Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

These anti-IDers do squabble amongst themselves a lot. First there's Ionus and now em. Neither batting for religion in schools.
.. I feel sure he didn't say such a thing about Texas public schools without having some first hand evidence.

Nobody with even a passing familiarity with what you post would concede a point to you about what anyone, sane or otherwise, would construe from what other people write.

We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. Johnson: " Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time, your breach is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.

Talking of education, " People have now-a-days (said he) got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chemistry by lectures,---You might teach making shoes by lectures!"

I daresay that em's athletic scholarships have more real education in them than many a rote-learned academic one which is gained simply by regurgitating recycled old fashioned material ..

.. go to the Texas Education Agency Web site and take a look at the "Academically Unacceptable" schools. About half of them have the percentage of white students in single digits. Right here in Austin, Eastside Memorial Green Tech is 80% Hispanic and 17% black. Is the top 10% of Memorial Green a great source of coveted non-Asian minorities for UT? You bet! Are they as academically qualified as, say, the top 40% of Westlake High (rated "exemplary," 82% white and 11% Asian)? I doubt it.

That you all think that some isolated divergence from the proper system can be taken as undermining the validity of the system itself is proof of an emotional disturbance.

em--I have no intention of drawing any conclusions from reports of events in certain Texas schools with which I have no familiarity .... I expressed an interest in you saying there is a racial component to this topic and asked for you to explain it.

For I'll refer me to all things of sense,
If she in chains of magic were not bound,
Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy,
So opposite to marriage that she shunned
The wealthy curled darlings of our nation,
Would ever have, to incur a general mock,
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou, to fear, not to delight.

O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my
daughter?
Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,
For I'll refer me to all things of sense,
If she in chains of magic were not bound,
Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy,
So opposite to marriage that she shunn'd
The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation,
Would ever have, to incur a general mock,
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight.
Judge me the world, if 'tis not gross in sense
That thou hast practiced on her with foul charms;
Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals
That weaken motion:—I'll have't disputed on;
'Tis probable, and palpable to thinking.
I therefore apprehend and do attach thee
For an abuser of the world, a practicer
Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.—
Lay hold upon him. If he do resist,
Subdue him at his peril.

A prodigal nation wallowing with the hogs
(Shreveport Times, Letters to the Editor, October 5, 2010)

Most of us are familiar with the biblical story of the prodigal son. A grown son, living comfortably with his father, begins to question the benefits of that life and asks for his inheritance. His father gives it to him. He promptly wastes it on riotous living. A famine comes and he winds up scrambling among the pigs for food.

The son is appropriately referred to as the prodigal son. The word "prodigal" is defined as "exceedingly or recklessly wasteful."

Let's consider for a moment whether this country, in one generation, has raised the bar on reckless spending. The prodigal son spent only what he had. Representatives that we elected and have re-elected repeatedly have spent not only all that we had, but all they could borrow. We have saddled untold future generations with a federal debt spiraling upward that our leading economists claim will collapse our economy.

Yet those who want to borrow and spend more still run for office, and we continue to elect them. Compared to us, the prodigal son was a tightwad.

The prodigal son's fall began when he abandoned the values of his father. He saw something attractive outside his father's house. He pursued debauchery and riotous living. He wound up wallowing with the hogs.

Similarly, we have abandoned the values of our fathers and our forefathers. Those values were rooted in their belief in God. Our Congress, on Sept. 12, 1782, passed a resolution praising the publication of the first American edition of the Bible in English. In that same resolution, Congress recommended "this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States." Wow, have we come a long way!

Today, high school biology teachers tell our children they evolved by chance from an ape-like ancestor and all living things similarly evolved from a common ancestor that was birthed accidentally, somewhere, somehow, from inorganic matter. In reference material recommended by the Louisiana Education Department as an aid to biology teachers, our National Academy of Sciences tells our children that this atheistic explanation of man's origin should be treated as fact, not theory.

If atheistic evolution is fact, our churches should sell their property and shut up. If the God they preach didn't create all that is, he is not God.

If teaching that something other than God produced all living things is somehow beneficial to our children, bring biology teachers into our churches and give the adults the benefit of that instruction. Have the local board members who regularly sit in the pews explain to the congregation why teaching children a godless explanation for their existence is beneficial.

Rather than do any of these things, churches wallow with the atheist hogs.

We have abandoned "Father Knows Best," "Leave It To Beaver" and "I Love Lucy." Young and old alike are now entertained by and enthralled with reality shows starring young sluts who achieved instant celebrity status by releasing sex tapes on the Web. Public drunkenness, drug use, promiscuous sex and homosexuality now characterize our "American idols."

We wallow with the lascivious hogs.

The prodigal son bottomed out and came to his senses. He said, "I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants." He remembered his father's values, his father's God and recognized his own sin. That story had a happy ending.

I was talking about that clown electronic mail . . . he has quoted Spurious several times here recently, so i suspect they're having a "conversation." They should get a room so the rest of us don't have to watch. That's OK by me--if he keeps quoting Spurious, i'll stop reading his posts, too.