Rick Perry's on board! And no postmodern vagueness for him. He's here to tell us that intelligent design is a "valid scientific theory." That's right, governor. Just check out all the work on intelligent design going on in the biology department at your state's fine university. Um...wait...it's there somewhere. Just let me figure out how to work this search function...
(Hat tip to Panda's Thumb.)
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It appears once again that Dembski, contra the official DI position, supports the teaching of ID - rather than the "controversy" - in science class. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has announced that ID is a "valid scientific theory" and should be taught (source). Indeed, a spokeswoman noted that Perry “…
I've already spoken to a reporter in Texas about this, but via Jamie Vernon we have video of Rick Perry telling a 4th grader in New Hampshire that he doesn't know the age of the earth, that
Transcript:
Student: How old do you think the earth is?
Perry: How old do I think the earth is? You know…
Last week, Rick Perry made some factually false and deeply disturbing claims about how evolution is and ought to be taught in Texas. In the ensuing flurry of criticism (fueled by the fact that Perry simultaneously doubled down on his climate change denial), retired British biologist Richard…
... as if you didn't know...
At Panda's Thumb, there
is a guest post by Daniel R. Brooks, FRSC. Brooks is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. In June 2007 he attended an apparently secret conference organized by ID advocates and…
Rick Perry's an Aggie (Texas A&M U) not a teasipper (UT) but I suspect they don't study intelligent design at A&M either.
It's pretty appalling, this from a man who says it's important to prevent gay marriage in order to preserve excellence in education. What gay marriage has to do with education, I am not really sure. But I have to say, his idea of excellence in education isn't my idea of excellence in education.
Unfortunately I suspect Perry's stance will "play" well in most parts of Texas, certainly here in the Panhandle. It's just this sort of thinking that carried fellow Texan George Bush all the way to the White House.
Whenever I see comments from the religious right about "teaching the controversy" or "students should be presented with alternative views and allowed to choose for themselves" I cannot help but think how their position would change if the subject in question were sex education or sexual orientation.
Hypocrites....and political snake-oil salesmen.
You've got to hand it to Perry: when you're so dumb that you make George W. Bush look like a genius, you don't have a coherent thought that isn't provided by the agribusiness conglomerates that put you in office, and you want to corner the only portion of the electorate that isn't already planning to vote your ass out and put Kinky Friedman in your place, go for the fundamentalist crowd. Thankfully, his bleatings have about as much influence on real science in Texas as Whitley Strieber's "Deliverance: The Next Generation" anal rape fantasies have in the SETI community, but you can still expect Southern Methodist University or the University of Texas at Dallas being willing to offer a course or two on ID solely to keep the engineering students happy and scam a few more million dollars in state grants. (Me, live in Dallas for too long? How can you tell?)
Perry acquired a degree in animal science at A&M. I wager they didn't teach ID in any form. Perry also was a C130 pilot in the Air Force. One can suppose there was no lack of science training before the Air Force handed him the controls of a multi-million air craft. One must wonder, where did all of his thinking go wrong?
It was a governor of Texas who, in response to a question about state funding for foreign language education said, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texans."