Mixed Outcome of Texas Textbook Vote

The Texas Board of Education — as discussed here last week — has voted on the guidelines for textbooks in that state, which represents a large enough market to have influence nationwide. The good news is that the board dropped a 20-year-old requirement that both "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories be taught; score one for the teaching of evolution. The not-so-good news is that in a "compromise," the board also voted to require that students "in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations ... including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student." Score one for the Discovery Institute. A Republican board member explained that the words "strengths and weaknesses" have become "code for creationism and [the similar theory of] intelligent design. So by being more clear in the language and using words that aren't seen as code words, we were able to get all of the 15 board members to agree that this is how we'll teach all sides of scientific explanation, using scientific evidence." Reporting on the Texas vote is all over the map, as a US Today blog summarizes. Some reports claim that an amendment was passed that preserves a requirement that students study the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of common ancestry and natural selection. Other reports claim that the board also adopted language that would have students study the "different views on the existence of global warming."

Comments

Not exactly theologians, strictly speaking

[zooblethorpe]

With "intelligent design", you have theologians trying to make scientific decisions.

Somehow when I first read this, it looked like you have hooligans trying to make scientific decisions. But then (in this context, at least) I guess that isn't very different anyway.

Cheers,

Re:not-so-good?

[jmcvetta]

Militant evolutionists, much like militant creationists, are creatures of faith.

Re:not-so-good?

[Jurily]

BING BING BING -- we have a winner. The wording was changed just enough to stop argument and allow further plundering of science education by those who 'claim' to meet the criteria for course material via 'scientific evidence'....

Exactly. I mean, even the Bible contradicts itself.

To all you fanatics who keep referring to it as The One Holy Source Of Truth: go read it. If you want the past to be multiple choice, so be it. But tell all of them then.

"Troll"? Mod, do you know what that means?

[zooblethorpe]

Please, mods, employ some thought before modding. "Troll" is not a synonym for "Do not like".

In my comment above, I clearly left too much to implication -- *proper* theologians concern themselves with theology, i.e. the study of God/gods and religions. This is orthogonal to any study of science, as no lesser authority than the Vatican itself has pointed out. Dictating science curricula plainly falls outside the bounds of theology, and therefore, anyone trying to make scientific decisions as within the context of this discussion about the Texas board of education is clearly not a theologian. Moreover, forcing one's views on another is rude, all the more so when those views are inappropriate to the context, which brings us to the epithet of "hooligan" -- a more apt description than "theologian", by a long shot.

Cripes, the mods these days are terrible. The "troll" mod used to be reserved for flagging posts that were actually trolling -- i.e., stirring the pot and trying to rile people up with spurious arguments -- as a warning and courtesy to others that the poster was a pot-stirrer and not really serious. My post above is anything but -- at best, I was trying to be mildly amusing and slightly acerbic, but trolling? Certainly not.

Cheers,

Re:not-so-good?

[ndunnuck]

Evolution, at least in the Darwinian sense, does not account for the creation of life. It only accounts for the progression of life already in existence. Darwin never intended, and indeed strongly affirmed that he never intended, for his theories to indicate that human kind (or any other variety of higher life) was evolved from, say, single-celled organisms or some kind of primordial ooze.

Darwin was also known for having expressed that his theory showed that (and how) blacks were genetically and naturally inferior to whites.

Re:A religion called science.

[jamesivie]

Many people believe that what you say is exactly true of their own religion as well. Science is merely God's way of allowing us to discover what he already knows. Science can never prove why anything happens either--it only comes up with new questions. So "evolution" created man? What or who created the conditions necessary for that evolution to occur? And what created that? And so on. Science has never answered why the universe is the way it is (ie. why life is possible, and why we are here) any better than religion has. It has only discovered a few of the mechanics. In order to truly believe that God does not exist, you must (according to current science) accept that one of the following is true:

1. There are multiple universes each with different values for physical constants
2. Every physical constant's value must differ in different regions of space
3. We just got incredibly, incredibly lucky

There are theories and math for each of these, but just like there is no evidence for God's existence, there is NO OBSERVABLE EVIDENCE for any of these conditions, making a belief in no god just as faith-based as a belief in God. It's just faith in something else.