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 ...
Can you name a single ID advocate that's published anything who's not affiliated with the Disco institute?
Hey..I’ve got Italian background.
Maybe you had steak tomato cheese pie.
Not pizza. Capisce? ;-)
Just curious...is the gluten thing an allergy or personal taste?
Yes, and you based your entire argument on such fantasies.
Pity.
Every scientist who has created her own transgenic species in the lab is an ID advocate at some level.
You think that pigs just *evolved* into growing human growth hormones for pharmaceutical companies?!
I'm not. Ergo your premise is flawed
I think one could reasonably define prominent as having written a book that most people interested in the subject have heard of and seen quoted, or having been invited to testify as an expert witness in a relevant court action.
I suppose there are prominent scientists who have done none of these things, but we all know that scientists are fired as soon as they indicate an interest in ID; therefore there cannot be any prominent ID supporters who are successful, practicing scientists.
See #44.
There is nothing wrong for a science director to criticize the teaching of ID. ID isn't science, it is philosophy. It should be taught in a philosophy class along with the cosmological argument and the ontological argument. It should not be taught in a science class where people actually require something called evidence.
The State of Texas is going to lose big time if this goes to court. The federal courts have already ruled that ID isn't science (for example, in the Dover case). There is no justification for the State of Texas to require somebody to be impartial on the teaching of something that isn't science. Else they would be firing a lot more teachers for criticizing astrology.
A wrongful termination suit should be in order as well.
Of course, this is just the Wedge Strategy at work:
Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
The reason so many take umbrage to ID is that its proponents put forth no testable hypotheses, yet offer all sorts of conclusions.
The problem here is that most people commonly refer to the conclusions of both a priori and a posteriori reasoning as theories. The theory of evolution, like any science, is the conclusion of a line of inductive reasoning based on scientific evidence. ID is the conclusion of deductive reasoning based upon some postulate or axiom that is assumed to be true (that God created the Universe based on the literal interpretation of the Bible).
Evolution can easily be proved false since it is based on evidence (i.e. find proof that dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth together). ID is based on an axiom that is assumed to be true, so it can never be proved false any more than I can prove that God does or does not exist or that two parallel lines will always remain the same distance apart.
My T-cells treat gluten as if it is a serious poison to be expelled at all costs IMMEDIATELY.
About 1.33% of the US white population has the genes to be affected negatively by gluten. There's a similar hereditary "allergy" to birch, apples and pears. There aren't so many people involved so it's rarely recognized. I did some experimenting and found I don't have that one but I have a different one involving an allergy to apples, pears and peaches. A cousin has a variation of that where it's apples, pears, chocolate and peaches. Worked with a lady who was a Chipewa Indian. She had what is known as a "rotating" allergy to chocolate, coffee and tea ~ involves a protein usually found associated with caffeine producing plants. You can use one of the three until you get sick, then you switch to the other two. Goes on for a lifetime.
These "allergies" are protecting you from consuming cyanide laden plants and plant byproducts.
I classify them as being undifferentiated from the Young Earth crowd.
Dividing everyone into the “intelligent design crowd, creationists” and “Marxists” is a false dichotomy.
Someday he's going to find out there's more reality to Santa Claus than to Natural Selection ~ which is not to say Creationism has any validity ~ just that when you deal with demigods they sometimes have feet of clay ~ and Santa Claus is readily identified with Little Red Man and the history of the normal activities of Sa'ami shamen.
Natural Selection has not yet been demonstrated to exist ~ it's just a concept for an as yet inexplicable process, but we'll get there someday. Gonna' require a lot more research into how DNA and RNA works.
Interesting. My maternal grandmother had some type of intermittent allergy that involved peaches, but that’s all I remember of it.
OTOH, much of the rest of the family has some type of wheat/gluten allergy. Not me, though.
Seems (no real data) more very smart folks have it than not so smart. Maybe just sampling bias, though.
False dichotomy? Haven't heard that one in twenty years. I didn't divide everyone into two groups. There are scientists who don't care about religion or Marxism. There are agnostics who don't care about Marxism or science. There are all kinds of view points. All I did was point out that ID proponents argue like Marxists.
No, it's not like that at all. Not even close.
Every scientist who has successfully created a new transgeneic species in the lab is an ID proponent at some level.
Deal with it.
Intelligent Design *is* why pigs produce human growth hormones for pharmaceutical companies. They didn't evolve that way!
They were designed.
And you were conclusively refuted in the very next post (i.e. #9 above).
OK. this is your second attempt to get my attention. Most people that toss the ID argument at Free Republic would at least be taking about first cause. If you think man substitutes for first cause, I suggest you get on reading Erich von Däniken. You might as well as get some entertainment out of this delusion.
Your argument was about Marxist logic and God. I simply refuted it by pointing out that there are plenty of factual instances where the origin of a new species (e.g. transgenic) is known to be due to Intelligent Design, which refutes your post #8 claim that Intelligent Design and Creationists must both depend upon God and faith.
The pig in the lab isn’t growing human growth hormone due to evolution or God, but rather, to Man and Intelligent Design.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.