Posted on 02/28/2006 7:05:48 PM PST by PatrickHenry
A proposed constitutional amendment would require Nevada teachers to instruct students that there are many questions about evolution - a method viewed by critics as an opening to teach intelligent design.
Las Vegas masonry contractor Steve Brown filed his initiative petition with the secretary of state's office, and must collect 83,184 signatures by June 20 to get the plan on the November ballot. To amend the Nevada Constitution, he'd have to win voter approval this year and again in the 2008 elections.
Brown said Tuesday that he hopes that volunteers will help him collect the signatures, but at this point has no name-gathering organization set up. A Democrat and member of a nondenominational church, he said he hoped for broad support from people who share his views.
"I just want them to start telling the truth about evolution," Brown said. "Evolution has occurred, but parts of it are flat-out unproven theories. They're not telling students that in school."
Brown, who has three school-age children, said he's been interested in evolution for years. He added that if people take time to read his proposal "how can this not pass?"
The petition says students must be informed before the end of the 10th grade that "although most scientists agree that Darwin's theory of evolution is well supported, a small minority of scientists do not agree."
The plan says several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered by teachers, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself."
Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link,'" the proposal says.
Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries" and that some scientists contend that sexual reproduction "would require an unbelievable series of chance events that would have had to occur in the evolutionary theory."
Brown commented on his plan following a decision Monday by the Utah House to scuttle a bill that would have required public school students to be told that evolution isn't empirically proven.
Last month, the Ohio Board of Education deleted a science standard and lesson plan encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution - another setback for intelligent design advocates who maintain that life is so complex it must have been created by a higher authority.
In December, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes. The judge said that intelligent design is religion masquerading as science.
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.
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.
Let's hope the Dem doesn't attract some Reps to the party. Political competition can bring out some fence sitters.
It appears the Las Vegas masonry contractor has a vested interest in keeping the next generation of Nevadians ignorant. The question is are there 83,184 all ready in Nevada stupid enough to go along with him. Even if the dozen or so anti-evo's infesting the FR forum all move to Nevada, I somehow doubt it.
Gravity is a theory, too.
I don't believe in gravity.
;-)
The plan should also require that teachers cover "areas of disagreement" in the atomic theory of gases, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for a bumblebee to fly".
Oh, but wait, that theory doesn't run afoul of any witch doctor's superstition, so there's no need to intelligently redesign every state constitution to whinge about it.
Well, to be fair, state constitutions tend to be a lot more specific than the federal constitution. The California constitution specifies how fruit and nut orchards are to be taxed (can't tax them until four years after they've been planted) and how overtime for mechanics and others on public works is governed (no work longer than eight hours "except in wartime or extraordinary emergencies that endanger life or property"). And so forth. By those lights, it's not an especially crazy provision, until you get to the part about it being completely wrongheaded, of course ;)
Hmmm... LaRouche's writings on the subject are so convoluted, I think only David Berlinski could understand them.
good, it is about time that common sense ruled in this, the false religion of evolution should never be taught as fact.
Is it still four?
Henry Morris passed on you know.
Masonary Contractors!? What's next patent clerks? Gardening monks? Painters and sculptors? Oh, the humanity of it all!
A giant has fallen.
"Stays in Vegas" placemark
You set no terms. Maybe you want to, but terminology will have to be negotiated unless you have some means of enforcing your will.
It always amases me how IDers and YEC always seem to close their minds to these definitions.
I think you should post these at the start of every thread dealing with this subject similar to the way Patrick H. posts his Ticket comments.
There's effectiveness, for you.
The more they are stated the better as more people will learn. Of course there are the IDers and YEC who have to close their minds at all costs to what science has to offer to hold onto their Book of Genesis beliefs.
If the list is an offering for discussion, wonderful. Is it? This list is not an authority, in other words. And attempts to insist upon its authority will be regularly challenged.
You know, all this "close-minded" stuff and "free enquiry" and all in the halls of science...I noticed that there was no squawking about the stunning thing that happened to the prez of Harvard these past few weeks, all for posing a non-pc question concerning women in the sciences and math.
Free enquiry met an irrational threat, and fell down dead.
But, since radical feminists are not the religious, not a squawk, squeak or fuss from the Keepers of the Holy Altar of Science who regularly inhabit the evo threads.
Makes you wonder if the agenda is pro-science, or just anti-religious.
Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link,'" the proposal says.
Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries".
To be fair, it is true that there have been some scientists (only very rarely those with any expertise in the specific field) who sadly have demonstrated misunderstandings of this sort about evolution. This is the entire reason a peer review system exists: to prevent discredited concepts like these from surfacing in journals (and subsequently, educational material).
If I was a science teacher in Nevada, and this ridiculous amendment passed, I would be glad to tell my students the honest truth within the bounds of the law (that a few scientists like these exist, but are wrong and that bad ideas like these are weeded out in the first steps of peer review), and then explain why the consensus of experts points to overwhelmingly evolutionary theory, and why people who say these things are wrong.
In CA, there is a hugely expensive upheaval over this very thing, only it concerns bogus claims about embryonic stem-cell research. The South Korean "scientist" has been shown to have fabricated the research which directly led to CA allocating Three BBBBillion Dollars to promote and "capitalize". Now the research has been debunked, but the allocation lives on. The taxpayers are being forced to sue to prevent the money being spent.
The stem-cell research that has since been debunked directly gained its prominence from Science Magazine, which was peer reviewed.
Maybe all the teachers in Nevada ought to say is "Science has a long history of overcoming its own errors, hopefully to our ultimate advantage." "Scientists are human beings, and profoundly fallible like all human beings." "Science Magazine's Peer Review System is Unreliable."
"I don't believe in gravity."
Me neither, I believe in Intelligent Falling.
Once, I was distracted, not paying attention at the critical moment (should I go up? Or down?), and flew instead of falling.
/With credit to Dent Arthur Dent, my favorite hairless ape/
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