Posted on 12/01/2007 12:39:07 PM PST by Alter Kaker
AUSTIN, Tex., Nov. 29 (AP) The states 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 Creationisms 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. Comers e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that T.E.A. endorses the speakers position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral, the officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
All one gets from dropping things here on Earth, wherever one is standing, is the basic observation that things fall, plus some data on air resistances, etc.
The theory of gravity (analysis way above my pay grade) talks about the why and how.
Ditto evolution. The fact of different species populations over time is easily observed in the geologic record. The further facts of chemical relationships is observable in the lab. In both cases predictions can be made.
Are there reproducible experiments on novas?
Unfortunately, grade school “science” teaching talks about reproducible experiments and does demostrations, calling them experiments (in a real experiment you don’t know what the right anser is). In certain areas of science reproducible experiments are, indeed, necessary, but not all. Predictions are the more generally significant feature, but it takes until college science classes, usually the ones for science majors, before that message gets out.
Evolution is an experimental science. If you don’t know this, you’ve been misinformed. The evolution of adaptations can be reliably observed. It won’t be long before this is routinely demonstrated in high school advanced biology labs.
Speciation can also be demonstrated over a period of a few years. Perhaps not in slow breeding animals, but then no one expects speciation in just a few generations.
Common descent is inferential in the same sense that criminal forensics is inferential. If you don’t accept this kind of reasoning, you better be prepared to empty all the prisons.
You have to go through "Fishes" to get to humans from anything ancient. Thus, my point that Fish have never been shown to have the immune functionality of coral and humans looms large.
Perhaps the problem that you are having is logical. Maybe you think that since all biblical creationists believe in ID at some level, that all supporters of ID must likewise be biblical creationists.
Of course, such logical fallacies are easily smashed by simply looking at scientists who design new life forms in the lab (e.g. transgenic species), for one example.
Clearly such scientists don't have to be biblical creationists, yet there they are, intelligently designing new life.
There is a fourth option (to young-earth Creationism, traditional Evolution, & ID) it is known as Theistic Evolution. It is not a "God in the gaps" theory. Kind of complex to go into depth here, but simply put that evolution is the vehicle God created to activate creation, he didn't need to step in from time to time and change things, before time, all events were set in motion.
You had to look long and hard for asimplified tree of life to support your statement. If you had bothered to look for the adult version (linked from the same source as your diagram) you would get this:
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html
That is, I understand, the teaching of the Catholic Church, and of many Protestant denominations. It was what I learned as a child in an Orthodox Jewish religious school, and is what most Jewish authorites teach today.
I found this one that shows the complexity of birds and the mutation trace for them.
The other images I've found are far to large to post. This is the smallest I could find but it helps demonstrate the complexity.
Per 229-
Here is a large image. I am providing the link only, copy and paste this in a new browser window.
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/oec/images/tree.jpg
This represents just one fragment of the larger one posted earlier.
I’ve seen that one. There are multiple problems with southhack’s code skipping, the most obvious of which is he is claiming that modern fish are ancestors to humans (not to mention modern coral).
He does not understand the concept of cousins. Perhaps where he lives your parents are also likely to be your cousins, but that is not the general case.
LOL...
That circular one in #229 is beautiful. (Love the “you are here.”) Where did you find it?
University of Texas website.
No, that would be a step up.
We are most often linked to Hitler and the Nazis. Or told we are headed straight to hell.
Your diagram in #223 has an obvious flaw which, if you think about it, leads to the problem with your argument. It’s trying to chart how different forms diverged, but it’s also drawn in such a way as to imply the passage of time. In doing so, it locates fish only in the past—the flaw is that there’s no place in it for modern fish. If you add a fish up next to the bird to represent today’s fish, you need to also add another line extending from the original fish to today’s fish. And a lot of evolution can happen along that line—including the loss of some aspects of the immune system.
It is the children’s version of the tree of life, drawn in 1968. This is another example of a creationist playing at witchcraft. Somehow reality can be altered by words and pictures.
In order to post his image, southhack had to ignore a link to a real diagram clearly labeled.
No matter how far back you trace vertbrates and our ancestors, you’ll never find a cnidarian.
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