Posted on 01/23/2009 9:39:39 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Texas State Board of Education Votes To Require Students to Analyze and Evaluate Evolution
By: Staff
Discovery Institute
January 22, 2009
AUSTIN, TX--The Texas State Board of Education today voted to require students to analyze and evaluate common ancestry and natural selection, both key components of modern evolutionary theory. The surprising vote came after the Board failed to reinstate language in the overall science standards explicitly requiring coverage of the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories.
"The Texas Board of Education took one step back and two steps forward today," said Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute. "While we wish they would have retained the strengths and weaknesses language in the overall standards, they did something truly remarkable today. They voted to require students to analyze and evaluate some of the most important and controversial aspects of modern evolutionary theory such as the fossil record, universal common descent and even natural selection."
According to West these changes to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills means that teachers and students will be able to discuss the scientific evidence that is supportive as well as evidence that is not supportive of all scientific theories.
"Analyzing, evaluating, any additional scrutiny of evolution can only help students to learn more about the theory," said West, who is associate director of the Institute's Center for Science & Culture.
We don't teach true science and math, rather, we teach them this ToE stuff and tell to believe it or their never be scientists! Who needs critical thinking when you have this!?
HOOAH!!!
See if you can find the missing link in this series. I can figure what order they go in, could you help. I can't provide ages for the rocks each skull was discovered in, though.
NOTE: Skull pictures size is not idicative a relative sizes of actual skulls.
I think we need to clarify what we are talking about when we refer to “evolution” - pure Darwinism or simply the change in inherited traits of an organism from one generation to the next. There is no doubt that the latter description of evolution is scientific fact. But pure Darwinism has a huge problem with its belief in random mutation being the cause of the change in traits. No scientific evidence backs up the random mutation aspect of Darwinism and I think logic dictates that the change in traits is better explained by intelligent design (since random mutation is easier to refute).
mmm yes- that’s exactly what we are advocating- having hte children quesiton established laws- Yup- you pegged us- our secret is out- We’re anti-educaiton- Darn it- and I htought out secret was safe- but you cracked our secret code- what we REALLY mean when ask that students be taught the TRUTH about Macroevolution, and to discover the impossibilities and high imporbabilities, and to discover how macroevolution violates many key established laws of biology, mathematical statistics, natural laws, and chemistry, is that we mean we really want htem to deny all the other established laws in other fields of science too- Golly- Guess we weren’t as trickily sneaky as we thought!
Comparing the certainty of the truth of mathematics and grammar as taught in schools to the theory of evolution is absurd, even if you believe in evolution. You sound like a global warming alarmist now.
In addition to the NCBI free archive linked above, you can prowl through various biological abstract archives like the one available here; various university molecular and cellular biology archives like the one available here; and various fascinating sites addressing genetics and genetics related evolutionary research, such as the human gene mutation database, the Metazome project, the NCBI human gene master list, the Blast assembled genomes database, and the EMBL nucleotide sequence database You can also, of course, browse through the many fossil databases available, with just a few of them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here here here and here, and with a pretty good overview of "Paleontological Evidence to Date the Tree of Life" located here.
As you can see from the available literature, evolutionary biology overlaps many scientific fields, including organic chemistry, genetics, paleontology, geology, cell biology, zoology, etc. The point being that there is a great deal of "evidence to weigh," and if high school students will eventually be expected to "weigh" that evidence and "decide for themselves," they will need a solid grounding in it.
This means, of course, a solid grounding not only in biology and the theory of evolution itself, but also in the the scientific fields it draws upon and influences.
"Let the children decide" is all well and good, but give them the children the evidentiary ammunition first so their decision will at least be informed.
“let them know there are no wrong answers”...
IOW when it comes to the cult of evolution...there simply can not BE any OTHER answers...
I see.
Anytime the cult is challenged, the challenge is attacked as a religious insult to science.
Yep, I’m sure the kids will come to respect the cult....errr...theory of evolution with that cozy little caveat.
And if they don’t fall in line, you can always enforce science via the courts.
NO WONDER public NEA godless liberal run schools are such unmitigated DISASTERS!
Thinking critically is what science is all about.
Except when it comes to the cult of evolution.
Can you show us any instance, ever, of where your cult was challenged and you didn’t attack the challenge as a science hating religious attack?
Circuar NON-reasoning.
They need to break out of their boxes and stretch their brains a little bit.
They need to break out of their cult with the help of a deprogrammer!
It’s been a while, but could you recite your scientific qualifications, training and experience that should lead any person to believe you actually know anything about the subjects on which you comment.
If I recall correctly, you have no background in biology, chemistry, microbiology, or biological chemistry; isn’t that correct?
But you are missing the point. When you question a scientific theory you need to bring scientific evidence, not religious belief, as creation “science” does.
You’ve been debunked on this point a million times, so why do you continue lying like this?
Is there something science-hating or even religious in these observations?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As a chemist, the most fascinating issue for me revolves around the origin of life. Before life began, there was no biology, only chemistry and chemistry is the same for all time. What works (or not) today, worked (or not) back in the beginning. So, our ideas about what happened on Earth prior to the emergence of life are eminently testable in the lab. And what we have seen thus far when the reactions are left unguided as they would be in the natural world is not much. Indeed, the decomposition reactions and competing reactions out distance the synthetic reactions by far. It is only when an intelligent agent (such as a scientist or graduate student) intervenes and tweaks the reactions conditions just right do we see any progress at all, and even then it is still quite limited and very far from where we need to get. Thus, it is the very chemistry that speaks of a need for something more than just time and chance. And whether that be simply a highly specified set of initial conditions (fine-tuning) or some form of continual guidance until life ultimately emerges is still unknown. But what we do know is the random chemical reactions are both woefully insufficient and are often working against the pathways needed to succeed. For these reasons I have serious doubts about whether the current Darwinian paradigm will ever make additional progress in this area.
Edward Peltzer
Ph.D. Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institute)
Associate Editor, Marine Chemistry
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org
click on the scientists link to see your lies for exactly what they are.
I think they should come up with a catchy name for this new approach. Call it something like "Whole Science" or "New Science" or something like that.
I know you think you're being funny, but you're really embarrassing yourself. You have no idea what kind of work goes into figuring out how old a skull is, do you? Let me ask the thing I always wonder: do you have any expertise in anything? Has your study or work made you more knowledgeable about anything than your average Internet user? If so, wouldn't you think that someone who just dismissed everything you know was acting pretty foolishly?
Check out this list of scientists and compare your qualifications to theirs.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
At least your screen name is appropriate. All you seem to accomplish here is howling at the moon, which serves no real purpose.
I will go you one step further. Darwinian Evolution is the bedrock premise of the aforementioned sciences, and the current state of the science will be severely affected (biology) if not destroyed (paleontology) by the removal of the foundation.
Did I intentionally simplify the skulls, you betcha. However, reading of the articles you have posted, will not "disabuse" me of anything. Each time I read one, and carefully disect it, I realize it is built on a series of assumptions, postulations, assertions and conjectures, that might explain the state of the evidence examined. However, I don't buy it. There is so much guessing and back patting, it is silly. For example if you click the second "here" link, click the "evolution resources" link and then click the first link and then click the first article, you will find the following, of which I pulled the first 2 questions as an example:
Animals: Tracing Their Heritage
Nicole King
An ActionBioscience.org original interview
Do animals have a common origin?
King: Yes. All animals, from sponges to jellyfish to vertebrates [animals with a backbone], can be traced to a common ancestor. So far, molecular and fossil evidence indicate that animals evolved at least 600 million years ago. The fossil record does not reveal what the first animals looked like or how they lived. Therefore, my lab and other research groups around the world are investigating the nature of the first animals by studying diverse living organisms.
Wow. We know they evolved 600 million years ago, but we don't have any "proof" in the way of a fossil record, so we will "guess" what the looked like by looking at things that are alive 600 million tears later. Now THAT is science! It get better.
You study multicellularity. Is there a connection to animal origins?
King: Eukaryotes [organisms with membrane-bound nuclei] range from those with a single cell, such as the amoeba, to complex multicellular animals, including humans. The vast majority of life on Earth has been dominated by unicellular life. At some point in the lineage leading to animals, multicellularity evolved. Multicellular organisms are those that have many cells. Their cells depend on each other, functioning in concert to sustain the life of the organism. So, the common ancestor of animals was a single cell.
No proof, just more gobblygook cause and effect effect reasoning. "At some point...multicellularity evolved...So, the common ancestor of animals was a single cell." No proof, no data, never been replicated in a science lab, just belief in the magic of genetic mutation and natural selection.
Every so called journal article I have looked at, while scary and full of big words that hurt to read, are full of the same silliness.
He's not a real scientist, he does not BELIEVE!
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