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Texas Science Director Forced To Resign Over ID Statements

Posted by Zonk on from the best-state-to-get-edumacated dept.

jeffporcaro writes "Texas' Director of Science Curriculum was 'forced to step down' for favoring evolution over intelligent design (ID). She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID — although state regulations require her not to have any opinion 'on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.' 'The agency documents say that officials recommended firing Ms. Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. The officials said forwarding the e-mail message conflicted with her job responsibilities and violated a directive that she not communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding a pending science curriculum review.'"

3 of 984 comments (clear)

  1. Religeon and Science should be seperate. by Deb-fanboy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is a curious state of affairs IMHO.

    I myself was educated by an order of Catholic Brothers"(a bit like monks) in Scotland. There were an impressive list of eccentrics, as one would expect, and some eccentric beliefs to match (anyone for a procession of angels?). These were people who had sacrificed a lot for their beliefs, you know vows of poverty and chastity and obedience.

    However when it came to Science they were bang on. The closest they ever came to ID was Brother Francis (The Biology Teacher) when if pressed on evolution would say that he would like to think that perhaps there was room for a little Divine nudge, but that this was not in the curriculum, and not in the Science of Biology and would never be included in the classroom. In fact I remember in the morning religious knowledge period the Biblical creationist theorem being taken apart, and really discarded.

    It is of course a great irony that Charles Darwin himself was a theology student, but he arrived at the theory of evolution via Scientific method. Religion and Science are not incompatible, they just dont deal with the same areas.

    To sum up, the creationists are an embarrassment to both religion and Science and should get some education.

  2. Re:how, exactly by tgibbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, out of curiosity, at this point (given the evidence we have in favor of evolution) what would we have to find to disprove it? Since the ability to be proved false stands at the core of the criticism of ID.


    Every time a gene is sequenced, it is a test of natural selection. Natural selection makes numerous predictions in this area--the commonality of the genetic code, close relatedness of genes in higher organisms, even down to the degree of similarity. Failure of these predictions to hold up would force the abandonment of natural selection in its current form.

    Of course, creationists have worked very hard to promote a nonsensical "two model" idea that the alternative to natural selection is creationism, but the notion that disproof of natural selection would force a return to creationism is nonsensical. When Newton's Laws of motion were shown to be incorrect, science did not return to Aristotle's ideas of motion--a new theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, supplanted it--one that included Newton's Laws as a special case approximation.

    It is worth noting that natural selection is not even the only theory of evolution. Remember Lamarck? Darwin came along at a time when scientists were looking for an evolutionary theory, because the predictions of creationism were inconsistent with the data (unlike intelligent design, which is intentionally vague and more a religious notion than a scientific theory, the creationism of Darwin's time was genuinely scientific, in that it made actual predictions).
  3. Re:how, exactly by etherlad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, let's look at what would have disproved it.

    DNA. When DNA was discovered, well after Darwin's time, it could have easily rendered large swathes of evolution irrelevant. It didn't. It verified and strengthened the theory.

    Chromosomes. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs; the other great apes have 24. By evolutionary theory, we should find that somewhere along the line, human genes mutated and two of our chromosomes fused. A chromosome has two markers called telomeres, one on each end, and a single centromere in the middle. (T__C___T) What we would expect to find is a chromosome with telomeres on each end, telomeres in the middle (where the fusion happened) and two centromeres. If we don't, our current understanding of evolution is wrong.

    But we did find a fused chromosome, exactly as predicted; our chromosome #2. (T__c___TT___C__T)

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