Game Over in Rio Rancho, NM: Science 1, Wedge 0

After reading this, I think another round of "pats on the back" are in order for those who worked so hard on the Dover case.

He said that bad legislation results in the sacrifice of Truth and Freedom, and said that the First Amendment of the Constitution has been reinterpreted from its original purpose (no state-sponsored Religion) to a new, invalid purpose (separation of God from public institutions).

He declared that the Supreme Court was schizophrenic for thinking this way, and yet allowing “In God We Trust” to be printed on US currency, or “One Nation Under God” to be included in the Pledge of Allegiance.

However, he claimed, if all references to evolution were torn out of biology texts (and he complained that they all mention evolution), students would not be impaired one whit in getting to Mars.

Or, as Scott Adams once put it: "If a grapefruit is happier than a bulldozer, then that means your toaster can turn jam into sound."

Congratulations to all those involved.

"He declared that the Supreme Court was schizophrenic for thinking this way, and yet allowing “In God We Trust” to be printed on US currency, or “One Nation Under God” to be included in the Pledge of Allegiance."

Agreed. So, in the interest of accuracy, I propose the following corrections:

In some Gods some of us trust, at least some of the time.

One nation, under Canada, except Alaska and Hawaii.

It certainly appears that policy 401 was only supported by an activist minority in Rio Rancho, and we should all thank the rational people who fought against it.

I note that the wording of the policy was very careful to avoid any mention of ID creationism, but comments like Renick's on the radio show uncover the true intent of such policies.

Incidentally, I feel it is at best disingenuous and at worst downright dishonest for anyone to claim that there is any scientific doubt about the position of evolutionary theory in modern science. I realise that these people are merely swallowing the claims of the DI, but the truth is so easy to find that people such as pastors Schlichte and Scharfglass have obviously let their own preconceptions colour their judgement. Why are these people deciding what should be taught in a public school anyway?

However, he claimed, if all references to evolution were torn out of biology texts (and he complained that they all mention evolution), students would not be impaired one whit in getting to Mars.

However, he claimed, if all references to evolution were torn out of biology texts (and he complained that they all mention evolution), students would not be impaired one whit in getting to Mars.

Congratulations to you all in NM. And thanks for your errots and the good news. There is presicious little good news these days, and a victory was good news indeed.

I can't help but be amused by the confident "game over" headline. With creationists, the game is never over, they simply lost this round and will reorganize, raise more funding, and try again. They were only one vote short; how hard can it be to change it with a good stealth candidate?

So while I applaud everyone who worked so hard to get that one vote altered (the creationists only won by one vote in 2005), don't sit back and relax. Ignorance never sleeps.

He [Schlichte] said that bad legislation results in the sacrifice of Truth and Freedom, and said that the First Amendment of the Constitution has been reinterpreted from its original purpose (no state-sponsored Religion) to a new, invalid purpose (separation of God from public institutions). He [Achlichte] declared that bad legislation results in the sacrifice of Truth and Freedom, and said that the First Amendment of the Constitution has been reinterpreted from its original purpose (no state-sponsored Religion) to a new, invalid purpose (separation of God from public institutions).

Yeah, Flint. We know this is but one victory in the midst of a war of sorts. We have been fighting these people on the ground for over a decade in many battles. But once in a while, you have to cheer when you win one. We have 1.5 years until the next election. This week we celebrate a bit.

We have learned to always sleep with one eye open.

I am proudly a *Darwinist SWAT Team* charter member, or so says at least one ID creationist ;-)

Kim,

I should emphasize my thanks. What you've done takes a lot of time, and seems like holding back the tide. Someday soon, I hope to retire and join your team.

Thanks to Marshall, Kim, and Dave for the mighty effort to maintain science curricula without religious dicta interfering.I would say that Law has prevailed. My thanks also to those citizens who appeared in opposition to Science 401 throughout the year.

Perseverance and reason succeeds. Well done. Kim - Darwin Swat Team - the DST - sign me up. Its deserving of a well designed patch to enhance a good quality ball cap, emblematic of what all of you have accomplished. I'd like to place the first out of state order. Raise some money. A good design would appeal to all the rest of us whose states are at risk of similar ignorant stupidity. David

Now the Dishonesty Institute is going to retract that little pamphlet that claims six, nay, five, nay four states have some kind of vague requirement to teach the controversy in some form and issue it with the corrected number. Scratch New Mexico from its list of states. Real soon, pretty soon. Yeah, sure. I am not holding my breath.

May be we should try to drive a wedge between the professional liars of the Discoverup Institute, its media shills and the rubes who get taken in by such persistent lies and half-truths.

May be till we know for sure otherwise, we should give the pastor Scharfglass the benefit of doubt and explain how he was lied to and cheated by the ID people. May be he is not capable of understanding evolution, as the summary says, but may be he can detect lying and cheating. He must have some level of dishonesty detection as per Darwin's theory.

Darwinist SWAT Team. When does the T-shirt come out? Can we get Mr. T to model one?

((big sigh of relief))

[However, he claimed, if all references to evolution were torn out of biology texts (and he complained that they all mention evolution), students would not be impaired one whit in getting to Mars.
He is probably right.]

First off, the statement about "not getting to Mars" comes off as implying that either the main scientific endeavors, or the only scientific endeavor worthwhile comes as those related to going to Mars. As already pointed out, PLENTY of other scientific endeavors come as worthwhile, and in no way do "moon shots" or "Mars shots" give us enough to motivative most of scientific research.

Second, I don't think it "probably right" that evolutionary theory has no bearing on getting to Mars. Artifical intelligence devices of various sorts, probably will come as needed or at least signficiantly enough used on whatever ship goes to Mars in some capacity. Various sorts of evolutionary algorithms come as one of the main "engines" of artificial intelligence. So, does work as plausible or significantly possible to think that a "Mars shot" vehicle might have a genetic, memetic, symbiogenetic, or other evolutionary algorithm in some system of the ship or some part of the equipment the astronauts will use? I'd say yes, and if it a "Mars shot" vehicle has such, then evolutionary theory has played a signficiant role in getting to Mars. Of course, one need not know biological applications and details of the theory like how eukaryotes developed from prokaryotes, but someone has to understand the theory in terms of its structure and use such for an evolutioanry algorithm to work.

Left out of the "going to Mars" comment was, why would we go to Mars. One of the main motivations is to...look for life. One of the central scientific questions left is how and where does life arise, what does extraterrestrial life look like, and does it even exist anywhere but earth.

You will need someone with training in the biosciences to figure that out on another planet. You won't need a religious bigot with an axe to grind.

Life may have arisen there and still be there, evolving to survive under conditions very different from earth. A current theory states that life might have first arisen on Mars as it cooled first and seeded the earth by the known process of collion mediated interplanetary transport. There are pieces of Mars found on earth occasionally. Only one way to find out.

...Kevin Jackson had previously had a formal family organization send copies of Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” to state science teachers.

It gives me a lot of hope that, when starkly faced with the issue, voters, even in conservative, rural areas like Dover, Kansas and N.M., have again and again voted out creationists in favor of good science. Of course, the creationists never quit trying, but between the courts and the voters their efforts have been held in check. Hopefully when things blow up in Texas, the creationism controversy will help get a democratic governor elected. Yes, I believe that even in Texas, most parents want their kids to get a good science education!

David Stanton declares: “One nation, under Canada, except Alaska and Hawaii.”

KyCobb: It gives me a lot of hope that, when starkly faced with the issue, voters, even in conservative, rural areas like Dover, Kansas and N.M., have again and again voted out creationists in favor of good science. Of course, the creationists never quit trying, but between the courts and the voters their efforts have been held in check. Hopefully when things blow up in Texas, the creationism controversy will help get a democratic governor elected. Yes, I believe that even in Texas, most parents want their kids to get a good science education!

Congratulations to the good people of Rio Rancho.

I'm interested that one thread of argument is consistently missed in these discussions. There really are questions about evolution, serious issues that scientists discuss. Intelligent design doesn't touch on any of them, however, and discussing it only frustrates the serious discussion of such problems.

I'd like to see, in some community some day, a parade of evolution specialists to discuss such problems. A woefully incomplete list of such problems would be: The difficulty of preventing laboratory populations from speciating (that is, "evolving" through "macroevolution"), especially insects in insecticide research; the speed of evolution to a speciating event; how to determine whether a speciating event that did not affect outward morphology occurred between the fossil form of an animal and its living-millions-of-years-later descendant; the role of viruses in evolution; the line between species, especially in ring species; the difficulty of perceiving evolution that occurs over hundreds, thousands or millions of years, by people who generally live between seven and eight decades; serious ethical issues (Is it fair to e. coli to make 'em make human insulin? Is such a question even rational?); and so on. I'm not really an expert, and I've probably missed a few of the most delicious controversies. Yes, I appreciate that present controversies must be done carefully in hopes of avoiding Discovery Institute twisting of the existence of the controversy into another slick press release claiming evolution will soon be dead.

To get into these questions students will need a good understanding of evolution. Intelligent design offers no insight or information of any use, and in fact probably confuses most serious issues in evolution.

In fact, to understand the ID view of evolution and what the faux controversy is, one should have a good understanding of evolution.

So, let's get the good understanding of evolution first. Teach the facts first (evolution is a fact and the theory that explains it), before teaching any controversy.

Schlichte then declared that evolution is just a theory, not a fact, and that students could not learn how to get to Mars if facts (like 2+2=4) were stripped out of science texts. However, he claimed, if all references to evolution were torn out of biology texts (and he complained that they all mention evolution), students would not be impaired one whit in getting to Mars.

"Scharfglass said he still supported his policy because biology indeed challenges the religious beliefs of some students, ..."

He is not even wrong. If I believed in my house being green, this would be seriously challenged by a photograph of it being red. But evolution is by far not the only fact that should make reasonable people doubt religions...

I can’t help but be amused by the confident “game over” headline. With creationists, the game is never over, they simply lost this round and will reorganize, raise more funding, and try again.

I hadn't realized it was biologists who built spaceships...

I hadn’t realized it was biologists who built spaceships…

Agreed. I was referring to Schlichte's notion that evo was irrelevant to space travel, sarcastically. Obviously, it is relevant. It is even more important for those students planning on becoming biologists so, in fact science would be losing much by tossing out evo in school.
Schlichte's remark seemed to imply the opposite...