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.
Oh, really? Happens every day in a government school.
Not in that area of the country.
You, Sir (or Ma'am), are lucky that I had already finished my drink.
We aim to please.
Because you have croc-o-phobia??
Art thou mocking the Great FSM!!!???
Ash me no questions and I'll tell you no lice.
Now you KNOW you get in trouble with some folks if you don't give a reference for Evoultionary charts!
Now I see my mistake. It's a good thing that none of those made it onto the ark. Wise of Noah, I guess.
Does it bug you if I ask questions?
True, but few jump in with both feet as frequently as I have a tendency to do.
Data dump.
And nobody's offered a rebuttal.
If I supply data, I get accused of "spamming." If I avoid "spamming," I get told that I have no data. It's a no-lose argument for creationists.
Only if you are somewhat limited and have tunnel vision.
The destruction of public school education is fundamental and inherent to this issue.
Do you know the answer, or you just prefer to analyze and disparage my personal integrity?
The Burgess shale apears to be localized and has hardly been exhausted as to its content. Why should one necessarily expect to find fossilized fish in this location unless he assumes this formation took place over a long period of time and demonstrates a history of life forms from the simple to the more complex?
Especially when they are shown to be organized in books as opposed to their original context. Find a fish fossil beneath the others? It is automatically assumed that the other were prior in history regardless of location, and that some geophysical process must have caused them to be contrary to the expected pattern of simple to more complex.
Don't let that stop you from reading, and understanding some actual science.
Ahhh... Triffids...
The densities of each organism under conditions of aquatic decomposition would also have a hand in the sorting process. I don't see this being taken into account. Even if it were, should the result controvert the status quo of evolutionsts it would simply be dismissed as incorrectly assessed.
At bottom, you have texts (and people) in whom you place your trust, and I have mine. You are certainly not entitled to have your views specially protected by law from challenge in a public, academic, or scientific context. The only tools you have to address the prospect of a global flood are scoffing, ridicule, and false accusations.
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