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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: zeeba neighba
They saw the SPAM® can and got hungry: then went to dinner!
481 posted on 02/28/2006 2:28:22 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
...and there is no signature on the Gospel of Mark,

BooHoo!

482 posted on 02/28/2006 2:29:05 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
Unsigned documents that have not been notarized are not depositions.

I guess if you get a telegram, you'll just throw it away without reading it...

483 posted on 02/28/2006 2:30:45 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: From many - one.
Some other female fell through a hole in the sky as in the Iriquois tale. Was it Finnish?

Not sure; that's a bit out of my field. I only know some of the western US stories. I could study up on it though; I'll let you know when I Finnish.

484 posted on 02/28/2006 2:32:41 PM PST by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: pby; BeHoldAPaleHorse

I posted the Vulgate and a literal translation in 463. I'd post the original Greek, except it would have to be a picture, since I doubt FR accomodates the Greek alphabet. The NIV is a modern document, and it seems clear the translation has been 'adjusted' to fix the geography problem in Mark 7:31.


485 posted on 02/28/2006 2:34:52 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Stultis
"We're always going to have to sometimes and somehow recognize that particular lineages are sometimes sufficiently "divergent" with respect to others within their "clade" that they warrant a different name."

Why are hominids not apes then? What is the demarcation criteria? Are we not primates too? Or mammals? This intuitively doesn't sound right.
486 posted on 02/28/2006 2:35:09 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Coyoteman

Just for the halibut I google a bit myself. I'll let you know what comes down the pike. It cod be interesting.


487 posted on 02/28/2006 2:38:51 PM PST by From many - one.
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To: Right Wing Professor
You have such issues with biologists.

It's too easy to be much more than a social science.

But I see it's about me now.

488 posted on 02/28/2006 2:40:19 PM PST by AmishDude
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To: WildHorseCrash

That is what the Bible says...not just what I believe (However, I do believe what the Bible says).


489 posted on 02/28/2006 2:43:08 PM PST by pby
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To: From many - one.
As for your notion that only a math major or similar can effectively use math, codswallop.

I didn't say "use", I said "understand". To be honest, the calculus in most sequences isn't even mathematics. There aren't proofs. There are a bunch of formulas and you take it on faith. Very, very few calculus courses actually teach the definition of a limit.

Understanding it allows you to develop generalizations. Otherwise, you just have the toolbox that somebody gave you long ago and that's the most you can do with it. Moreover, you can't use that understanding to develop and generalize your own theories.

BTW, understanding evolution requires a fair amount of bio fluency...witness the laemetable failure of responses regarding viral insertion evidence.

No. Understanding evolution means understanding finite sequences, partially ordered sets and vectors of elements in Z_4. The rest is just vocabulary. Or the art of finding a straight line through a single data point.

490 posted on 02/28/2006 2:44:46 PM PST by AmishDude
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To: AmishDude
But I see it's about me now.

Is insulting a category of people somehow better than insulting individual persons?

491 posted on 02/28/2006 2:45:05 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Elsie
I guess if you get a telegram, you'll just throw it away without reading it...

Telegrams are not legally binding documents, nor are they depositions, and they are no longer sent (Western Union got out of the telegram business last month).

Do try to keep up.

492 posted on 02/28/2006 2:46:28 PM PST by BeHoldAPaleHorse (Tagline deleted at request of moderator.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
I didn't take offense to being insulted. I can at least outsmart my research subjects.

I said it was "about" me. I.e., I am now personally the topic of discussion. That's fine, just as long as I know that these are the new ground rules.

493 posted on 02/28/2006 2:48:21 PM PST by AmishDude
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To: Right Wing Professor
Nothing has been jimmied.

Good grief...your worse than one of those creationist caricatures that evos contrive. You know...the one that sees the boogey-man in all things "science".

Translate the greek word "orion" from Mark 7:31. Some say "region"; others "district"; and/or etc. Many greek scholars say that it is best translated "on the border" (as the word orion has its origin in the word oros, which means mountain, a frequent boundary or border of an area).

In any case, the region, the district, or the border could all mean the same thing and be by the Sea of Galilee.

One thing is certain, no matter how you translate "orion", you can't prove that Mark's statement is inaccurate geographically.

494 posted on 02/28/2006 2:56:12 PM PST by pby
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To: Right Wing Professor

Amazing how no one touches the center of your argument (namely, that the Latin text says a certain thing).


495 posted on 02/28/2006 2:58:32 PM PST by BeHoldAPaleHorse (Tagline deleted at request of moderator.)
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To: pby
That is what the Bible says...not just what I believe (However, I do believe what the Bible says).

Fair enough. Let me ask you this. This is a serious theological inquiry, and not a smart-assed question. What if the Bible said something that your experience told you was loony. For example, what if the Bible said, "All cats lay eggs." What would you believe? The Bible? Or your experience?

496 posted on 02/28/2006 2:59:02 PM PST by WildHorseCrash
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To: Elsie
I don't know, but sniff I thought I was getting the blame, and I'm nice.
497 posted on 02/28/2006 3:03:54 PM PST by zeeba neighba (What I'm reading now: The Word of the Lord)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
Not amazing...see post 494.

And no matter how this is translated...How do you guys know that Jesus did not take the route that Mark reports?

You don't.

This is much to do about nothing...a very poor attempt to discredit Mark and Matthew's eyewitness account.

It doesn't do it.

498 posted on 02/28/2006 3:04:28 PM PST by pby
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To: Elsie

You'll pardon me if I don't take your word for how evolution is "supposed" to work.


499 posted on 02/28/2006 3:08:05 PM PST by ahayes
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To: Stultis
It turns out that cladistically there are no such things as "mammals".

I don't get this. Does cladistics dispute the "hair, mammaries, three-ear-bone" characterization of mammals?

No such thing as "reptiles" makes sense - crocodilians and birds are both descendants of archosaurs, but lizards aren't, and mammals branched off somewhere in between.

500 posted on 02/28/2006 3:09:43 PM PST by Virginia-American
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