Posted on 02/28/2006 4:05:45 AM PST by PatrickHenry
House lawmakers scuttled a bill that would have required public school students to be told that evolution is not empirically proven - the latest setback for critics of evolution.
The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars, had said it was time to rein in teachers who were teaching that man descended from apes and rattling the faith of students. The Senate earlier passed the measure 16-12.
But the bill failed in the House on a 28-46 vote Monday. The bill would have required teachers to tell students that evolution is not a fact and the state doesn't endorse the theory.
Rep. Scott Wyatt, a Republican, said he feared passing the bill would force the state to then address hundreds of other scientific theories - "from Quantum physics to Freud" - in the same manner.
"I would leave you with two questions," Wyatt said. "If we decide to weigh in on this part, are we going to begin weighing in on all the others and are we the correct body to do that?"
Buttars said he didn't believe the defeat means that most House members think Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is correct.
"I don't believe that anybody in there really wants their kids to be taught that their great-grandfather was an ape," Buttars said.
The vote represents the latest loss for critics of evolution. In December, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes.
Also last year, a federal judge ordered the school system in suburban Atlanta's Cobb County to remove from biology textbooks stickers that called evolution a theory, not a fact.
Earlier this year, a rural California school district canceled an elective philosophy course on intelligent design and agreed never to promote the topic in class again.
But critics of evolution got a boost in Kansas in November when the state Board of Education adopted new science teaching standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory, defying the view of science groups.
Long live the thread
Anteater, porcupine, opossum and armadillo migrated from S. to N. America.
Deer, camels, raccoons, tapirs, horses, mastodons, bears, peccaries, rabbits, shrews, cats, dogs, weasels and rodents went the other way.
Thanks, but now I gotta feed them before they turn on me.
Schliemann used the Illiad to help find Troy.
Wrong--we of the newly-formed OD (Olympian Design) Movement hereby grant unto ourselves sole and exclusive rights to speak on behalf of the Graeco-Roman pantheon.
I have some doubts about the Odyssey; I suspect that at least some parts of it are metaphorical.
A special region of Hades has been reserved for you to contemplate your blasphemous heresy for all eternity.
Wrong--we of the newly-formed OD (Olympian Design) Movement...
I look forward to the OD ID debate.
Your right. I've hardly spoken at all to, or about, the handful people whom you reference. I don't even know who they are. I am quite sure they were sincere in their pursuit of knowledge. If I were calling them names and telling jokes about them, as your friends in this forum are inclined to do about me, or if I were calling them liars as you have called me, then perhaps the word "slander" might apply to me in this case. As it stands, however, you merely established another emotional straw man for yourself that in no way erases the physical evidence of a global flood.
KoalaDidit placemark
What kind of rebuttal do you want? You spam that over nearly every thread. It doesn't prove a thing. Let me explain. From your spam:
4.0 Telling Whether a Speciation Event Has Occurred
What evidence is necessary to show that a change produced in a population of organisms constitutes a speciation event? The answer to this question will depend on which species definition applies to the organisms involved.
Exactly. If you define "speciciation" broadly enough, you can claim that there have been observable instances of evolutionary speciation. Here's an example from your spam:
Crossley (1974) was able to produce changes in mating behavior in two mutant strains of D. melanogaster. Four treatments were used. In each treatment, 55 virgin males and 55 virgin females of both ebony body mutant flies and vestigial wing mutant flies (220 flies total) were put into a jar and allowed to mate for 20 hours. The females were collected and each was put into a separate vial. The phenotypes of the offspring were recorded. Wild type offspring were hybrids between the mutants. In two of the four treatments, mating was carried out in the light. In one of these treatments all hybrid offspring were destroyed. This was repeated for 40 generations. Mating was carried out in the dark in the other two treatments. Again, in one of these all hybrids were destroyed. This was repeated for 49 generations. Crossley ran mate choice tests and observed mating behavior. Positive assortative mating was found in the treatment which had mated in the light and had been subject to strong selection against hybridization. The basis of this was changes in the courtship behaviors of both sexes. Similar experiments, without observation of mating behavior, were performed by Knight, et al. (1956).
So here you start with two batches of mutant flies (which are highly unlikely to mate in the first place), put them in a jar (so they can't do anything BUT mate), and then mate them for 49 generations while disposing of every single hybrid offspring (as if that would spontaneously happen in real life) and when you are done you have a new (let's call it a) "species" of fly which is defined as a 89th generation mutant fly that has "evolved" a change "in courtship behavior"!
Wow! Natural Darwinian Evolution in action! (as if any of this could possibly have occurred in a natural setting and as if a modification is sexual behavior after 89 generations of mutant fly sex is an example of "speciation".
I call it an example of deliberative attempted change in inherent behavior produced by intricate deliberative attempted "intelligent design." The flies were still flies, even though the intelligent "designer" started out with two strains of mutant flies and force mated them against their wills for scores of generations.
And interestingly enough, in similar "experiments" they were unable to reproduce the same results. Surprise!
So what is there to "rebut"?
OK, if I don't present evidence, you squawk that I have none.
If I do present real, no-fooling evidence, you squawk that I'm spamming.
Make up your flippin' mind already.
Yes, but he didn't believe in the story of Achilles' heel, or the role of the gods in fomenting the war.
Please define speciation as you see it. What would define one species from another. How can we use your definition in the future.
thank you.
Thanks, but now I gotta feed them before they turn on me.
Spamming is where you fill up a thread with a 5000-10000 word article (that you post on every thread) that really adds nothing to the discussion, but is very irritating.
If that is the best evidence you have of the observance of "naturalistic evolutionary speciation" then you might as well admit that you have no such evidence. What you have is evidence that in closed controlled situations you can force miniscule changes in one species, but at the end of the day (unless you define species extremely broadly) you still have the same species and any changes that you made did not occur naturally at all.
What kind of rebuttal do you want? You spam that over nearly every thread. It doesn't prove a thing. Let me explain. From your spam:
...uuugh, I didn't post the post you referred to as spam. Perhaps you should ping the poster who posted it.
He did have some help from Frank Calvert.
I'm sure that "anything" will turnip any time now.
In terms of modern transportation, the ark could hold a cargo similar to that of a freight train over 100 cars long. Into this space were to fit the animals that were brought to Noah, including birds, cattle, and creeping things. If one is to accept the biblical text for what it says, the animals that were gathered into the ark carried all the genetic material necessary to continue the propagation of every living thing of all flesh.
Let's suppose for the sake of argument, that the ark was to carry only two representatives of the human race, similar to the first persons denoted as Adam and Eve. These two not only represent all forms of human flesh that have ever inhabited the planet, but they carry within themselves all the machinery designed to make it happen. They wouldn't need a great deal of space. Maybe a whole freight car.
Ask any anthropologist and he will probably tell you that the forms human life has taken thoughout the generations have been exceedingly diverse, enough that human bones have been confused with those of primates. Yet out of, and subsumed in, only those two people, this entire expression of life issued forth.
One may reasonably speculate that it was not necessary to bring a sample of each form of cattle, or each form of bird, in order to preserve the flesh represented therein. The diversity was already programmed and concentrated in the creatures that appeared before Noah to be loaded into the ark.
Well, how much living flesh of how many types can fit into a 100 car freight train? Enough that one need not consider the argument a serious challenge to the biblical text when it is said it would be impossible to fit them all aboard an ark the size Noah built.
You were the one who wanted the "rebuttal".
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.