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  Topic: What’s the Matter with Kansas?, David Klinghoffer in the National Review< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Jason Spaceman



Posts: 163
Joined: Nov. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 03 2006,01:22   

Quote
Dishonest Darwinists — coming to a state near you.

By David Klinghoffer

State school-board elections don’t normally receive much national media attention. Yet the school-board primary race in Kansas on Tuesday, representing a key front in the Darwin wars, was an exception.

Will Darwinism be taught as unquestionable dogma? That’s the question that voters decided. In Kansas, it seems it will.

Kansas has been one of five states with biology curricula that include instruction about the evidence both for and against neo-Darwinism, requiring that students learn about the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory. Darwin advocates worked hard to defeat the majority on the education board and eliminate this requirement. On Tuesday they succeeded in this first objective, and the second will follow in due course.

The current “controversial” Kansas Science Standards very clearly do not mandate that students learn about intelligent design. On the contrary, as the board explained, “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design.”

Can’t get much clearer than, can you? Yet an outfit called Kansas Citizens for Science argued exactly the reverse — that the Kansas Science Standards do indeed mandate instruction about ID. It ended up convincing the voters. Or rather, deceiving them.

It was all part of a campaign, on behalf of liberal candidates for the education board that included other bold falsehoods. For example, the Darwin faction scared Kansas educators with the prospect of being sued on the basis of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Pennsylvania. In fact, Kitzmiller is irrelevant to a curriculum in Kansas that does not advocate teaching about ID.


Read it here.

   
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 03 2006,05:04   

Quote
David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute

What would we expect? Integrity?

  
Arden Chatfield



Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 03 2006,05:56   

Quote (Flint @ Aug. 03 2006,10:04)
Quote
David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute

What would we expect? Integrity?

Apparently the Darwinian fascists make it so that the DI folks don't have time to 'get to work', but apparently they do have time for press releases...

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"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
BWE



Posts: 1902
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 03 2006,06:29   

It has only just gotten into me that these guys and those who are like them, are evil. Real evil. Like, they get the energy to go about their days from fear and anger rather than wonder and curiosity. Y'know, the dark side.

I used to just think they were comical, ridiculous, "a bit touched" as my grammy used to say, but now I think of it as straight snake oil sales. intentionally harmful for a profit.
???

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Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far

The Daily Wingnut

   
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 03 2006,07:32   

BWE:

Probably some of them are perfectly well aware that if you have a large population of reasonably affluent people begging and pleading for you to sell them a bridge, you might as well start raking it in.

But I recall Behe almost single-handedly demonstrating in Dover that there is no science behind ID of any kind whatsoever, and subsequently crowing about how his testimony clearly put ID firmly into the scientific fold. He believes that!

So I suspect that in most of these cases, we have what Dawkins termed 'virtuoso believing' - the human capability to believe, without any possibility of doubt, in defiance of the most self-evident contradictory reality. The human capability to kid ourselves knows no bounds. These people have emotional needs, in the face of which intellectual objections are helpless.

  
k.e



Posts: 1948
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 05 2006,05:28   

You're right Flint.

I think it was on UD ,they ..the ignorati (All the proof one needs for Barnum's Axiom) first gushed that Behe was "saying the obvious LOUD and CLEAR on the stand they (we) JUST don't ...get it"

Hey....the snake-oil salesman ALWAYS sleeps at night, no problem.

Fools and their money are easily parted.

Who is going to ask for it back?

That would be tanamount to an admission they have been milked.

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The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane

   
Julie Stahlhut



Posts: 46
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 06 2006,06:39   

Klinghoffer wrote:

Quote
You would have thought that being able to understand both sides of a scientific issue would be a valuable intellectual experience for anyone to have.


Understanding that a scientific theory is not required to be an issue with two sides is an even more valuable intellectual experience.

  
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Aug. 06 2006,07:06   

I imagine all scientific theories have two sides: the side based on evidence, and the side based on preference. Sometimes these are the same, but when they are not, the side based on preference is always superior.

  
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