Creationist amendments

Terri Leo just offered an amendment to add a standard to Biology 9:

D) analyze and evaluate the evidence regarding formation of simple organic molecules and their organization into long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life.

It passed, with reservations expressed by various members who hadn't had time to review it. This will come up for a vote again tomorrow.

Mavis Knight proposed to remove the creationist amendment McLeroy introduced last time. The vote failed, with Agosto abstaining.

McLeroy is now advocating an amendment to add another item to section 7:

G) analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell.

McLeroy quotemines Bruce Alberts to support this amendment, which echoes creationist rhetoric about irreducible complexity.

Bob Craig proposes to amend this to:

G) analyze and evaluate the evolutionary explanation of the complexity of the cell.

Barbara Cargill tells people to look at online animation of cells, as if they were scientific evidence.

Leo is complaining that she doesn't want to evaluate evolutionary explanations, she wants to evaluate the complexity of a cell.

She and Craig go back and forth.

Agosto wonders why McLeroy's amendment singles out natural selection, leaving out other evolutionary mechanisms.

Hardy gets a note from her scientific expert, who says that natural selection can never alone be sufficient to explain complexity, and that other mechanisms must be involved.

McLeroy offers to change it to "unguided natural processes," which gets a lot of chatter, partly because Bob Craig's amendment is still on the table. Also because that's creationist rhetoric, which would open the door to teaching the supernatural in science class.

Cargill likes the amendment.

Voting...

Craig's amendment fails, 6-8.

Now McLeroy's amendment is up, and he withdraws his auto-amendment. Passes 9-5.