Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

wandeljw wrote:

TEXAS UPDATE

Quote:
Education board to confront Ellis’ 'club' and 'stiletto'
(By CLAY ROBISON, Houston Chronicle, Feb. 2, 2009)

“While on the national level in America there is more emphasis on a healthy respect for science, our board is engaged in a debate on how to teach evolution,” he said.

At its last meeting, the board narrowly agreed to repeal a longtime curriculum requirement that Texas teachers instruct students in the weaknesses and strengths of evolution theory. But, the next day, it adopted another requirement that, some scientists say, will continue to undermine the state’s science standards.

What was the other requirement it adopted?

The day after the board defeated a "strengths and weaknesses" requirement, conservatives on the board managed to get a majority to pass one or two amendments.

One amendment calls for students to discuss the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of the conclusion that humans and other living things have common ancestors. (Another amendment had something to do with making students aware of the "Cambrian Explosion.")

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

The day after the board defeated a "strengths and weaknesses" requirement, conservatives on the board managed to get a majority to pass one or two amendments.

One amendment calls for students to discuss the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of the conclusion that humans and other living things have common ancestors.

So they failed with "Strengths and Weaknesses" and now they changed the words to "Sufficiency or Insufficiency".... Hahahahahaha, that's great. I guess their strategy is to create a separate court case out of every word in the thesaurus.

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@rosborne979,

Here is the exact wording of the amendment that was passed:

Quote:

Analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.

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@wandeljw,

a good instructor, sufficiently informed, wont have any trouble with that amendment. Wed start with chapters 9 and 10 of the "Origin"Itself and then look at each of the concepts in turn, with all the evidence that can be gathered by the students in this discussion period.
The IDjits dont realize that , with this ed committee mandated attention focused on an aspect of the bio curriculum, they are losing that detail-free "broad brush" effectiveness that their critiques rely upon. The more that the curriculum focuses upon detail, the more the students will be educated about the elegance behind natural selection. This is really a gift served up by an unthinking committee.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Quote:

I guess their strategy is to create a separate court case out of every word in the thesaurus.

Yeah well- we know your strategy ros. It's to look at the science you want to look at and ignore the science you don't. Exactly what happened at Dover.

Texas looks to me to be one place you can get something of a proper scientific education rather than just a load of left-wing selectivities carefully designed to push a specific agenda and further careers in the propaganda industry.

I don't suppose you have bothered studying Darwin's lame excuses for the Cambrian problem. An imperfect fossil record. Ye gods. And in Chap. 6 he raises the matter himself along with the absence of what, he admits, is an even vaster range than that of the uncountable extant species,: that of the parent ancestor and the "transitional varieties" all of which must have been exterminated "by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form." And what a ridiculous word "perfection" is in this context of a continuously dynamic process.

He says that the imperfection of the fossil record is "chiefly (sic) due to organic beings not inhabiting profound depths of the sea".

I defy anybody to explain Chap 6 of Origins to schoolkids.

By all means try to turn Darwin into a saint of the new secular material age in order to justify abortion, divorce, homosexuality, adultery and what not but don't expect religious people to lie down for that vague wodge of teleology in Chap. 6. Religion deals with human beings in social settings.

There are more species than we can count. So how are blood clotting cascades in one of them proof of anything? Make a case out of every species.

It's obvious ros has no science. Merely cheap jibes.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

a good instructor, sufficiently informed, wont have any trouble with that amendment. Wed start with chapters 9 and 10 of the "Origin"Itself and then look at each of the concepts in turn, with all the evidence that can be gathered by the students in this discussion period.
The IDjits dont realize that , with this ed committee mandated attention focused on an aspect of the bio curriculum, they are losing that detail-free "broad brush" effectiveness that their critiques rely upon. The more that the curriculum focuses upon detail, the more the students will be educated about the elegance behind natural selection. This is really a gift served up by an unthinking committee.

What empty, content free nonsense that is. What "elegance" is behind natural selection? Pure anthropomorphism. Elegance my arse. Red in tooth and claw--elegance? Strongest does the shagging!! What's elegant about that?

I saw a film of two stags fighting. When the loser slunk off all the females' tails popped up vertically. How elegant. Once a year too.

Imagine that lads. Think of all the money you would save. Advertising revenue would do more than tank. The ******* economy would go tits up in a week.

It is very difficult for a scientifically disinterested observer to appreciate a 150 year old controversy of such proportions as this is to be taking place over a matter asserted to be "elegant". What on earth is controversial about something elegant?

You're in a circularity effemm.

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What you mean is that your appreciation of natural selection as "elegant" proves that you have an elegant mind and thus your opponents are crass and gumpy.

Do you have your hairdresser part your hair in the middle or slightly to one side?

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@spendius,

spendi, It's an "elegance" totally missing from your understanding of science.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Nothing is "elegant" outside humans and their doings. Nothing. How can a purposeless, blind process, as you claim evolution to be, be elegant?

Saying it is elegant is an admission of divine guidance and design. Rat **** is elegant by your definition.

Something is missing from your understand of the English language. Something very serious too.

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@spendius,

Gee--what a coincidence. After writing this -

Quote:

What you mean is that your appreciation of natural selection as "elegant" proves that you have an elegant mind and thus your opponents are crass and gumpy.

I went back to Professor Pomeroy and the very first sentence I read was --

Quote:

Praising the female members of their family was another way that men used to gain status through women.

She had already been through using them as sandwich boards and display cabinets.

So I will rephrase my remark-

What you mean is that praising natural selection as elegant is another way you use to gain status through science. It is blatantly obvious you have no interest in science as such.

I've already been through shouting, bombast, invidious insults and a few other things which I can't be bothered remembering.

Every post you write effemm is a hopelessly disguised method of patting yourself on the back.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Here is the exact wording of the amendment that was passed:

Quote:
Analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.

I can't imagine why any document produced by a political board should include language which is so specific to a particular theory in science.

The mere fact that they are focusing on evolution rather than chemistry or cosmology implies that evolution requires some unique level of scrutiny which it isn't already getting and which is different from other theories in science, and nothing could be farther from the truth (and they know it).

FM is correct that evolution can certainly withstand detailed scrutiny, but that isn't what's happening here. These political statements have nothing to do with really making students look at the details, they have to do with phony implications and a campaign of continued misinformation (exactly the opposite of what students really need).

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@rosborne979,

It was Dr. McLeroy, the chairman, who introduced the amendment and got a majority of the board members to vote for it. Maybe McLeroy got the wording from someone at the Discovery Institute.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

I can't imagine why any document produced by a political board should include language which is so specific to a particular theory in science.

ros is slow on the uptake I'm afraid. It has been explained hundreds of times, in a fantastic array of improvisations, some witty and some not, that it is because this one particular theory in science is directly and unavoidably related to sexual receptivity and arousal responses in females some small number of whom are required to teach it in classrooms to smirking adolescents who are not all quite so stupid as anti-IDers are assuming them to be.

One can easily see that this will be "controversial" in a nation which almost had a collective nervous breakdown when a small tit popped out at the Superbowl gig.

ros just likes to pretend that it is all just neutral science or it maybe that he hasn't the faintest idea about these matters. He probably thinks that when Darwin used the word "infusoria" he wasn't supposed to laugh out loud.

It is difficult to explain these matters to people who are not ready for them. ros is evidently unaware that sexually aroused females often exhibit, along with other interesting effects, colour changes in various parts of their anatomy. I will refrain, on this occasion, as I gather some ladies read here from time to time, from providing further details but they are quite well known to those who are familiar with certain types of scientific documents as I presume the Texas senator to be.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

It was Dr. McLeroy, the chairman, who introduced the amendment and got a majority of the board members to vote for it. Maybe McLeroy got the wording from someone at the Discovery Institute.

Yeh, I can just picture them all huddled over their thesaurus look for a new doppelganger to send to the party.

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@wandeljw,

Quote:

Maybe McLeroy got the wording from someone at the Discovery Institute.

What's the "maybe" for wande? One might easily speculate about a very large number of things if one starts with a word like that. Maybe you are telling lies without the stupider members of A2K noticing.

I saw another example last week. Maybe, it was said, that one in three men are bringing up children who are not actually their's. I had always thought it was only one in ten. I sometimes jest, as a bearded person, that maybe men shave so that they can attend cross-dressing parties once a week.

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@spendius,

Quote:

What empty, content free nonsense that is. What "elegance" is behind natural selection? Pure anthropomorphism. Elegance my arse. Red in tooth and claw--elegance? Strongest does the shagging!! What's elegant about that?

Well, you sotted dipshit, you never were much for detail or more scientific analysis. Your only place on these boards is as the Norm Crosby of A2K. The elegance is quite observable in chapter 9 of the Origin (just in that single area of his argument), and has nothing to do with the process of natural selection, but the detection of it douche bag. If you'd take your head out of your ass long enough to see what my post was in response to, perhaps you wouldnt look like the complete idiot ( youd just be a quasi-Idjit).
You have little knowledge of anything beyond malted barley, fool.

Time for you to panhandle some coins so that you can purchase your several beers

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@spendius,

Quote:

What you mean is that your appreciation of natural selection as "elegant" proves that you have an elegant mind and thus your opponents are crass and gumpy.

Nope, just you twit.

I am in awe of the Darwins ability to discern the process of evolution through natural selection. Darwin was so good at what he did, and the explanation so simple and elegant that even shitheads like you can act like the entire process was obvious. The most difficult thing is to explain the "Obvious"

1 Reply

@farmerman,

It's just hilarious effemm that a bunch of so-called science education experts are in denial of these points I'm making.

The very idea that this dispute that is so long lived, expensive and ferociously fought by well educated people on both sides can be summarily dismissed by you lot with cheap invective and sarcasms is too silly. Really.

You're just in denial of the main points. You're in awe of yourself in the manner I explained, with Ms Pomeroy's assistance. I have already said that I accept evolution theory. I have a certain regard for Darwin. It isn't Faustian science though. It breaks down in the simpler forms of life. It was in the air of Euro-science before Darwin was born.

It's pub time.

The challenge is about teaching it to kids.

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@spendius,

Those pushing the ID meme are the ones losing millions in law suits. They have involved themselves into losing battles of religion vs science, but they are welcome to throw their hard-earned money away like any fool.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

"Hard earned money" !!!??? Are you kidding ci?

People who earn their money the hard way would string the fuckers up if they could get their hands on the bastards.

Talk about straw. You must have a baling machine in your back yard.

0 Replies

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