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Utah House kills evolution bill
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | 28 February 2006 | JENNIFER DOBNER

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy; US: Utah
KEYWORDS: biofraud; crevolist; scienceeducation
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To: P-Marlowe; Virginia-American; BeHoldAPaleHorse; ml1954; xzins; Elsie; blue-duncan; Alamo-Girl; ...

"Ok above are two species of Helens."

I'm pressing the abuse button. Do you realize that posting the picture of Helen Thomas next to the picture of Helen Hunt does not enhance the beauty of Hunt but magnifies the horror of Thomas. That alone should show the logical outcome of the "survival of the fittest". Who wants it?


1,361 posted on 03/02/2006 5:55:51 PM PST by blue-duncan
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To: P-Marlowe
Given the choice between mating with Mizz Thomas, or going extinct, all I can say is bye-bye

What a grotesque thought!

Now, are they a different "species" because they don't want to mate?

The criterion is whether, without help, they mate or not. The reason doesn't really matter; if they don't, the two gene pools are separate.

EG, ligars ond tigons have never, AFAIK, been found in the wild. But there are places (India, other parts of Asia) where their habitats overlap, so there is no physical barrier like an ocean preventing mating.

Therefore, lions and tigers are different species

Ditto for horses, asses, zebras, etc.

There are species of birds that are interfertile (like lions and tigers), but never interbreed because of differences in their songs or other courtship behavior. Since the gene pools are separated, they count as different species.

1,362 posted on 03/02/2006 5:58:11 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American; P-Marlowe
I should have said "species of interfertile birds, in the same habitat, .."

Getting late ..

1,363 posted on 03/02/2006 6:02:40 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Elsie
"I'm confused... is it a group or individuals?

Remember, mEve is a human and the most recent common ancestor of the current human population. (This is different than the last most common ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo heidelbergensis (Homo erectus).)

The only way I can explain mEve or our Most Recent Male Common Ancestor (MRMCA) is if I get you to do a bit of charting.

I will use the 'Y' chromosome because it is more appropriate to the previous posts.

Take a sheet of paper and place a small circle centred near the top of the page. Mark it 'Elsie'. Place two more small circles below 'Elsie' but sharing the same horizontal line and equidistant from each other and the sides of the page. Mark one as 'Elsie's mom' and the other as 'Elsie's dad'. Connect each of Elsie's parents to Elsie with a line.

For each of Elsie's parents do the same thing; draw Elsie's parent's parents below Elsie's parents on the same horizontal line equidistant from each other and the sides of the page and connect them by lines. You should now have three horizontal lines of circles representing three generations. Do this for three more generations.

The 6 lines should contain, in order from the top, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 circles, all representing Elsie's direct ancestors. Each of these 62 people will have, to varying degrees, contributed to Elsie's genome in some way. Elsie may not have genes from every single person on the sheet but is still connected to each of them through successive parent generations. In the case of the 'Y' chromosome, it is possible for each of the males in the '32' line (5th precursor generation) to have different 'Y' chromosomes. However, it is possible to trace back through the generations to at least a single male that has the same 'Y' chromosome as Elsie. We'll pretend there is only one.

Find that one 'Y' chromosome male in the 5th precursor generation (just randomly pick one, this is a rough example only. The male on one edge of the sheet or other is probably best) and draw a slightly larger square around the circle. For the arguments sake, let's assume that the average family size is 4 children (and siblings/cousins do not marry). For that one male, make 4 small squares on the generation line above and connect them to the male with lines (one will be a male on Elsie's direct ancestral line of that generation so will be a square drawn around a circle). For each of those squares, draw 4 squares on the generation line above and connect them by lines. Successively repeat this including Elsie's generation. By the time we reach Elsie's generation we should have 45 or 1024 people (including Elsie) that are descendent's of Elsie's 'Y' chromosome ancestor.

This male is the MRCMA of all the males in Elsie's relative population of 1024 yet there were at least 15 other males from Elsie's ancestral population alive at the same time as his MRCMA.

Does this help?

1,364 posted on 03/02/2006 6:12:50 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Elsie
"HMmm... you guts find it 'interesting' if the same thought is applied to Noah!

We 'guts'?

Polygamy within Noah's family would have resulted in fewer 'Y' chromosomal variations, not more. This is the whole point, there are too many variations within the current population's 'Y' chromosome to be the result of only a few thousand years of descent.

1,365 posted on 03/02/2006 6:19:18 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Virginia-American
I think you have too broad of a definition of species and thus you think you can prove speciation where none really esists. In your example they are all cats. They could mate as is shown by the fact that they have been interbred. Thus they are no more different species than ugly people and beautiful people.

When you put flies in a jar and in 400 generations you have a jar full of mosquitoes, then you might have a point about the possibility of macro evolution taking place. Right now I don't think you have any evidence of macro evolution being observed. If anything the last century or two has shown that what we have observed is nothing more than macro extinction. Hence we have almost as many species on the endangered species list as we even knew we had 100 years ago. The trend is not that developed species evolve, but that they become extinct and are not, in fact, being replaced with new species.

The observation of survival of the fittest does not produce new species of highly developed animals every year as Darwinism would have predicted, but produces fewer and fewer species each year.

1,366 posted on 03/02/2006 6:29:18 PM PST by P-Marlowe (((172 * 3.141592653589793238462) / 180) * 10 = 30.0196631)
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To: b_sharp
This is the whole point, there are too many variations within the current population's 'Y' chromosome to be the result of only a few thousand years of descent.

Ah, but what if Mrs. Noah had been fooling around? Never thought of that, did ya, huh? Well, did ya?
</creationism mode>

1,367 posted on 03/02/2006 6:31:15 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Ah, but what if Mrs. Noah had been fooling around?

If the creationist model is correct, and evolution went into hyperdrive after the Flood to create every animal species on earth from representative pairs of their own "kind", this opens up the possibility that apes evolved from Noah...

1,368 posted on 03/02/2006 6:35:47 PM PST by Quark2005 (Confidence follows from consilience.)
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To: P-Marlowe
...new species of highly developed animals every year as Darwinism would have predicted...

Every year?! No, not even every tenth generation.

would have predicted?! based on what? AFAIK, no-one's ever made any such prediction.

The fact is, "species" is a fairly blurry concept, and the criterion of interbreeding when left to their own devices is the best that biologists have come up with. It captures the notion of separate gene pools.

Here's an interesting discussion of these issues.

Thanks for the civil discussion, but I have to sign off for the evening.

1,369 posted on 03/02/2006 6:48:45 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: Elsie
Many people interpret the physical evidence differently. This doesn't mean that all people's interpretations have equal value or likelihood of being correct.

I could interpret objects falling to Earth as a result of static electricity rather than as a result of mass bending space-time. My interpretation would not have the same value or weight as a physicist's, nor should it.

Evidence must be interpreted in light of other related evidence not other preferred outcomes. The global flood would leave some very specific evidence that would be world wide, ubiquitous and obvious. The mass of the water, the speed of accumulation, the type of accumulation, the mass of continents, the mass of the sediments, the movement of the continents, the movement of the sediments, the direction of terrestrial water flow, the rate of terrestrial water flow, the mass of terrestrial water flow, the direction of aquatic (I'm using this to specify under water flows) currents, the rate of aquatic water flow, the mass of aquatic water flow, and many other conditions would all leave interrelated and recognizable telltales in the geologic column. The telltales modern geologists see do not match what would be necessary for a global flood.

The only people who interpret the evidence differently than modern geology are those with a vested interest in matching the evidence to their interpretation of an ancient book. To accomplish this they make up wild stories such as a water canopy, which of course creates a problem with atmospheric pressure. To overcome this problem, the source of the water is modified to include underground water (Walt Brown - hydroplate theory). This of course brings up the problem of heat generation. This is fixed by ... and so on, and so on.

Each subsequent correction is found to not comply with some physical law or another so has to be changed in some radical way or another. This is what happens when there is a need for the evidence to match a conclusion. This is what happens when individuals try to make the world fit the Bible.

1,370 posted on 03/02/2006 6:56:50 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Virginia-American
The fact is, "species" is a fairly blurry concept, and the criterion of interbreeding when left to their own devices is the best that biologists have come up with. It captures the notion of separate gene pools.

Well that was my point in the first place. The spam article I was commenting upon was used to attempt to show that evolution of species has been observed, but in order to show it, they had to redefine the term species in order to coincide with the result that they obtained.

They didn't observe the evolution from fly to mosquito or fly to "walk". What they observed was that if they started a gene pool with MUTANT flies and interbred the MUTANT flies for 40 generations, while at the same time artificially removing any hybrids from the gene pool then they could artificially create (rather than naturally evolve) a fly that was not particularly sexually attracted to the mutant flies that were bred in another jar. Big deal. The fact is that they stacked the deck by using mutants in the first place and even with the deck stacked, the result was not reproducible in another independent experiment. This is hardly "evidence" for naturalistic macro evolutionary changes in the creation.

But I suspect that if this experiment were mentioned in a high school textbook and a christian teacher were to point out this fact and question the result in a high school classroom that they would have their credential pulled.

Thanks for the civil discussion, but I have to sign off for the evening.

You are most welcome.

Good night.

1,371 posted on 03/02/2006 7:01:56 PM PST by P-Marlowe (((172 * 3.141592653589793238462) / 180) * 10 = 30.0196631)
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To: Fester Chugabrew
Why do you insist on using a single fact (that fossils are found world wide) as an independent verification of a Biblical flood without considering the accompanying fossilized ecology that existed at the time of the fossilized organism. Many other fossilized flora and fauna, many diagnostic of the environment are found with the larger fossils. Contained in the same strata as many notable fossils, are fossils of insects, leaves, spores, seeds, pollen, rain drops, and even worm tunnels, each of which requires a specific environment to survive and many a different condition than a flood to be preserved. Some of the sediment contains evidence of dry accumulation, some of wet accumulation; some of stream deposition, some lake deposition, some ocean deposition.

You also ignore the order of strata that quite independently from any dating method shows chronological sequencing of organisms.

Evidence should not be considered independently of all other when determining the history of the rocks.

1,372 posted on 03/02/2006 7:16:59 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: PatrickHenry
"Ah, but what if Mrs. Noah had been fooling around? Never thought of that, did ya, huh? Well, did ya?

Noah should never have left her alone with his sons...

They didn't fall far from the tree, did they?

1,373 posted on 03/02/2006 7:22:43 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Elsie
"I don't see how your example addresses the facts of whether an individual or a group mutates.

An individual experiences a mutation. The mutation will not define a new species unless it is fixed in the population. (All members have access to the allele). The new allele will not fix in the population unless those that have it as part of their genome have offspring.

1,374 posted on 03/02/2006 7:33:45 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: VadeRetro

[rim shot]


1,375 posted on 03/02/2006 7:35:25 PM PST by Junior (Identical fecal matter, alternate diurnal period)
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To: PatrickHenry
"Be fruitful, and multiply.

Be fruitfly and multipul?

1,376 posted on 03/02/2006 7:37:44 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: Junior; PatrickHenry
Anything beets this nonsense. I'm sure that "anything" will turnip any time now.

ROFLMAO! Do you know you've been doing this ALL afternoon! LOLOL! So funny!

1,377 posted on 03/02/2006 7:45:19 PM PST by phantomworker (It doesn’t matter what other people think or feel or say. “You are the only person who defines you.")
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To: Fester Chugabrew
"I should add that flood activity could easily transport the remains of these creatures to places which today are inhabitable.

You still have to deal with the sorting.

"The biblical text denoting a global flood, which would assist in sch dispersement, could easily cause one to predict fossil remains of all kinds of mammals at the poles. In fact I'm surprised more haven't been found.

Indeed. There should be a whole morass of different species laid down wile nilly all over the globe with little stratification.

1,378 posted on 03/02/2006 7:46:06 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: b_sharp

"Be fruitful, and multiply.
Be fruitfly and multipul?


LOL!


1,379 posted on 03/02/2006 7:49:15 PM PST by phantomworker (It doesn’t matter what other people think or feel or say. “You are the only person who defines you.")
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To: phantomworker

Just pulling down kales of laughter...


1,380 posted on 03/02/2006 7:51:45 PM PST by Junior (Identical fecal matter, alternate diurnal period)
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