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.
Genesis 5
1. This is the written account of Adam's line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
2. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man. "
3. When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
Nonsense.
Everybody knows it's turned off by the light bulb fairy angel.
Remember this in school, then.
In what units is "evolution" measured?
One could certainly quantitate it as base pair changes.
However, and I know it irritates you as a mathematician, but not all science is a matter of numbers.
One could certainly quantitate it as base pair changes.
However, and I know it irritates you as a mathematician, but not all science is a matter of numbers.
Ahem, you seem to have conflated science and mathematics; the two are not synonymous.
I used to argue that point.
Like pounding your head with a hammer. I gave up.
And so it might have been, if only loose women had ever shown any interest in consorting with me, and if I had a metabolism sufficently robust to cope with anything stronger than the occasional snifter of Glenmorangie 12-year old single malt...
But I suppose we could offer a menu of theoretical choices on the Eternal Question of the Refrigerator Light, to wit:
Creationist: Using the authority of the sales literature including in the packing crate, the Creationist claims that "Frigidaire so loved its customers, it decrees Non fiat lux! everytime the refrigerator door is closed, thereby sparing us untoward electric bills. To challenge this creed is to risk the wrath of the Frigidaire Corporation and may result in an eternity spent in the foul underworld of spoiled produce."
Intelligent Design: The mechanism for switching off the light inside the refrigerator is irreducibly complex, only a Higher Force (or space alien) could have made it, all of a piece.
Evolutionary: First, there were simple, dark iceboxes...
That was to what I was responding.
not all science is a matter of numbers.
Indeed, there are many who flail away in the Nerf™ sciences. But ya gotta have numbers of some kind, otherwise, you're just doing the humanities with a fancy white coat.
Genesis
19:32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
19:33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
19:34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
19:35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
19:36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.
Scripture is fun!
We evolved from apes, just not the ones existing today. We share an (extinct) common ancestor with gorillas, chimps etc.
Protestants used to be Catholics, so why are there still Catholics?
Nice joke, but it's just a joke.
No, I said "most" because there are people who run things incorrectly.
What is your taxonomic scheme? State your assumptions; show your work.
This is one of those oft repeated errors. It is factually challenged. Differently honest. To the far left of the bell curve as to reliability.
More specifically, differential reproductive success is probably among the most studied and measured phenomena in biology.
That's just nonsense. But I never met a mathematician who knew diddly about science in practice anyway, unless he/she was a double major.
Poor military decisions in the Thirty Years War?
I sometimes don't know how to unstop my toilet, either. Shall we have a Department of Plumbing at the local university?
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