Posted on 12/14/2005 6:23:06 AM PST by PatrickHenry
An education oversight panel has put off a final recommendation on the state's biology teaching standards at the urging of a state senator who wants alternatives to evolution - including creationism - taught in classrooms.
The Education Oversight Committee voted Monday to recommend approval of the state's biology content standards, but by an 8-7 vote, the panel removed for further study the wording that deals with teaching evolution.
The committee plans to put together a panel of scientists and science teachers to advise committee members on the biology standards dealing with evolution, JoAnne Anderson, the committee's executive director, said Tuesday.
State Sen. Mike Fair, a panel member, wants the education department to change the standards to encourage teaching alternatives to the theory of evolution. Fair, R-Greenville, also has proposed a bill that would give lawmakers more say on biology curriculum.
The Education Department writes standards teachers must follow in designing their daily lessons. The State Board of Education must give those standards final approval. The Education Oversight Committee can recommend the board approve or reject those standards.
The head attorney for the state Department of Education said he didn't think committee members are authorized to change the standards.
"This is unprecedented," attorney Dale Stuckey said. "It's my interpretation of the law that [EOC members] have no authority to change the standards."
Anderson said Tuesday that is not the committee's intent. The committee issued a news release clarifying that it does not have the authority to revise content standards.
"We are asking our colleagues at the State Department of Education for recommendations of individuals from the science community who can assist the committee in bringing about a resolution."
Fair said he wants to encourage "critical analysis of a controversial subject in the classroom."
State Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum, a Democrat, said Fair was trying to derail teaching standard revisions she said have wide support in academia. The agency recently conducted a yearlong review of key subjects and basic knowledge all science teachers in public schools must teach.
Current biology curriculum includes Charles Darwin's 19th century theory that life evolved over millions of years from simple cells that adapted to their environment. Creationism relies on the biblical explanation that mankind's origin is the result of a divine action.
In November, the S.C. Board of Education approved changes to science standards some teachers said needed clarification. The oversight committee put off voting on the rules in October to give Fair more time to lobby education officials.
Karen Floyd, a Republican candidate for state education superintendent, has said she will encourage the teaching of intelligent design.
Rep. Bob Walker, R-Spartanburg, said he supports Fair's efforts because "there are other ideas that can be addressed as to how this world came about."
One school official, Lexington-Richland 5 science supervisor Kitty Farnell, said the committee's questioning of educators' work sets "a terrible example for our students."
"It's an embarrassment," she said.
It is true that uninformed criticism of what is probably the most solidly evidenced theory in science will tend to be treated with derision.
Anyone who brought genuine data to the table that challenged "descent with modification" would be trampled in the rush to investigate the new fields that would be opened up by pretty much the whole of biology, genetics, bio-chemistry, and paleontology being turned upside down. The fact that you can't see this suggests to me that you've never met any scientists at all.
Property crime? Property *is* theft. (At least according to the majority marxist wing of our creationist friends)
The key word there is "selected". You need to think about the implications of that word. The fallacy you have fallen prey to is "Argument from personal incredulity"
Where's the design or intelligence in adding a single nucleic acid to a bacterial genome? Seems to me it could happen by accident. BTW, in the environment of a nylon factory, the newly-evolved protein confers a selective advantage.
Discussion of the nylonases found in different bacteria.
When did biologists "demand an older and older earth"?
Actually you have hit on something. One of the first vindications of evolutionary theory is that biologists and paleontologists came up with the first good estimates for a minimum age for the earth. This was at a time when physicists thought that the earth was as young as 20 million years, because otherwise its molten core would have cooled by now. Then Rutherford discovered that the earth was being kept hot by fission reactions in the trace heavy elements, and the physicists started coming up with better estimates. Later, radiometric dating was developed, which confirmed the new estimates of the physicists to a considerable confidence. Physics estimates of the age of the earth have not varied significantly for around 50 years now, at around 4.5 billion years.
Feel free to handwave away evidence that I attempt to offer you. But don't pretend that it hasn't been offered.
Your mind-reading machine appears to be broken.
Scripture says "Honor riches power and glory"
Agree.
JS: remember who/when/what thread the refutation was in? Don't go out of your way to hunt it down
Yes, actually, I think that would be quite interesting. Please post these statistics that you're talking about, along with the sources.
Since we don't know who made the Piltdown fraud, we don't know it was a "fellow believer". It could have been a creationist; some people have accused Teilhard de Chardin. We just don't know.
How about saying that no copying mechanism is 100% accurate? Occasionally, a bit gets added, dropped, or flipped. On a hard disk, it really is a bit; in DNA, it's an extra, missing, or substituted base pair.
We know that this happens (in fact, it's part of the reason that treating HIV is so hard).
We also know that (for one kind of nylonophage) the difference between the normal bacterium and the one that lives on nylon is one extra "T" nucleotide.
He noticed the farce in declaring oneself the final arbiter
He noticed that scientists are human beings. He noticed it quite beautifully: You don't know what you're talking about. The professor sat in my very living room, told that very story, and confirmed that personal prejudice, politics, and totally irrational impulses sometimes not only influence--BUT GOVERN--the scientific community. He said something very startling. Listen to this: SCIENTISTS ARE HUMAN BEINGS.
He noticed that sever limitations of a limited science: poetry, religion, architecture, all dancing about on an exquisitely blue pea-sized globe in a universal ether that is characterized by vast stretches of pure void--that doesn't happen without a creator, boys.
He noticed the semantic juggling: Well, of course! "We" call it an accident, a mutation--and violate the very foundation of science itself, that the universe behaves according to observable and recordable, (albeit complex) laws.
Fine show.
Got those boots on again, he?
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