On the Fight Between Evolution and Creationism in Texas Classrooms
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Let's hear it for Pat Hardy and Tincy Miller.
Pat and Tincy are the two Texas Republicans who showed the good common sense that Texans are known for and voted to remove a state-mandated discussion of the "weaknesses" of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution from their state's biology curriculum.
We can all be thankful to Pat and Tincy because national textbook publishers tend to cotton to big purchasers like the state of Texas. Had the religious right won this one, it might have affected what your kid reads from Rhode Island to Hawaii.
Yes, 83 years after Clarence Darrow humiliated William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tenn., there are still hardy anti-Darwin sentiments in parts of the Bible Belt, whipped up by modern-day "creationists."
And we're not out of the woods yet. Pat and Tincy joined six Democrats on the Texas State Board of Education to carry a preliminary vote, 8 to 7, on Thursday. But the winning coalition needs to stay intact, under pressure from the wingers, through the final adoption of the standards in March.
Just how nutty are these creationists? Well, according to the New York Times, the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education—Don McLeroy, a dentist—says "he does not believe in Darwin's theory and thinks that Earth's appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend."
Yabba Dabba Doo, Dr. Don. The whistle is blowing at the Slate quarry: Time to slide down off the brontosaurus, pick up Wilma and Dino your pet dinosaur, and head out to the drive-in for some ribs. And don't forget, before you go to bed, to put your saber-toothed tiger out.
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Tags: Texas | evolution | education
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Liberal bigots here, not Christians
I can see all the love being displayed by the "open minded" (NOT!) liberals here including the author John Aloysius Farrell. It is unreal how bigoted many of you are as to what Christ teaches. NEWS FLASH: The current wording that they want to change and remove DOES NOT teach creationism. Only asks that evolution be presented ACCURATELY. That would mean the full story and not only the strengths of the theory. That is the SCIENTIFIC thing to do! HOW can anyone say otherwise? MAYBE it is YOU that have an unfair agenda. We only want freedom and things to be presented fairly. YOU are the idea censors and book burners! You naturally lash out at hypocrisy because YOU yourself are the biggest hypocrite. Open minded my eye!
No school system is required to use Texas-approved textbooks
The original post said,
--We can all be thankful to Pat and Tincy because national textbook publishers tend to cotton to big purchasers like the state of Texas. Had the religious right won this one, it might have affected what your kid reads from Rhode Island to Hawaii.--
Local school districts in Texas and public school systems outside of Texas are not required to use textbooks that are approved by the state of Texas! Local school districts in Texas can choose state-unapproved textbooks if the districts pay the full cost, which isn't much.
In fact, a popular textbook, "Biology" by Ken Miller and Joe Levine, already comes in regular, Texas, and California editions.
Wow... dont even know where to star on that one... guess we'll start at the top.
"Who decided what was good and bad and why? What was the first law and who named it and when and WHY?"
Well, the first set of written laws that we have pre-date your biblical ones by at least 2,000 years... and that isn't just scientific reckoning, either. It hails from Sumeria, the people that lived before the supposed 'flood'... well before Moses was born. Moses, in fact, came from the civilization that grew off of Sumeria's ruins.
"Why did only some apes evolve to you and not a horse or a bat. Who named these creatures anyway? Who was the first PaPa ape? Shouldn't you know your first father? Oh right, He was the missing link. Well then why did he abandon you, and where is the law book he left, certainly if you started over again, one of you knew the law and still passed it on. Who was this one?"
This whole paragraph only shows how poorly educated you are... if you do not understand why apes dont suddenly transform into horses, or why an ape doesn't suddenly remake the same exact evolutionary jump and give birth to say... George Bush... then obviously 'No Child Left Behind' left YOU behind. Why dont I know my 'first father'? Same reason you never met you great-great-great-great-great grandaddy.... he's dead. Where is the law book he left? Smithsonian, I believe.
To sum up... Your entire argument shows that your education was not, in fact, an education as much as it was an indoctrination. (You can feel free to look up the big words). You dont seem to be able to understand a world where Christianity and its concept of law had not existed... yet clearly, even if the bible is the only education you received, that idea is wrong.
The bible lists generation after generation of people that your God happily slaughtered before he ever bothered to hand the law to Moses. The law that was handed to Moses is a code of ethics that YOU dont even believe in. Rather, we have to wait some 2,000 more years to have the law rewritten by Jesus, and the Christian faith has done a very poor job of following even its most basic precepts... such as non-violence, charity, poverty, non-judgment, and an open heart. Instead we are deluged by closed minded, rich televangelists tell us what we are doing wrong, then telling us to send them money... we have a mass of Christians that are all frothing at the mouth for us to bomb Iran, and think that we ought to 'nuke them all to a sea of glass'.
It is time your people learned to 'take the log out of your own eye' before you bother with the mote in ours. Even if we are all wrong, what alternative are you giving us? WWJD? Turn a blind eye to global warming because the televangelist is telling him that god loves the oil companies? Go to war to kill everyone that doesn't think like us because God loves them too? How about we pillage our education system just so no one has any scary independent thoughts?
Thank you, but... NO.
If Jesus returned right now, I think he would be ashamed of the Church that claims him.
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