Kansas BOE wants to lie to students - Part 2

Posted 13 August 2005 by Mike Dunford

↗ The current version of this post is on the live site: https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/kansas-boe-want.html

The second entry in what is starting to look like a long series of posts on the Kansas BoE’s attempt to uneducate their students comes from the same page in the standards as the item I discussed yeaterday:

c. Patterns of diversification and extinction of organisms are documented in the fossil record. Evidence also indicates that simple, bacteria-like life may have existed billions of years ago. However, in many cases the fossil record is not consistent with gradual, unbroken sequences postulated by biological evolution.
[italics denotes material added by the BoE in this revision]

5 Comments

Pete Dunkelberg · 13 August 2005

Biological evolution does not 'postulate' any fossils at all. That's a matter of geological luck.

Evolution is continuous. No rational being ever said it stops and starts. What would stop it?

The rate of morphological change is not constant. Why would it be? Who said it was? Not Darwin.

"Gradual" is not a rate. It is a mode of change: by small gradations, not large ones. Large changes happen. You know that a single mutation can have a large phenotypic effect or a small one or none.

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 13 August 2005

However, in many cases the fossil record is not consistent with gradual, unbroken sequences postulated by biological evolution.

"No transitional fossils". Once again, we see that every argument put forth by IDers --- every single solitary one ---- are nothing but plagiarized versions of decades-old chestnuts first roasted by creation "scientists" long before Aguillard. Tell us all again how ID is not creationism . . . . .

kay · 13 August 2005

You know, I'm actually FOR this at this point... most science teachers with integrity will read the textbook first and set their pupils straight when they get to the relevant chapters.

harold · 14 August 2005

The "kangaroo court" revealed ID to be a load of dishonest creationism in disguise, laced with heavy doses of raw ignorance (as displayed above).

It did not change the minds of the school board members who put the charade on in the first place, nor would it have been expected to.

I would suggest that if every ID "expert" had showed up in a tin foil hat raving about alien rays robbing them of their vital essence, and Jesus himself had showed up and plugged accurate science teaching, the "pro-ID" school board members would nevertheless have stuck to their creationist "standards". Didn't anyone see the behavior of these people? For them, it's about WINNING, pure and simple.

The Kangaroo Court gave them a chance to break even, to back down without losing face. They could have said "Oh, now that we see that ID isn't really part of mainstream science, we won't try to force it into schools anymore. We may still like it personally, but it doesn't belong in the science curriculum". Predictably, they didn't take that chance.

On to the next phase - election campaigns and lawsuits in real courts. Where, in both situations, the creationists will lose.

SEF · 14 August 2005

most science teachers with integrity

Unfortunately there are enough people doing the job of "science teacher" who don't have integrity for that approach to work. They are too stupid, ignorant, lazy, cowardly or dishonest to make that ideal happen reliably for all pupils. Having more rigorous standards and high quality textbooks supplied is all that gives some pupils a chance of getting an education despite having one of those teachers - in the absence of having a good purge of the useless and corrupt ones of course.