Texas School Board Demonstrates "Idiocracy" Theory of Evolution

[Rolando]

DharmaDog wrote:
Not sure what relevance that has. Most countries are unstable at their founding. The US had a rather tenuous hold on its independence initially as well, losing several cities to the British after declaring independence.

In any case, this is a better source for Texas history info than wikipedia:
http://www.tshaonline.org/

I agree

[DharmaDog]

Looks like it's been resolved. Science wins... narrowly.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/...e216f.html

There's hope.
:woot:

[Gutenberg]

DharmaDog wrote:

There's hope.
:woot:

You'd better hope that Mavis Knight's heart surgery went well.

Is that an elected or appointed board?

[DharmaDog]

Elected

[Gutenberg]

Do you suppose that a lot of voters vote straight party line and don't examine the candidate's position on issues, or are about half the voters in Texas creationists?

[DharmaDog]

Vote straight down the party line. I'd say maybe 20-25% are creationists. Don't know what the actual percentage is, just my gut feeling.

Texas is getting closer to 50/50 Republican/democrat, maybe it's 55/45 if you believe the results of the last election. All the major cities went democrat except for Lubbock (not sure if one would consider it major). East Texas, the panhandle and the Rio Grande Valley went Republican, but wikipedia says the Rio Grande Valley is loyal to the democrats - this isn't supported by the voting results I've seen.

I don't personally know anyone that is a strict creationist or would advocate that it seriously be taught in public schools, but I know those people are out there and they are vocal.

[lafinfil]

Lux Interior wrote:
Don't be so sure about this "It'll never happen here" stuff.

There seems to be a pattern in these cases. Creationists have an agenda to get creationism taught as scientific fact. This is very important to them. The rational people who realize this is BS aren't typically the people who want to serve on these boards and the creationists slowly replace them. Then, after they reach critical mass, they vote in the BS. People become outraged, vote them off the boards and overturn the BS.

Repeat process.

That's pretty much the scenario here - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

[Robert M]

Laf,

Great episode of Nova. I still remember reading about the hate mail PBS received over the show. Absolutely unbelievable.

Robert

[Stuart21]

"All of your nasty generalizations about Texas are very stupid."

Perhaps - to a certain extent. But they will be less stupid in 1 - 2 generations time if the creationists have their way. Because Texans will be more stupid.

I think the answer is allow teaching of creation - but ALL creation theories (Adams rib, the great serpent, the big mollusc, etc etc - must be thousands and thousands) must be given equal time.

[davester]

....and the flying spaghetti monster. Don't forget the FSM and his noodley appendage.