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Evolution Debate Led to Ouster, Official Says
Associated Press ^ | November 30, 2007 | The Associated Press

Posted on 12/01/2007 12:39:07 PM PST by Alter Kaker

AUSTIN, Tex., Nov. 29 (AP) — The state’s director of science curriculum said she resigned this month under pressure from officials who said she had given the appearance of criticizing the teaching of intelligent design.

The Texas Education Agency put the director, Chris Comer, on 30 days’ paid administrative leave in late October, resulting in what Ms. Comer called a forced resignation.

The move came shortly after she forwarded an e-mail message announcing a presentation by Barbara Forrest, an author of “Creationism’s Trojan Horse.” The book argues that creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Ms. Comer sent the message to several people and a few online communities.

Ms. Comer, who held her position for nine years, said she believed evolution politics were behind her ousting. “None of the other reasons they gave are, in and of themselves, firing offenses,” she said.

Education agency officials declined to comment Wednesday on the matter. But they explained their recommendation to fire Ms. Comer in documents obtained by The Austin American-Statesman through the Texas Public Information Act.

“Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that T.E.A. endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,” the officials said.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: creationism; evolution; id; scienceeducation
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To: ahayes
"No, I do not. The evidence from coral, ray-finned fish, and humans is consistent with evolution. So you admit you can't read?" - ahayes

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. My how you dance and squirm. Your claim in 335 was for Lobe-Finned Fish, but then you try to talk as if "Ray-Finned" Fish will save your failed argument.

Won't happen. You lost.

341 posted on 12/07/2007 8:29:12 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
I need to learn how to put my posts in bright flashy colors, maybe then you'd pay attention enough to figure things out.

Let me explain this to you very simply: If coral don't have TLR-4, you're screwed.

Bad news: Coral do not have TLR-4. :-( Poor you!

342 posted on 12/07/2007 8:33:38 AM PST by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: ahayes
Nope. The bad news is that Evolutionary Theory can't explain why Corals have sophisticated endotoxic recognition and signaling (like Humans!) whereas Fish do not.

Other bad news for Evolutionary Theory is that TLR-4 (heck, or TLR for that matter!) hasn't been found in lobe-finned Fish (even though Evolutionists claim that lobe-finned Fish are a key branch in the path to mammals).

343 posted on 12/07/2007 8:37:32 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
The good news is corals don't!

As I said before: Put up or shut up.

Other bad news for Evolutionary Theory is that TLR-4 (heck, or TLR for that matter!) hasn't been found in lobe-finned Fish (even though Evolutionists claim that lobe-finned Fish are a key branch in the path to mammals).

You do like grasping at straws. I would say you'll look awful dumb when we sequence one and find it there, but it would be hard for your image to get any worse.

344 posted on 12/07/2007 8:42:34 AM PST by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: ahayes
"I would say you'll look awful dumb when we sequence one and find it there..." - ahayes

LOL!

Which is to admit that you haven't sequenced one and you haven't found the evidence that would be needed to actually give Evolutionary Theory even a ghost of a chance at being a reasonable theory.

Keep searching, though! Who knows, Don Quixote may have been right, after all! You've always got that "hope," just like religious guys will always have that "faith."

345 posted on 12/07/2007 8:49:34 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack

So were you ever going to prove that coral have endotoxin recognition, or are you satisfied with just claiming they do in the presence of evidence that they don’t?

Poor, poor Southack. We have evidence, and it says fish and coral share a common ancestor and lobe-finned fish and humans share a common ancestor. Your wishing this were not so does not make the evidence vanish any more than your wishing you could fly will make you sprout wings.


346 posted on 12/07/2007 9:20:24 AM PST by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: ahayes
"So were you ever going to prove that coral have endotoxin recognition, or are you satisfied with just claiming they do in the presence of evidence that they don’t?" - ahayes

Evidence that coral doesn't have endotoxin recognition?! My, aren't you cheeky. Wait. Lemme guess. TLR in coral can be ignored because it isn't TLR-4 in humans (even though TLR-4 in Fish bizarrely does something completely different).

Who do you think that you're fooling?!

347 posted on 12/07/2007 12:06:08 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: ahayes
"We have evidence, and it says fish and coral share a common ancestor and lobe-finned fish and humans share a common ancestor." - ahayes

Nope. You don't have evidence. You have conjecture. There's no DNA evidence of lobe-finned fish sharing an ancestor with anything because there is no DNA that has been sequenced for lobe-finned Fish.

So don't claim that you have evidence when you don't.

348 posted on 12/07/2007 12:08:15 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
Who do you think that you're fooling?!

Not you, because you do that all on your lonesome.

Wait. Lemme guess. TLR in coral can be ignored because it isn't TLR-4 in humans (even though TLR-4 in Fish bizarrely does something completely different).

Want to list for me the functions of the other human Toll-like receptors?

349 posted on 12/07/2007 12:08:16 PM PST by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: Southack; ahayes
SH: Coral have sophisticated endotoxic recognition and signaling capabilities.

Fish do not.

Humans do.

How can you say that "fish do not [have the relevant genes]" if no lobe-fin has ever been sequenced?

To make a claim about fish in general you would, at the very least, have to check ray-fins, lobe-fins, hagfish, cartilage fish, bony fish, etc etc.

350 posted on 12/07/2007 2:43:14 PM PST by Virginia-American (Don't bring a comic book to an encyclopedia fight.)
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To: Virginia-American

More importantly, he first needs to prove that coral respond to LPS like humans do. He seized onto one sentence in a popular news outlet story and extrapolated from there to the baseless conclusion that corals must respond to endotoxin in the same way as humans, and that fish do not. Since coral haven’t got TLR-4, this is pretty much impossible. Even if they did have TLR-4 it wouldn’t help him because fish have that as well as humans, again consistent with evolutionary theory.

Basically he’s thrashing about like a patient in electroconvulsive therapy where the nurse forgot to administer the paralytic agent. Ouch.


351 posted on 12/07/2007 2:47:08 PM PST by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: ahayes; Southack
Basically he’s thrashing about like a patient in electroconvulsive therapy where the nurse forgot to administer the paralytic agent. Ouch.

This exchange (I can't call it a debate) has been amusing to watch.

What is most amusing is that a layman could think he could take a single line out of an article and disprove all of the world's libraries full of information corroborating the theory of evolution.

As if all the world's scientists had just overlooked that one little piece of information. Or as if there was some vast conspiracy to hide that information.

I think what you are seeing is the effects of extremist beliefs in action.

This exchange reminds me of Baghdad Bob, standing on the balcony talking to reporters and denying that there were Americans in Iraq--while ducking the incoming bullets.

352 posted on 12/07/2007 4:53:08 PM PST by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Virginia-American
"How can you say that "fish do not [have the relevant genes]" if no lobe-fin has ever been sequenced?" - Virginia-American

Because there's no DNA evidence of *any* fish having endotoxin recognition and signaling capabilities.

For that matter, there's no DNA evidence to support Evolutionists' repeated (and tired) claims that lobe-finned Fish are a key branch to mammals.

Such claims are pure supposition.

353 posted on 12/07/2007 7:46:45 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: ahayes
" Even if they did have TLR-4 it wouldn’t help him because fish have that as well as humans, again consistent with evolutionary theory." - ahayes

Nope. Not consistent with Evolutionary Theory.

Oh sure, Fish have TLR-4, but it does something enormously different in Fish than in humans (or than what TLR does in Coral for that matter).

And rest assured that there is no published version of Evolutionary Theory that explains why TLR-4 should perform endotoxin recognition in some species but not in others.

< cue sounds of desperate Darwinists typing that there are Evolutionary explanations, just none published and linkable and that specific >

354 posted on 12/07/2007 7:52:06 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
I think the fact that fish have TLR-4 but use it for something else is evidence for, not against, common descent. The fish immune system recognizes the presence of endotoxins, of course, just using a different mechanism: "Our analysis also suggests that beta-2 integrins, a group of well-conserved ancient molecules, may play a primary role in the LPS recognition by the piscine immune system." Why would we all have the same parts if we were going to use them for different things, unless we all had a common ancestor?

What is it you do think happened?
355 posted on 12/08/2007 8:45:45 AM PST by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
"Why would we all have the same parts if we were going to use them for different things, unless we all had a common ancestor? What is it you do think happened?" - Ha Ha Thats Very Logical

Information Theory implies that new uses for old coding routines is due to intelligent design (or redesign), not happenstance.

We certainly see the same code used for entirely different purposes in computer programming, for instance.

356 posted on 12/08/2007 10:38:01 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack

Right, but here you have the same code used for a different purpose, while some *other* piece of code is used for the original purpose. If you need endotoxin recognition, why not just use the code that’s already there?

That’s why I asked what you think happened. Why, exactly, do coral, fish, and mammals all have TLR-4* but fish don’t use it for the same thing the other animals do? Do you have an explanation, or are you just trying to nitpick evolution?

(* I’m taking your word for the fact that fish have TLR-4.)


357 posted on 12/08/2007 2:19:30 PM PST by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
"Right, but here you have the same code used for a different purpose, while some *other* piece of code is used for the original purpose." - Ha Ha Thats Very Logical

No, Fish don't have endotoxin recognition and signaling. Coral have it with TLR. Humans have it with TLR-4.

Fish have TLR-4, but it does something entirely different.

That's not a gradual, evolutionary, smooth step to smooth step process.

It is, however, what one sees in modern computer programming with code re-use of portions of old programs used in (or slightly modified for) new software.

358 posted on 12/08/2007 2:24:58 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
No, Fish don't have endotoxin recognition and signaling.

Hm. the article I linked to before certainly seems to say that fish have endotoxin recognition: "Our analysis also suggests that beta-2 integrins...may play a primary role in the LPS recognition by the piscine immune system."

Further in the same article, it says "Recently, Roach and colleagues suggested that Fugu TLR23 may participate in LPS recognition which may compensate for the loss of TLR4 in this species" and "Our analysis also suggests that alternative signaling receptors such as beta-2 integrins may play a primary role in the activation of piscine leukocytes by LPS."

Doesn't that sound to you like fish have an endotoxin recognition system, just one that doesn't use TLR-4? I don't think computer programmers usually take a piece of perfectly good code, ignore it (or use it for something else), and "compensate" for the loss of that code with an alternative.
359 posted on 12/08/2007 3:50:44 PM PST by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
"Doesn't that sound to you like fish have an endotoxin recognition system, just one that doesn't use TLR-4? I don't think computer programmers usually take a piece of perfectly good code, ignore it (or use it for something else), and "compensate" for the loss of that code with an alternative." - Ha Ha Thats Very Logical

Sounds like an Evolutionary problem, to me. Coral use TLR. Fish use TLR23. Humans use TLR4. Lots of functionality jumping around is hardly a smooth transition process.

360 posted on 12/08/2007 3:56:36 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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