Another anti-evolution bill, Missouri 2012

Yet again an attempt is being made to legislate for the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. This Bill is the fifth bill of 2012, yep the fifth, to challenge teaching of evolutution.Page not found | National Center for Science EducationHaving read the Bill (it's not long) it's just a rehash of Dover with the usual confusion over law, theory and hypothesis in science.http://www.house.mo.gov/...bills121/biltxt/intro/HB1276I.htmAt this rate of around one Bill every 2 days, the legislature is going to be snowed under with this nonsense.While it's relatively easy to pick this Bill apart, it's more difficult to understand why this continues to happen after the Dover trial, after all you'd think the ID crowd would want to hide their performance in court under a bushel.I'd like this thread to discuss why the Dover trial hasn't put a stop to this nonsense and why anyone would think that children, just beginning their journey into science and it's methods, would possess the knowledge and critical thinking skills required to assess ID and evolution when supposedly educated adults are unable to, as is demonstrated in all it's awful clarity in the text of the Bill itself. It would also be of interest to determine if the ID crowd have made any advances which would render the Dover judgement outdated and wrong.Education forum if promoted please.

NCSE have posted this on their websitePage not found | National Center for Science EducationThe Bill's supporters are trying to claim that religion isn't involved, but previous versions were drafted by

Only 20 posts before the inevitable happens. Religion is brought into the equation, falsifying claims that ID has nothing to do with religion. I think you've just made my point. Religion doesn't belong in a science class so ID does't get in the door. I think you've also answered the question of why this is still going on after Dover - many proponents of ID just don't get what Dover was about.marc, the whole pint of the wording of the current bill is so tha doesnt gt laelled as religon. Your comment has rather spoiled their party.As an off-topic aside, if evolution is a thin veil over atheism, how do you explain those people who accept evolution and believe in God?

Nope, not what I said or implied at all. You'll find out sooner than you expect. I'm a Roman Catholic which I do believe counts as Christian (contrary to what some fundamentalists would have you believe). But you haven't answered the question, really, have you? I'll try to be clearer. Religion cannot be allowed in science class because it breaches the Establisment clause, separation of church and state. That is a fact. Dover happened because a misinformed bunch of religious zealots tried introduce religion into science class under the guise of "non-religious" ID. Unfortunately for them this was shown to be exactly what it was, religion deliberately and dishonestly disguised as science to circumvent the Establishent clause.Give that the religious foundations and agenda of ID are exposed for all to see and given that an attempt at showing it was science was laughable, why are the ID crowd persisting? I think that unintentionally your diatribe may have answered that question. There is a complete lack of any understanding of why religion has no place in a science class. Even when trying to defend ID as valid science you just couldn't stop yourself from introducing religion with references to atheists. You even stated And there in lies the problem. Evolution says nothing about atheism, it's neutral. The existence of evolution in combination with all the other sciences like geology, palaeontology etc., is evidence against the literal biblical account of the 7 days of creation, a young earth and all life being created exactly as it appears now. Your choice of words is illuminating, using "claimed" for evolution and "can" for ID. The problem is that evolution has been studied separate from atheism whereas ID hasn't been studied FULLSTOP! Oh, it's been talked about, but where's the actual scientific work? And in your reply you've shown that even when just talking about ID it can't be separated from religion.Now, given that you have stated that ID does have something to do with religion, the question is more along the lines of why do the proposers of these bills continue to expect ID to be given special treatment and be allowed to breach the Establishment clause? There are some ill-informed individuals who hold that ID has nothing to do with religion, but they are not the ones trying to shoe-horn it into science class. All of the above are occurring in people's brains, not at the lab bench. No amount of mental masturbation can equate to hard, raw data. Where is this data? Show me it, show me the numbers! The word "studying" above doesn't belong in there. Replace it by "hypothesising" and you're closer to the truth.The very place to decide if something is constitutional is the law courts. It's been ruled that religion in science class is unconstitutional. So why are some people still trying to achieve something which is unconstitutional? Does the Constitution mean so little to them? Costly legal battles? The Catholic church is free to teach whatever the hell it wants. It's a religious body and so is expected to teach religion. Are you suggesting that the Catholic church thought it would be sued if it taught creationism, so accepted evolution? Isn't it more likely that they looked at the evidence and made their decision? Afterall, that's what they themselves state about their decision to accept evolution. I wonder which category I fit into. I also wonder how anyone can How on earth do you bend your religion into a denial of religion?The rest of your post is nothing more than an attack on atheists and atheism which you seem to equate with science, or at least an acceptance of evolution. Maybe that's the only answer there is to my question. Until certain people realise that the two terms are not synonymous they will continue to be deluded that the battle is between religion and atheism, when in fact it's a battle between science and pseudoscience.

In your reply to Percy you said Can you demonstrate the political process that mathematics, geography, home economics, English literature, languages, history or any other subject goes through that you think should also apply to science? Or is the case more that you want to put constraints on science that don't apply to the aforementioned subjects?Science doesn't make social decisions, rather the politicians make social decisions based on the information at hand, some of which may include scientific information. Statistical calculations are used to analyse data and can demonstrate social trends which assist politicians in formulating social policy. Would you then claim that statistics and statisticians make social policy? Is Analysis of Variance Republican or Democratic? Is the Student's t-test atheistic or religious? Germ theory explains alot about infectious diseases without any inclusion of God and gives us the means to tackle epidemics, but it doesn't mean that epidemiologists make the decisions about control measures. However some people claim that any disease is caused by God as punishment for sin. That doesn't make germ theory or epidemiologists either atheistic or Democratic.If anyone can express what I'm trying to say in less strangulated terms, please feel free to do so. It's morning and I've only had one coffee so far

Hi, Pressie. I don't think your post disrupts this thread. Rather it demonstrates that ID and the argument for it's inclusion in the science curriculum is not based on science as these bills claim, but is politically and religiously motivated.

Nope, wrong again. Science is neutral on religion so it's hard to use it as a weapon against religion. Religion, on the other hand is used as a weapon against science by zealots. That's what Dover was about and its what these bills are about.

Once more, with feeling, as soon as you bring in reference to religion or God, belief in God, non-belief in God you immediately step outside of science and into religion and we all know that religion cannot be taught in a science class. Your idea represents an attack on science by religion. Let's turn it round and demand that evolution must be taught in Sunday School and churches and religious education classes. How would you feel about that?

Maybe the breathtaking arrogance you just demonstrated is why these bills keep turning up. Some people just can't accept that religion doesn't belong science, no matter what the constitution says, no matter what legal experts judge to be unconstitutional and no matter how bloody stupid they looked the last time they tried it in Dover.They cannot accept that they were wrong, after all God is on their side so they must be right. Praise Jeebus! It doesn't matter that they mow down honest people, honest scientists, the law, the constitution as long as they get to tell kids in science class that the ToE is atheistic and they'll go to Hell for accepting it and that all scientists are atheistic liars out to disprove the existence of God. They will lie time and again to disguise their purpose, they will say that it has nothing to do with religion when all along we know and they know it's [i]all about religion[i/] and getting their particular version taught to a captive audience.It's time the zealots stopped judging science and scientists by their own gutter standards. The only agenda science has is to find out stuff, there is no ulterior motive. The religious nuts in Dover got handed their heads to play with after lying under oath (and it's all too evident in the transcript where they were caught out time and time again telling blatant lies).Even if ID managed to disentangle itself from religion it's still got major problems, courtesy of Behe and his lies in his book "The Edge of Evolution". He lies about science!! And he's been caught out (see the discussion over at Panda's Thumb about the HIV and malaria portions of his book).If you feel that I don't deserve any more of your time, when it's you who is trying to convince us all that ID belongs in a science class, then bugger off out of the thread.

I didn't tackle this statement earlier on because I couldn't make up my mind if marc was being facetious or serious. Then I remembered that one of the reasons we all continue to post here is to inform lurkers. So I decided to treat it seriously, just in case and point out the implications. Those with a science background will probably feel that this isn't necessary since the implications are obvious, but I think it needs to be dealt with for those without a science background.So we take science from schools. What are these so-called religious equivalents that we are removing? We wouldn't be able to teach the physics behind a pendulum's swing, levers and pulleys, fluid dynamics, voltage, current, power, nuclear physics, inertia, gravity, electromagnetic radiation, prisms, lasers, basic chemical reactions, acids and bases, thermodynamics, the periodic table, solubility, types of chemical bonds and their characteristics, chemical structure and chemical properties, flight in birds, anatomy, cell structure and function, photosynthesis, reproduction, the seven life signs, plant biology, respiration. All of this and a hell of alot more would be forbidden.I would love for someone to explain to me how teaching children about levers and pulleys or photosynthesis has any effect on religious beliefs or how it would be taught differently in a religious setting? If no-one can do that, then it stands to reason that the subjects are neutral about religion. What parts of the above require a religious-like belief which is a belief without any evidence? Or do they actually have supporting evidence which is the same whether seen through religious or non-religious glasses?So kids leave school with no idea of anything about the world around them, how clouds and storms form, how bodies of water behave, how chemicals interact to form new and useful chemicals such as fertilisers for agriculture and drugs to treat disease, how to separate oil into it's component organic chemicals, how to move heavy loads more easily...the list is endless.As Dr A says, we'd be back in caves, with much shorter life expectancy. If science education doesn't start in schools how will any child decide to take up science as a career? Do we expect every generation to reinvent the wheel?If marc is so convinced that the "atheistic" agenda of scientists twists facts about the world around us he should refrain from ever consulting a doctor or taking antibiotics or any other drugs. He should have no power to his home which would be a cave since buildings require a bit of science if they're not to fall down, he wouldn't drive a car or ride a bicycle, use a telephone, watch television, buy groceries in the supermarket since all of these things ultimately derive from science done by these atheistic scientists.Look at the alternatives. Why have I got this disease? God gave you it. How can I get rid of it? Pray to God to cure you. I need to move a load that's too heavy, how do I do it? Pray to God to make it lighter, just for a moment. Why doesn't this stone hover in midair? God doesn't want it to.marc is free to throw all science away and live his life without it, but he is not free to impose this lunacy on anyone else. As a parent he would be able to remove his children from science class but he would not be able to remove science from other people's children.It's a good job that none of the people involved in formulating the US constitution thought the same way as marc. If they had it would only have taken a few generations for the people it was written to protect to be unable to read the bloody thing.Methinks that marc has let his paranoia override any sensible thought on the subject as his ideas demonstrate less common sense than God gave sawdust.

I was replying specifically to the comment, made by you which demonstrates that you are the one who introduced the idea that science as a whole violates the constitution. You made this allegation, not me, when you said Now, where in that statement do you specify that only certain science violates the constitution when taught in public schools? Hint - you don't, you say "science". You now state that this very allegation you made is false and you provide a lengthy refutation to demonstrate why you yourself are wrong. Worse you dishonestly ascribe this allegation to me.I've come across alot of bizzarre debating styles in my time at EvC, courtesy of religious fundamentalists, but self-refutation is a new one to me.

Try this one for size.Behe & Snoke (2004) Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues Protein Sci. 2004 Oct;13(10):2651-64.Behe was asked about this at Dover and it appears in his book, "The Edge of Evolution". I posted the following info on an ID site. I hope you'll forgive that it is a cut and paste of that post." Are you not aware that many of the assertions made by Behe in "The Edge of Evolution" have already been shown to be wrong? The problems with Behe's computer simulation are numerous. In setting the parameters for the simulation Behe loads the dice against evolutionary theory. He only includes single base changes (point mutations) as the source of change, ignoring all the other well documented mechanisms of mutation, many of which cause a heck of a lot more than a single base change, for example transposon insertion, faulty transposon excision, recombination, aquiring or losing plasmids, plasmid integration into chromosomal DNA, wholesale deletions and duplications, the list goes on and on.Secondly, his model does not allow selection to act on intermediates,ie he assumes that the intermediates are neutal. There is no selection for or against any point mutations that arise. Evolution happens by random mutation and natural selection working in combination. While the mutations may be random and can be compared to your drunk on the road, the selection isn't and it is this selection that drives the changes within a population. By failing to include any selection in his computer model, Behe removes a crucial mechanism which evolution requires.By any stretch of the imagination this is not really testing evolution. Consider, if you will, a crowd of drunks, 50% of them wearing red hats, let loose in a street and told to get to the other end while car drivers are instructed to aim for the drunks wearing red hats. At the end of it all, the population will contain more than 50% non-red hat wearers. Whether a drunk had a red hat or not is random, but the choice of who gets flattened and who doesn't is not random, since the drivers are selecting red hat wearers. Whilst not a perfect analogy, it does the job.Behe states that the protein-protein binding sites are difficult to develop and used this computer simulation to demonstrate that. Even with the dice loaded against evolution, the data generated showed that it could happen by random mutation alone and that it would only take 20,000 years with a small starting population and only 0.7 days if the starting population was the same size as the number of prokaryotes in 1 ton of soil. I'm sure you'll agree that there's more than 1 ton of soil on the entire planet. Behe's own data, obtained from a skewed simulation shows that the very protein-protein interaction which he asserts is difficult to develop is in fact easy to develop even without selection for intermediates.Let's take another example from his book. Behe asserts that HIV has not evolved any new protein protein binding sites. When he was provided with a list of binding sites which refuted this claim, especially the fact that HIV-Vpu had evolved into an ion channel, what was his response? He said, and I quote "Although she calls herself a pre-grad student, the tone of the post is decidedly junior high, the tone of someone who is trying hard to compete with all the other Mean Girls on that unpleasant website. I’ll pass over all that and try to stick to the substance." This highly unprofessional and sexist response is given despite the fact that the person in question is a post graduate who was engaged in HIV research! After a flurry of activty, Behe has now acknowedged that HIV-Vpu represents a real, de novo binding site. So another of Behe's assertions in his book bites the dust. His chloroquinine resistance in malaria goes the same way. Two mutations are required for this, which Behe argues must be produced simultaneously. This completely ignores the fact that natural isolates of malaria possessing either one or the other of the two mutations have been found. His entire argument depends on the impossibility of these strains arising, so the fact that they do actually exist rather torpedoes his assertions.The fact that in his book he declares "The same mistakes in the same [pseudo]gene in the same positions of both human and chimp DNA. If a common ancestor first sustained the mutational mistakes and subsequently gave rise to those two modern species, that would very readily account for why both species have them now. It’s hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans." He accepts that life has existed for billions of years and has decended with modification from one stage to another and that natural selection is the obvious mechanism by which adaptive gene variants spread through a population. Where's the ID in all of this? I'm interested in what you think of Behe's conversion to descent with modification."When it's asserted that the non-existence of something is evidence against the ToE, such as novel proteins in HIV at a time where the existence of said something is in fact known about, you have to assume that much of what they assert is garbage. When they carry out a skewed computer simulation that actually supports the very theory they are trying to refute and when they propose an experiment to test their hypothesis, but fail to carry it out (See Dover....again), you really have to be suspicious about their motivation, their thought processes and ultimately their mental stability.

This reminded me of an absurd signature by one of our members here which made me laugh when I saw it. And therein lies the problem. Kids will never learn critical thinking skills if they are presented with information way over their heads. Heck, if you look at the bastardised version of the ToE which ID supporters and YECs are busily refuting, you'll realise that many educated adults don't understand either what the ToE actually states or what information it is based on.This bill proposes that kids be taught the strengths and weaknesses of biological and chemical evolution. Why just those two? Why not the strengths and weaknesses of atomic theory or thermodynamics?I'm also very interested in hearing what the weaknesses of biological evolution actually are. The bill would allow a YEC teacher to state that one of the weaknesses in the ToE is that it would take much longer than the 6000 years that the earth had existed for (please bear in mind this isn't my position!). Is this truly a weakness or is this a weakness based on a religious view? I think it's obvious that it's based on a particular religious view.As soon as religion comes into the equation, so does the US Constitution which prohibits its teaching in public schools, no matter what the state legislation says. Why should Missouri be exempt from sticking to the Constitution?I'm not trying to tell Missouri what they can and can't teach, I'm pointing out that it's the US Constitution that tells them what they can and can't teach. If they don't want to be governed by the Constitution I suppose they could always make enquiries about leaving the Union, but if they want to be a part of the Union, they have to accept the rules of the Union. They don't get to pick and choose which bits they'll comply with and which bits they'll ignore.

This Bill was just passed by the Indiana Senate. Look closely at the original version. Although it was the amended version which passed, the wording of the original Bill gives the game away.

I suppose if they teach this in a comparative religion class that's fine although they're not really comparing religions, they're comparing origins within various religions. I note that they call these variations "theories", again showing a complete misunderstanding of the term "theory". Actually, that might be a deliberate ploy to conflate theory in everyday language and theory as it's used in science. I'm concerned about the term "creation science" though. Will they use this to shoehorn the lot into science class?