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 ...
Remember, bacteria can and do borrow genes from other bacteria all the time. We don't know if the aggregate genepool for bacteria in the broadest sense ever change.
That's not exactly "evolution".
Huh?
Find one.
Wow!
Try “curiosity” as the source ~ although I’m sure you were buying into it.
Put an end to the Big Government Public School Monopoly and the phony-”oh, the ACLU is great”-liberals would lose their phony platform for their phony godless, liberal schools.
Dembski, for example, says that the fundamental claim of intelligent design is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."
Your definition may vary, although it would be nice to know what it is for purposes of discussion.
Now, are you contending along with Southack that the "pig in the lab creating human growth hormone" is evidence in support of intelligent design? If so, can you explain how laboratory manipulation (however intelligent) of natural systems or components is evidence for intelligent design of the natural systems or components being manipulated?
Are you willing to state without fear of objection from any source that NO INTELLIGENCE is ever in evidence in the scientific laboratory?
What you need to do is take a long look down the road ~ maybe 200 years ~ when so much genetic and RNA (and spindle, etc.) manipulation has taken place that it is no longer possible to discern any sort of earlier "natural" development.
At that time they'll look back and say "doggone those Evos, they gave up a perfectly good term for it, and now we have to use this l5 syllable monstrosity."
Why? I'm happy to concede that man's laboratory manipulation of natural systems and/or components involves intelligence. Indeed, I'm happy to concede that a beaver manipulating timber to make a dam involves intelligence.
But I don't see that this leads anywhere. That there are smart critters who can manipulate systems and/or components that they find in nature doesn't lead inexorably to the conclusion that there must be a smart critter who made the natural systems and/or components being manipulated.
I would think the argument would go something more like this:
Since we know that intelligent agents, that would be humans, can change the allele frequency in populations it makes little sense to arbitrarily set limits on science precluding such an agent elsewhere because by setting those limits you necessarily exclude knowledge that lies outside those limits.
What it seems to me that you are trying to do is give up the perfectly good term "Intelligent Design" to the Creos.
How silly. Do you realize how long it took the Conservative Movement to recover the terms "culture war", "compassion", "honesty".....
“Did you know there are thousands of people in science who strongly suspect that many of the various organisms we encounter in Earth’s oceans are simply parts of things that came in from “out there”?”
Everything on this planet, including the planet, came from “out there”.
“Bacteria borrow genes from other bacteria. “
Hope they’re not like the neighbor who ‘borrows’ the lawnmower.
“They end up surviving.
That’s not exactly “evolution”.”
On the contrary, it is the driving force behind evolution.
Bacteria and viruses are good, really good, at evolving, in order to survive.
We evolve in single generations. A newborn, kept away from bacteria and viruses, allergins, etc. grows up with an inability to tolerate same.
If exposed to such, we develop defenses.
Each cell in your body does this, in an ‘intelligent’ manner. Viruses mutate to overcome new defenses. The war goes on.
That design is the ‘intelligence’ which the creator gave to all life. The creator gave life a primary drive, the will to survive.
Since he created us in his own image(ination), we are able also to create. That which we can conceive of in our mind, we can turn into reality.
The article, though, is about the ousting of someone over debating about an issue that is highly debatable, and constantly in the news.
To repress another’s views because they are different than your own, is censorship.
Without question, the Dover school board was stupid not to hire you as an expert witness. You must be the smartest person in the world.
Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't see how. Would you care to explain?
Nope. All that happens is that genes with a pre-existing resistance (or ability to borrow said resistance) survive to propagate.
But the bacterial mat hasn't added new genes because of your experiment. It might shift some genes around, but those genes already existed.
No new aggregate data was introduced into the overall DNA.
OK, I’ll bite, bugs are smart. Now what.
There's also some question about the directionality of time. Could have been going on a long time. We, humans, could very well have invented copper and tin, ran time backwards, then ran it forward to the present.
The fact you find things around you that you can't explain doesn't mean you aren't at fault.
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