Buttars' Bill Moves Ahead

Sen. Buttars' ridiculous bill has passed the Senate Education Committee in Utah by a 4-2 vote and is headed for a floor vote. And along the way, we get another one of those brilliant statements showing Buttars' rank ignorance of evolution:

"There is evolution within species," Buttars said. "There are big dogs and little dogs, big cats and little cats, but you haven't seen a 'dat.' You don't see intermediate species."

There's a nicer way to put this, I suppose, but the guy is simply an ignoramus. Evolution doesn't predict that anyone would see a "dat". And the fact is, we have witnessed speciation dozens of times in the wild and in the lab. This is just another uneducated person repeating the empty rhetoric of creationists. But this person is actually in the legislature and could potentially screw up science education for an entire state.

More like this

Some of you may remember the story of Chris Buttars, the Utah state legislator who submitted a bill to require the teaching of "divine design" in public school science classrooms in that state. That led to a couple of long exchanges between myself and John West, associate director of the Discovery…
The Utah Senate took a preliminary vote on Sen. Buttars' anti-evolution bill on Friday and it passed; a final vote is expected on Monday, then it will move on to the house. The Salt Lake Tribune notes that the debate over the bill may well doom it in court: Sen. Chris Buttars has tried to…
Chris Buttars, the eternally clueless Utah state Senator, certainly didn't get the answers he wanted from the Utah state school board. Buttars has been threatening to submit a bill to mandate the teaching of "divine design" - a slightly more honest version of intelligent design - if the school…
Here's an unusual couple of stories, coincidentally brought to my attention within days of each other but apparently unrelated. The first is that a brewing company in Utah, irritated by Sen. Buttars' attempts to weaken science education in that state by attacking evolution, has renamed one of its…

Big dogs and little dogs, huh? And Buttars admits that they share a common ancestor?

Take a look at these pictures and tell me the morphological differences between a Great Dane and a Pekingese are smaller than the differences between a chimp and a human.

Great Dane - Pekingese

Evolution is supposed to be capable of producing the differences between a Great Dane and a Pekingese, but not between a chimp and a human? By what principle?

There may not be "dats", but anyone who has watched Napoleon Dynamite knows that there are ligers and tigons.

My dad said that once. I found it so baffling that I had no response. Some things are just to wacky to deal with right away. It's like saying that since no two white folks have given birth to a black child, we must not share a common ancestor. Creationists just can't see small changes adding up to big ones. As though you could never get to a million by increments of one...

And for the record, not only are there ligers, there are also camas!

There are big dogs and little dogs, big cats and little cats, but you haven't seen a 'dat.' You don't see intermediate species.

...

Why does he think that cats evolved from dogs (or vice-versa)?

Skemono... Or seems to think that cats & dogs will someday converge. Or, to give him a little more credit, seems to think that the common ancestor of dogs & cats (but no other Carnivora, apparently) must still be alive. (Has something like that ancestor been identified, BTW?)

What makes you think there's any science education in Utah to screw up?

but you haven't seen a 'dat.'

Ahahahahahahahahaha.. *gasp* ...hahahahahahahahaha!

Holy shit. Excuse me. I have a hard time understanding how such people manage to eat food without stabbing themselves in the eye, let alone get elected to some kind of political position with power.

No, wait...I guess I don't. But if I don't laugh, the depression will hit instead.

I thought that such idiocy would be contrary to the USA's "establishment of Religion" clause in the amendments to your constitution?

If so, why is this wing-nut proceeding?

By G. Tingey (not verified) on 19 Jan 2006 #permalink

I saw a pope evolve from a lower primate.

We know Buttarse is a fool; but what's the matter with the Utah Senate Education Committee? Don't they at least read the newspapers?