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 ...
Programmers re-invent the wheel all of the time. It's common to see different computer code used to accomplish the same task as older code.
But that's not evolution. Different subroutines don't just swap functionality on their own.
Happens all of the time with computer programming (ever looked at various iterations of MicroSoft Windows code?!).
...just doesn't happen by evolutionary happenstance.
One of the things about evolution is that the details of the genome change over time, even within a species. Southhack is not wrong about the implications of code that does not conform to a nested hierarchy consistent with common descent. The problem for him is that the discrepancies he claims exist simply do not exist.
I suppose if he had some support from any qualified scientists one would be forced at least to look at his claims in some detail, but he has no support from anyone on either side of the debate. He has no support from mainstream biology, no support from information theorists, no support from the Discovery Institute, no support from the creationists. It is very odd to consider how important his claims would be to evolution critics if they had some substance, and how odd it would be for evolution critics to ignore them if anything could be made of them.
Ther are several problems with his claim, but the simplest to understand is that the genealogy he presents is a figment of his imagination. Neither mainstream biologists nor Intelligent Design proponents nor creationists think that corals are ancestors to humans, nor do they think modern fish are ancestors to humans. The most one can say is that all three have a common ancestor -- something accepted by both mainstream biologists and intelligent design proponents. ID proponents like Behe haven't even raised this particular gene and its variations to the status of something worth discussing.
You do enjoy making sweeping proclamations on subjects you know nothing about, don't you?
Proteins often have multiple roles. The fish use of TLR-4 (still not understood) may be the primitive state or after divergence the fish may have modified the receptor cascade from the primitive state into the modern state. On the line going to mammals a different role became useful as the primary one.
The ancestral TLR in coral still has not been explored. Contrary to your blind assumption that it is involved in endotoxin recognition, it probably has a completely different role. After all, humans have more than ten TLRs, each with a different function. Only someone completely ignorant of this would demand coral TLR be involved specifically in endotoxin recognition.
Yes, that means you.
He's correct about that, but only because I informed him of it. Ray-finned fish typically do have TLR-4, although the pufferfish, which has a stripped-down genome, eliminated it.
Coral do not have TLR-4. They have an ancestral TLR protein that does not match any of the fish or mammal TLR subtypes. Since we've been diverging from coral for about half a billion years, that's to be expected.
You are such a liar. Here's proof: Southack informs ahayes of TLR-4 in Fish
And look! In the second post I tell you why evolutionists are not surprised to find TLR-4 having a different role in fish!
"This is something that is seen often throughout evolution--a gene used for one purpose eventually takes on a new one. We see the same thing with olfactory genes, many of which are expressed in sperm cells and probably used for chemotaxis."
To: ahayesI must have missed your source for TLR4-mediated endotoxin recognition and signaling in Fish (though I admit that you can point to most/all other TLR functions)...
59 posted on 06/04/2007 7:50:14 PM EDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
You express doubt that TLR-4 is present and request evidence for its existence, which I provide in the next post. You were not informing me of anything, you were doubting the very thing you claim to have "informed" me of.
I will be more charitable and instead of saying you're a liar, as you told me, I will say you just misunderstood your own words. . .
You’re grasping at straws.
You’re completely busted.
Your original objections and current opinions:
You've run out of objections.
You're like the Black Knight who doesn't know when he's been beaten, not unlike another poster who keeps repeating "modern Fish" on this thread without comprehending that he's harming Evolutionary Theory by pointing out the lack of an evolutionary pathway for traits.
Poor Southack. It’s a strong man who can persist in being right when he’s been proven completely wrong!
Your standard for “proof” must be awfully low...but then again, you’ve fallen for Darwinism so that shouldn’t really shock me.
Poor Southack. Have you figured out what you are objecting to yet?
A giant meteoreite, nay, a comet...NAY, a ROGUE PLANET of Irony has just impacted my brain.
Uh, huh. Keep trying. And leave poor Hyperbole Man out of it!
You’re going to be really embarrassed when Southhack has his own featured wing in Ken Ham’s museum. The lone gunman whose silver bullet killed Darwinism.
I saw on the news earlier today that there are plans for a bigger and finer museum than Ken Ham's. It is to be built in Stockholm honoring Abba.
Let’s all say thanks for the music.
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