Creationism is being pushed legislatively in Texas again. But this line is priceless, from State Board of Education vice chairman, David Bradley (yes, you guessed, a Republican):
Bradley said he doesn't foresee any successful effort to remove the “strengths and weaknesses” requirement from the science standards.
“There are issues in the evolutionary process that have been proven wrong,” he said. “Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven. Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions.”
After all, if the grownups can jump to their own conclusions, why shouldn't the students?
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And there was me thinking that evolution was an empirical fact and the theory of Evolution was the explanation of that fact. I must stop jumping to conclusions.
Have you ever met David Bradley? Are you sure he exists? I reckon his existence is just a theory, so I'm going to conclude that he doesn't exist. I bet he has a black swan as a pet, too.
If you actually believe God 'poofed' everything into existence 6000 years ago then evolutionary theory IS full of weaknesses - there really can't be any transitional fossils, isotopic dating must be wrong, genetic similarities are purely coincidental and geographic biodiversity just a big joke played out by God or Satan to test us.
Everything that science holds as critical confirmatory evidence can be discounted out of hand.
What amazes me is how in the process of trying to bring evolution down, the current species of Creationist has so willingly devalued his own Literalistic beliefs. Underlying it all is this idea that they're all just explanations, so all are equal. They seem to think invoking post-modernist claptrap will destroy evolution, but it seems to me that it's destroying Creationism, which has now been torn asunder from any kind of Biblical grounding, and has now shriveled to the theologically neutral and intellectually vacuous notion of Intelligent Design.
I agree with these two statements:
1) "There are issues in the evolutionary process that have been proven wrong."
2) "Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven."
But that does not imply, "Evolution is not fact."
"Need to be able to jump ..."
I'm still laughing.
A salute to you for careful reading.
Indeed, the best line of the entire article. How does he truly not understand that jumping to conclusions is actually a negative thing...?
And Bob, nice BS reference!
"Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions."
At least David is honest about how he came to his own conclusions regarding the origin of species.
Who needs evidence when one can simply leap.