CHRISTIAN fundies in Texas are fuming over a defeat they suffered on Friday following their attempt to promote creationism in schools.
The State Board of Education stripped two provisions from proposed science standards that would have raised questions about key principles of the theory of evolution. 
The sections, according to this report, were written by board Chairman and creationist Don McLeroy. They would have required students in high school biology classes to study the “sufficiency or insufficiency” of common ancestry and natural selection of species. Both are key principles of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
In identical 8-7 votes, board members – Five Democrats and three Republicans – joined to outvote the seven Republicans on the board aligned with fundie groups.
The vote means that students will now have to:
Analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning and experimental and observational testing.
The new science standards were ultimately adopted by 13 votes to 2, setting the state’s curriculum in the subject for the next decade. The standards will determine what students are taught in class and what must be covered in science textbooks.
McLeroy, who argued that many aspects of Darwin’s theory are not supported by fossil records, called the board’s decisions a blow to science education in Texas.
Science loses. Texas loses, and the kids lose because of this.
Groups representing science teachers and academics had urged the board to dump McLeroy’s proposals on common ancestry and natural selection of species, contending they would be used to undermine teaching of evolution.
But these groups are unhappy over the board’s decision to adopt compromise language with regard to the study of fossil records and the complexity of cells. Those compromises were supported by McLeroy and most other board members.
The Texas Freedom Network warned that the compromise language could still be used to water down coverage of evolution in textbooks. Its President, Kathy Miller, said:
This document still has plenty of potential footholds for creationist attacks on evolution to make their way into Texas classrooms.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
March 29th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Thank goodness common sense reigned, pity it was by such a narrow margin.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Why don’t they just send their children to religious schools if they want them to be taught creationist twaddle? They have no right to infect the population at large with that nonsense.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:17 am
I wouldn’t be too triumphant. The general interpretation in the more liberal press and blogs is that the final votes were disastrous for ensuring that evolution will be taught without creationist interventions.
Check out the Discovery Institute – they are cockahoop over the wording. In a strange inversion of reality, the US christian creationists believe that allowing discussion of “weaknesses” will permit teaching of creationist nonsense as an alternative. Partly they play on the popular usage of the word “theory” rather than the usage accepted by the scientific community – thereby emphasising a sense of uncertainty. Read the words you quoted:
“Analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning and experimental and observational testing.”
They will use this to introduce creationism into science classes.
R
March 30th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I posted a comment shortly ago (I can’t see it, maybe it’s awaiting moderation?) about why we should be cautious in celebrating this. Here’s an example of the Discovery Institute position, from their blog (no commenting, I note). I hope I got the tag syntax right, I can’t see a preview option here!
Robert
March 30th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Pleasing though this result may be but isn’t it depressing, here we are in the 21st century with our knowledge and advances in science and yet we still have to fight for reason over superstition.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:19 am
There is a beautiful quote from the Demented Dentist’s testimony to the hearing last Friday, as reported by New Scientist…
‘Anti-evolutionist Don McLeroy, a dentist and chair of the Texas State Board of Education, testified at Friday’s hearing: “I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts.”‘
http://www.newscientist.com/ar.....?full=true
The man’s an IDiot.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:44 am
“Science loses. Texas loses, and the kids lose because of this.”
I would dearly love for McLeroy to explain the reasoning behind this quote…really, I’d love to know how the mind of someone like that works. Reminds me a bit of that twat Buckingham after the Dover trial:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html
(in the last chapter, but it’s worth watching the whole thing).
March 30th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Tim,
McLeroy gets his information from very dubious sources (see my blog entry about it at http://flies-and-bikes.com/wor.....eationism/)
There’s a great quote from him in a New Scientist article:
Anti-evolutionist Don McLeroy, a dentist and chair of the Texas State Board of Education, testified at Friday’s hearing: “I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts.â€
Robert
March 30th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Once that dentist has got your mouth open it is game on for him. For example:
Dentist: The evidence for a Designer God is clear. Visit our the new Museum where humans cavort with Dinosaurs; where the fossils have been placed there by God and Bishop Usher has worked out from the generations in the Bible that the world was created in 4004 BC. Don’t you agree?
Atheist (gurgling): That is total bollocks.
Dentist: So glad you agree. Open a little wider please. I think I will have to take out a couple of extra teeth. Oh dear, wisdom teeth and they looked quite sound before we started. This might hurt rather a lot.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Mark Twain’s story ‘The town that voted the earth was flat’ springs to mind. If Texas introduces creationist drivel into schools it will make the state a laughing stock, just like Kansas, Alabama etc. In a way, such a ‘victory’ might immunise the US as a whole against religious lunacy. ‘Do we want to be mocked the way Texas was? No? Well, vote for proper scientific education.’
March 30th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Creationists are the flat Earthers of the modern age. The flat Earthers believed the Earth to be flat because their Bible said it was. Eventually due to remorselessly advancing knowledge their position became completely untenable (Though there are a tiny handful still hanging in there) and they ended up looking completely ridiculous. Interesting how the modern Bible believer gets around the fact that the Bible says that the Earth is flat simply by pretending that it doesn’t.
However, I don’t think that the parrallel is too exact as you do need a reasonable knowledge of biology to understand evolution while I don’t think that anyone living in the modern world can fail to know that the Earth is a sphere. I’m not sure that evolution will ever be so well known that even the uneducated know about it.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Stonyground,
You may be right. More than once, I have had the experience of xtians mocking evolution because “how can we have evolved from monkeys when there are sill monkeys around?”
Having explained to them how that happened, they have always been silenced, but such a major misunderstanding of the concept in the 21st century is hard to fathom. I suppose they have just shut themselves off from even the possibility of everything having come about in any other way than that described in the OT.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Stonyground, may you reconsider what the bible says.
http://www.biblegateway.com/pa.....version=31
And Stonyground, may you also reconsider that the earth is not a sphere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblate
August 9th, 2009 at 2:14 am
I find it shocking that people still believe ‘without question’ some words written so long ago