Kathy Martin and Connie Morris
Posted on 06/13/2005 6:23:59 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Evolution is an "age-old fairy tale," sometimes defended with "anti-God contempt and arrogance," according to a State Board of Education member involved in writing new science standards for Kansas' public schools.
A newsletter written by board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis, was circulating on Monday. In it, Morris criticized fellow board members, news organizations and scientists who defend evolution.
She called evolution "a theory in crisis" and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!"
"It is our goal to write the standards in such a way that clearly gives educators the right AND responsibility to present the criticism of Darwinism alongside the age-old fairy tale of evolution," Morris wrote.
Morris was one of three board members who last week endorsed proposed science standards designed to expose students to more criticism of evolution in the classroom. The other two were board Chairman Steve Abrams, of Arkansas City, and Kathy Martin, of Clay Center.
Morris was in Topeka for meetings at the state Department of Education's headquarters and wasn't available for interviews.
But her views weren't a surprise to Jack Krebs, vice president of Kansas Citizens for Science, an Oskaloosa educator.
"Her belief is in opposition to mainstream science," he said. "Mainstream science is a consensus view literally formed by tens of thousands people who literally studied these issues."
The entire board plans to review the three members' proposed standards Wednesday. The new standards - like the existing, evolution-friendly ones - determine how students in fourth, seventh and 10th grades are tested on science.
In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards. Elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservative Republicans recaptured the board's majority in 2004 elections.
The three board members had four days of hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life, that all life has descended from a common origin and that man and apes share a common ancestor. Evolution is attributed to 19th Century British scientist Charles Darwin.
Organizing the case against evolution were intelligent design advocates. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are so complex and well-ordered that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.
In their proposed standards, the three board members said they took no position on intelligent design, but their work followed the suggestions of intelligent design advocates.
In her newsletter, Morris said she is a Christian who believes the account of creation in the Book of Genesis is literally true. She also acknowledged that many other Christians have no trouble reconciling faith and evolution.
"So be it," Morris wrote. "But the quandary exists when poor science - with anti-God contempt and arrogance - must insist that it has all the answers."
National and state science groups boycotted May's hearings before Morris and the other two board members, viewing them as rigged against evolution.
"They desperately need to withhold the fact that evolution is a theory in crisis and has been crumbling apart for years," Morris said.
But Krebs said Morris is repeating "standard creationist rhetoric."
"People have been saying evolution is a theory in crisis for 40 or 50 years," Krebs said. "Yet the scientific community has been strengthening evolution every year."
Are you really going to believe that garbage (no explanation of why it is garbage/go read the infallable Behe/etc)?
The creationists/IDers are so hot and bothered to prove the biblical account of the earth's origin that they discount any idea, regardless of validity that says otherwise. Either that or they are so offended by the notion that humans and monkeys evolved from the same place. It could be both.
The reality is evolution is not about theology, but explaining the process by which we came to be. Evolution can even be considered theologically neutral, because there is room for in the theory, even though He/She/It is not specifically referenced. I had an astronomy prof that that suggested a supreme being could have caused the "big bang."
However, theology is not science. As has been denmonstrated in this thread, people have different ideas of the universe's driving force. These should be confined to theology classes or the home.
And yet, in the same post they'll whine like little 'victims' of such demeaning tactics.
What are you talking about?
Do you think that evolutionary mutations take place "at birth", and must be identical in both male and female for the change to perpetuate?
You need to go back to 7th grade biology class and learn about DNA, Mendel and trait inheritance.
Your deponent is correct. If there were proofs in natural science, you could easily find, say, the proof of the theory of gravity, on the internet, and post it here.
Of course, then you have the dilemma: should I post the proof of Einstein's theory, or Newton's theory, whose large-scale assumptions contradict the large-scale assumptions of Einstein's theory?
LOL Sure you did!
You'll have to explain how "order" is itself evidence of design.
You are kidding right? Things have gotten a little out of hand in the silly department here.
That's not what the Great Book of Queen Maeve says. Why should I believe your book and not mine?
Good question. Since truth is the absence of error, give me your copy of the 'Great Book of the Queen Maeve' and I'll see if I can find an irrefutable error in it. On the other hand, I'm still waiting for you to point out an irrefutable error in the Bible.
4 legged locusts is one of my preferred errors.
For a detailed analysis of Behe's "arguement" see "Finding Darwin's God", by Kenneth Miller, the long-time co-author of the most serious introduction to Biology used by Universities, and without a doubt, one of those celebrated evolutionists referred to in a previous post. There you will learn, amongst other things, that one of Behe's featured predictions about things that would never make it into refereed journals because of unobtainable complexity, had already been published before his book was. Whatever his scientific credentials, bench-checking was apparently not one of his top-drawer skills.
All his argument amounts to, shorn of the pretty drawings and technical jargon, is that "if my giant brain can't imagine how something happened, it must be a miracle". If celebrated natural scientists all took this attitude, we might as well have left science up to the judges in Galileo's trial.
What makes you think that 'He wants humans to live out history to face judgment'? That's not what my Bible says he wants of humans. Where did you get that idea from?
...rather than skip to the end and save a lot of time, since He knows how it will all turn out anyway?
And what makes you think that God operates inside the boundaries of what we know as time?
I would argue that genetic mutations occur at birth, or earlier a male and female so significant and of the same nature that they both are a new/different identical species so that mating would result in offspring that would be that same new/different species.
An animal cannot be born as one species and then at some future point change into a different species.
Really! I shocked that someone pushing your point of view believes that. Change means that a pair of dogs may sire puppies and those puppies sire puppies and so on until way down the line the zillionth puppy is born which may not look anything like either of the original pair. It will likely have changed enormously but guess what... it's still a puppy. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't evolution believe that all living matter originally stem from the same bit of biological somethingorother that formed in a primordial ooze somewhere? And therefore puppies and kittens both trace back to original parents somewhere?
Ho, hum. I am not impressed.
I don't agree with the majority of your post but your conclusion is on the right track as long as you play it evenly on both sides. I mean think about it, do you believe it appropriate that taxpayer funded public schools should have the privilege of teaching their version of 'the process by which we came to be' when that process is in direct conflict with what the parent's theological beliefs are? Personally, I think that it's entirely possible to have a totally valid science class without invoking any discussion of either evolution or theology. I fail to see (at least for any schooling up to say the completion of high school) what it adds to the learning of science for the individual.
I Chronicles 2:13-15 David was the seventh son of Jesse
I Samuel 16:10-11 David was the eight son of Jesse
Choose one.
Ho, hum. I am not impressed.Didn't expect you to be - dogma blurs ones vison. But what alternative explanation would you offer for these traceable viral insertions?
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