and the exact selection pressures needed to provide the environment to cause those mutations to be selected out.

Great faith.

693 posted on 10/20/2008 6:01:42 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
How many were there then?

I asked him that already. He clammed up.

694 posted on 10/20/2008 6:05:29 PM PDT by Mojave
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To: allmendream

It’s essential for evos and scientists to monkey with the speed of light to explain how the entire known universe and beyond expanded to it’s present size in one trillion-trillionth of a second; which would put if at far greater speeds than the speed of light.

Or perhaps you could explain how the universe could expand faster than the speed of light that scientists say nothing can travel faster than?


695 posted on 10/20/2008 6:08:03 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
Dr. Lenski is figuring out the genomic changes that happened in both generation 20,000 and 31,500 right now. No doubt the actual mutations involved will shed quite a bit of light on what genes evolved and how.

You think a high mutation rate from stress would lead to population extinction? What is your evidence for this?

There was no selection other than surviving in the laboratory environment, they were not actively selecting for citrate utilization. Nor were the cells under stress or stringent selection.

If the stress response increase in mutation could lead to the extinction of the population why do you think it would be part of the stress response?

The high mutation rate INCREASES the likelihood of survival in bacteria under stress, that is why it is part of the stress response.

You have the effect of a high mutation rate during the stress response exactly backwards; moreover there is no reason to think these cells were undergoing the stress response for 31,500 generations.

696 posted on 10/20/2008 6:12:16 PM PDT by allmendream (White Dog Democrat: A Democrat who will not vote for 0bama because he's black.)
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To: LeGrande; Mojave

Science isn’t about truth. You won’t find it through the scientific method. You missed the memo as well, I see.

http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/LiU/resource/misused_glossary.html

Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said “Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths.” Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths.


697 posted on 10/20/2008 6:19:51 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: LeGrande; Mojave
The fact that no information can travel faster than the speed of light disproves the existence of an omnipotent God.

You know this how?

Prove it.

698 posted on 10/20/2008 6:22:02 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: LeGrande

I guess that since I did not pay much at all into SS (I won’t draw any out; either) it doesn’t show up as a tax on my radar.


699 posted on 10/20/2008 6:22:57 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: allmendream
Do you think every experiment is replicated by an independent lab before Science provisionally accepts the data?

Are you saying the data is not UNIVERSALLY accepted?

700 posted on 10/20/2008 6:23:55 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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