Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution

tboulay writes "The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation. The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a large textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards, then market those books nationwide. 'This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science,' said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution." Both sides are saying the issue it too close to call. Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways.

Comments

It's time for Catholicism to step up

[Anonymous Coward]

The Catholic church is in agreement with the theory of evolution, so it's time for it to make it clear to its followers they need to support the teaching of evolution over creationism.

Re:It's time for Catholicism to step up

[Red Flayer]

The Catholic church is in agreement with the theory of evolution, so it's time for it to make it clear to its followers they need to support the teaching of evolution over creationism.

It's not the Catholics who are the problem, it's certain fundamentalist Protestants.

Please don't conflate the two.

The big problem with fundamentalist protestants is that they believe the bible to be literally true and inviolate. So if you invalidate one little part of the bible, you invalidate their entire faith.

This means that they'll defend the most ridiculous things as a defense of their faith, and supporting teaching of evolution is viewed as a direct attack on their faith.

Re:How about this, wise-guy

[MightyMartian]

While Dover wasn't a precedent-setting case per se, Judge Jones final decision, in particular the elements of it demonstrating how evolution had been picked out of all the sciences for "special treatment" will be applicable if this reaches Federal court. Simply put, as much as the Fundies dishonest and fundamentally immoral argument that they're just trying to teach the flaws, they are in fact simply trying to get Creationism through the backdoor.

Let's be clear here. Creationism is dead Edwards v. Aguillard), Intelligent Design is dead (Kitzmiller v. Dover), and now all these incredibly dishonest scam artists and their ignorant followers (most of which probably aren't even aware they're being scammed) have got left is Teach the Controversy.

Here's the news, THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY OVER BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. The number of real scientists (and no, engineers and mathematicians are not scientists) who disagree with evolutionary is so exceedingly small to be utterly irrelevant. Even one of ID's biggest formulators, Michael Behe, doesn't disagree with evolution or Common Descent.

What I'm wondering, when this is handed back to them by the courts, where will they go next? What's left after "Teach the Controversy"?

On "Theory" ...

[PhxBlue]

Anyone who says, "Evolution's just a theory" should read up on what the word "theory" means within the scientific community:

"A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations." (Wikipedia: Scientific Theory)

Natural selection meets these criteria, as does evolution as a whole. Saying "evolution is a theory" is like saying gravity is just a theory. If you want to test gravity (and natural selection, for that matter), jump off a tall building and see if you can fly.

Re:More than two sides

[ThisIsAnonymous]

I am a Christian who believes the Bible. I therefore believe that "God created the heavens and the earth."

I believe this is called begging the question. It's a type of logical fallacy and is not admissible in any intellectually honest debate. Please take a moment to review "begging the question." Google is your friend.

Plenty of religious folk don't

[langelgjm]

Well, there are a lot of religious folk who don't have a problem with evolution: e.g., Catholics, pretty much any mainstream Protestant church, lots of Jews...

And in fact, many of them have taken just that tack of "evolution as process, God as architect." It's nothing new, either - Darwin's book prompted controversy in religious circles when it was first published, but plenty of religious figures accepted it then, and plenty do now.

If you're interested in reading historical religious perspectives on it, check out The Post-Darwinian Controversies, which looks at a bunch of different religious reactions to Darwin.

Re:Cue the following:

[h4rdc0d3]

I have yet to see proof that Evolution explains how life began. Sure, it explains how life can change/advance, but not how it started. I think it is disingenuous to suggest people are closed minded for pointing out this fundamental limitation of the theory.

The lack of explanation for the beginning of life is not a limitation of the theory of evolution, but rather, is not part of the theory at all. It is a common mistake, but these are completely separate concepts. Evolution does not even try to explain how life began, just how it changes since it has been here.

Re:Remains unbelievable

[SBacks]

What is unbelievable is that Americans criticize fundamentalism in Muslim countries but they do not see the bigotry in their own culture.
So much for pretending to have the moral high ground.

Please don't use the term "Americans". It refers to many of us that do realize the complete hypocrisy and idiocy of major portions of the population. And, yes, we hate it as much as you do.

So in the future, when referring to these people, please use "Rednecks" or "Hillbilly Yokels" or "Inbred Fucktards".