No one cares what McLeroy’s personal beliefs are; he just cannot impose his religious view of the world upon the young people going through the Texas school system.

Um, his personal beliefs are pretty much defined by the imposition of his religious views on the state at large (that’s what “evangelical” means, certainly as the GOP has defined it).  Not to mention that “the infallibility and literacy of the Bible” is mutually exclusive with anything resembling fact-based education.

Oh, noes! Christians persecuted and, *gasp* EXPELLED! *jazz hands*

It looks like next year’s Texas gubernatorial GOP primary is going to pit the wingnut base of the GOP (quickly becoming the whole GOP) against the at least somewhat moderate faction when Hutchison challenges Perry for his job.  While I have to say that I would hate to see Gov. Goodhair get re-elected to continue his decade of lousy ideas, I wonder if it is in the best int6erests of the state’s Democrats to pull for Hutchison over Perry in the primary.  Don’t get me wrong - if the final choice came down to either Perry or Hutchison as Texas governor, anybody with any sense of reason would pick Hutchison.  That said, if KBH wins the GOP primary, she’s probably a lock to win the general election, regardless of who the Democrats put out there.  But should Perry manage to win the primary, I’m wondering if there would be enough centrist and moderate defection for a Democrat to pull off a win in the general…

Does the resident Pandagonian Texan have any insight on this?  Could the Democrats actually beat Perry if he gets renominated, and would their chances be much better in a general facing Perry instead of Hutchison?

Schism beat me to it but for fucks sake, how can anyone believe that the bible is “infallible” in this day beyond me. We don’t have slavery, and if a parent tries to sell their child then they’re arrested and “god told me to” isn’t an excuse for stoning disobedient children to death. Good on Texas for putting the kibosh on this lunacy.

If we vote against Dr. McLeroy, the perception among many Texans will be that if you are a conservative and believe in the infallibility and literacy of the Bible, there is no need to apply to be on the State Board of Education.

I think it’s worth pointing out that the Democratic majority in the Texas state Senate is saying no such thing. What they are saying is, McLeroy practiced divisiveness and refused to listen to reasonable educators, and the results have been objectively and demonstratably bad.

In other words, what an individual believes is not at issue; what matters is, what does that person do.

Um, his personal beliefs are pretty much defined by the imposition of his religious views on the state at large (that’s what “evangelical” means, certainly as the GOP has defined it).  ...
schism on 05/30 at 11:15 AM

Exactly. Now in principle, there is nothing about being “evangelical” that demands that one use divisive, all-or-nothing tactics that are disrespectful of the well-argued reasons offered by one’s opponents. In fact, the fundamental message of Christ is summed up in the distillation of the commandments, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This should clearly include not just those on your own team with whom you are most comfortable; Jesus very clearly illustrated he meant people who are different from you, whom you disagree with and even are strongly at odds with. Even an evangelical who believes that those who disagree with them are flatly, even damnably, wrong is still called, by the very God they profess to believe in, to deal justly and generously with them—to attract by their example the errant to the truth.

Well, even if they were followers of some Klingon Satanic cult that explicitly made virtues of cruelty, arrogance, unbending defiance and the most underhanded means they can devise—such beliefs are, as beliefs, protected under freedom of speech and thought. But when they perform specific actions that violate the rights of their neighbors, it is both reasonable and necessary for the law to intervene to stop it.

In this case, it isn’t even a matter of rights; it’s a matter of what the elected Senators of the State of Texas think is prudent, effective public policy.

They might want some of those Satanist Klingons in the Texas National Guard or a division of the state police (I think they’ve got them anyway.) Putting them in charge of the school system—well, if such a person did an effective job, and got along with the people they need to work with well enough, then the Senators would have a different situation to consider.

Personally I think there is little to choose between my imagined Satanic Klingons and right-wing political “Christians” except that the latter exist in great numbers and have a lot of influence. Personally you might even say I am prejudiced against a self-labeled “evangelical” and would avoid giving such people any power or position at all on the assumption they will probably abuse it—although I know there are other kinds, such as Fred Clark of Slacktivist, so if reasonable people are making a strong case for an avowed evangelical, I would try to find out if they are that kind, and if I’m stuck with one in high places I might hope they will turn out to be that kind. But experience tells me this rarely happens.

Here there is no need to say that as an evangelical McLeroy should not be considered; he actually held the job—and screwed it up. Whatever the individual Senators who opposed him may think, the reasons they gave are valid ones and in no way bigoted.

What the heck is “the literacy of the Bible”? Does he think the Bible is some kind of sentient, Necronomicon-like book that can, itself, read?

And what Mark said. There’s nothing about being an evangelical Christian than means one has to be a divisive moron.

Does the resident Pandagonian Texan have any insight on this?

Yes, Amanda, is Kay Bailey going to beat Perry?

Is this a serious statement?

Of course it is! Only real Christians believe you should ditch Darwin for baby Jesus.

I’m from Texas, and I think Kay Bailey is going to beat the shit out of Perry. He’s got negative charisma, and I think his swing toward the wingnuts is going to look pretty desperate to non-wingnuts.

Basically, Hutchison has a good rep in Texas; Perry is a very bad rep.

The fundies got the fear put into them. That’s all we needed. Sure, we’ll get Dunbar or worse, but things are changing.

Bill White will be elected to US Senate senate from Texas. You heard it here first. Texas will flip blue soon.

Back in the 70s and 80s the ahl cummnies (“oil companies” to those outside east Texas) used to send reps to the schools to make sure we were learning real biology and geology. They weighed in at school board meetings too. They need to throw their weight around again to create a bloodless coup against the SBOE exactly as they did what civic and business leaders did in Houston during “The Stange Demise of Jim Crow” movement.

The time is almost ripe for the strange demise of the SBOE. We need to get the ahl cummnies to understand they don’t have a future in Texas of fundies control the SBOE. We need to get the docs at the Texas Medical Center in Houston to weigh in. The TMC is bigger than downtown Denver. With the right leadership we could pull this off.

the infallibility and literacy of the Bible

Before saying anything he should have thought about it a bit more and had his “beliefs” correct.  The Pope is infallible. The Bible is said to be INERRANT and LITERAL.  Inerrant is not the same as infallible. Inerrant supposedly covers the contradictions between various books in the Bible.

Man, what a dumbass.

(I’m not a evangelical; just someone who was once very interested in church history and such and did a lot of reading while in a lay deacon’s program under the guidance of Lutheran ministers. These days I follow my own light and believe in a creative force, unnamed, unknowable, ineffable and cosmic.)

“If we vote against Dr. McLeroy, the perception among many Texans will be that if you are a conservative and believe in the infallibility and literacy of the Bible, there is no need to apply to be on the State Board of Education.”

So how many of these people who “believe in the infallibilitiy and literacy of the Bible” recite Matthew 6:5,6 when talk turns to School Prayer? How many quote the relevant passage in Leviticus when a Woody Allen movie opens? (It’s against the Holiness Codes for a man to have sex with a woman and her mother.) How many recite Joshua 6:24 (The destruction of Jericho) in opposing a ban on genocide?

The Creationists are trying to guilt-trip people, pure and simple. They have no problem treating the Bible as figurative or ignoring it completely when it “leaves preaching and gets into meddling.”

The Pope is infallible

No, he’s not.  He even admits it.  It’s only when Popes are making special hoopty-doopty mystical proclamations (ex cathedra) that they claim infallibility.  and only for that particular proclamation about dogma and faith.  and it’s only b/c the Holy Spirit is talking through them.  and there are other rules, too.

if you are a conservative and believe in the infallibility and literacy of the Bible, there is no need to apply to be on the State Board of Education.”

well, there shouldn’t be, if your intention is to impose “literal infallible Bible study” as the basis for teaching.  Christians don’t agree on these things, much less Americans in general.

These days I follow my own light and believe in a creative force, unnamed, unknowable, ineffable and cosmic.)
PurpleGirl on 05/30 at 10:06 PM

Sheer curiosity - would it be correct to call the belief you describe above deism.  If not , how does it differ?

and there are other rules, too.

  ...
Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 05/30 at 06:44 PM

The Catholic Church has a genius for creating complex mechanisms and structures—in part of course because it is heir to nigh-on two millennia of contradictory practices and a geographic span that was always continental (well, a very small continent, one that’s really just a subcontinent of Eurasia, but you know what I mean—it took a long time and a lot of effort to get from Rome to Norway or Prussia in the Middle Ages) and has been global in span for half a millennium now. But also because, if you create a complex enough system of epicycles upon epicycles, you can approximate any result you want within the rules—provided you can amend the rules as you go along too, anyway. And yet maintain the illusion of eternal, rigorous consistency, provided no one looks too critically at actual history.

I suspect, cynical as I have become, that the complex rules governing when the Pope is infallible and when he isn’t boil down to being able to affirm anything at any given time and plausibly deny later, if it becomes quaint or embarrassing, that this or that was ever held “infallibly.” By the time the Church, in its majestic mass, is ready to reverse itself, it will have gone through generations of changing procedures and always be able to claim that past theologians were mistaken because they didn’t follow modern procedures, which are of course correct. Whenever “modern” is.

Well, even if they were followers of some Klingon Satanic cult that explicitly made virtues of cruelty, arrogance, unbending defiance and the most underhanded means they can devise

Honestly, that sounds more like the modern Republican party than Klingon Satanism.

“Of course it is! Only real Christians believe you should ditch Darwin for baby Jesus.”

Well, it’s more the opposite. Most Christians refuse to ditch Jesus for Darwin. Darwinism remains unproven. Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism., i.e., the belief that the Strong have the right to wipe out the “weak”, all for the greater good of the species, of course.

“That’s precisely the perception I want Texans to have. The board of education is no one’s personal pulpit. If you can’t check your wackadoo superstitions at the door, get the fuck out. “

Seig Heil, Mein Führer!

Geez, is it any wonder many Christians feel there’s a secular contingent that would dearly love to go back to throwing them to the lions?

Darwinism remains unproven. Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism., i.e., the belief that the Strong have the right to wipe out the “weak”, all for the greater good of the species, of course.

Seriously, dude, get better drugs.  Remains unproven.  So there are still Mastadons?  And so right-wing hacks like you turned biological Darwinism into social Darwinism so we shouldn’t believe in biological Darwinism?

And while we’re at it, you stupid Republicans don’t believe that the more vigorous and stronger shouldn’t be richer than the weak less vigorous in our economy, now do you?

Well, it’s more the opposite. Most Christians refuse to ditch Jesus for Darwin. Darwinism remains unproven. Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism., i.e., the belief that the Strong have the right to wipe out the “weak”, all for the greater good of the species, of course.

Someone’s seen “Expelled” *jazz hands* and thought it was actually a serious piece of work.

Not dealing with a bright one here, are we?

Darwinism remains unproven. Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism., i.e., the belief that the Strong have the right to wipe out the “weak”, all for the greater good of the species, of course.

This really should be automatic stick territory.

Darwinism remains unproven.

What is this ‘Darwinism’ you speak of?

For the record, evolution, which is derived from Darwin’s work, has an overwhelming stack of evidence in its favor. Creationism is based on faith, not evidence, and Intelligent Design has been shown in court to be a catspaw of creationism, with little to no credible evidence to back it.

Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism.

As opposed to the church, which leads to ugly things such as crusades, inquisitions and pogroms?

Sorry, though ‘social Darwinists’ may have derived inspiration for their hideous philosophy from a distortion of evolutionary theory, many were also religiously oriented. It’s not difficult to notice that many, if not the majority, of conservatives believe in some weak form of social Darwinism. Their inclination is towards a form of authoritarianism that is exclusive, not inclusive; in the strength of their own group and the weakness of others.

“Seriously, dude, get better drugs.  Remains unproven. “

Well, I read “The God Delusion” (it was a Christmas present of all things, but I digress) and even Dawkins, perhaps the premier Darwinist of our times, is basically reduced to going “Humina, humina, humina” when asked to explain how life began. In short, he doesn’t have a clue how the most important aspect of evolution came about (I.e., the spontaneous generation of life from nothing).

I believe the word he’s looking for is “Miracle”

In short, he doesn’t have a clue how the most important aspect of evolution came about (I.e., the spontaneous generation of life from nothing).

stick

Don’t you see what you’re doing, though, Left_Wing_Fox?  By making distinctions between distinct processes, by using different terms to signify different phenomena, and by developing research programs and techniques centered on answering separate scientific questions, you’re just engaging in unnecessary handwaving.  Miracle! Goddidit. All you need.

Hallelujah! I can haz research grant nows!

Sorry. Bush is gone.  Have to actually do science now.

The nazis were right-wing Christians who believed they were following God’s orders to create a perfect society of God’s people.

I know the propaganda for the Cold War tried to bill them as secular or atheistic in order to create parallels for our fear of Stalinist Russia (which was a genuinely atheistic totalitarian state), but it doesn’t somehow wipe out the fact that pretty much every single atrocity was defended with the works of the Bible and the writings of Martin Luther long before it was defended by their failed understanding of science and medicine. In short, if the Nazis are a warning of anything in the scope of evolution, it is that trying to force your religion under the guise of science always ends really really badly. Hey, like creationists.

Always annoys me how we essentially erased 4/5ths of what the Nazis did or believed in the 1950s in order to not disillusion Christians for our “struggle against communism”. It’s like believing that Saddam Huessein and Osama bin Laden are one and the same, which actually now that I think about it, I suspect Eric also believes.

And life from non-life is actually an easy question. The accumulation of prebiotic compounds in primitive lipid membranes. These formed pre-cells, some percentage of these pre-cells packaged a self-replication mechanism and further mutations eventually allowed the semi-dominance of those cells which managed to replicate themselves and also provide their own “food” source through an endocytosis mechanism. The first step has even been examined in a lab including the step right before about the formation of biological precursor molecules such as RNA sequences and basic pre-proteins. That would be the start of “life”. I believe the problem you describe is the beginning of molecules, the Big Bang, which is also rather supported and which rather demands a quite large leap of faith to disregard for a MORE complex system of absolute origin. But I guess that’s stupidity for you.

EricJG:  Read The Beak of the Finch.  It’s about researchers in the Galapagos Islands who watched evolution at work.

I know you will be able to comprehend it.  I read it in high school.

I think your problem (and not just you, the rest of the Creationists too) is that you don’t understand what the word “theory” means in a scientific context.  A theory in science is not a guess or a supposition.

“in scholarly use it is reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of that class.”

Also, I find it interesting that your ilk dismiss the Theory of Evolution out of hand due to your idea that a theory is a guess, but you all are right on board with the Theory of Relativity.

Ah, it’s our resident independent thinker, EricJG: Bush fan (voted twice for Commander Flightsuit because he thought he was an “idealist”); anti-choice Libertarian; climate-change denialist; and now evolution “skeptic,” too. Can’t wait to hear his views on the Holocaust and the Apollo moon landing.

Also, I find it interesting that your ilk dismiss the Theory of Evolution out of hand due to your idea that a theory is a guess, but you all are right on board with the Theory of Relativity.

Not so fast,speedbudget! EricJG, your thoughts on Relativity?

Well, I just assume they’re on board.  Cause, you know, being a denier means you get flung out into the netherworld of space, doesn’t it?

It’s like the scientific version of nonbelievers getting sent to hell.

Well, I just assume they’re on board.  Cause, you know, being a denier means you get flung out into the netherworld of space, doesn’t it?

You’d think so. But EricJG seems to be all about various life-preserving “miracles” (courtesy of the Invisible Bearded Sky Man™ that a rational Libertarian is understandably reluctant to mention)—God or Jeebus or some other supernatural entity will just wave his magic wand and make everything better.

”...I find it interesting that your ilk dismiss the Theory of Evolution out of hand due to your idea that a theory is a guess, but you all are right on board with the Theory of Relativity.”

Maybe ‘all’ is going a little too far.  There are “Christian” people who believe it was Copernicus who started the downhill slide into Darwin, leaving no room for Einstein.  (I really have to wonder how they reconcile with Quantum Mechanics, particle physics, String Theory, and other modern physics concepts…)

The “Fixed Earth” people sound like they’d be EricJG’s type…

And these people would rank right up there…

And let us not forget the Time Cube guy...

Oh come on. Darwin hasn’t been proven?

There is a big difference between having some aspects of a theory be unclear and a complete disproof. And even more difference between having a theory be unproven and therefore opening the door to just any old theory anyone comes up with.

If the milk you bought yesterday is not in the fridge today it is unproven whether your roommate drank it. That doesn’t mean it is equally likely that unicorns broke in and ransacked the fridge.

...goddam thieving unicorns…

{me}Well, even if they were followers of some Klingon Satanic cult that explicitly made virtues of cruelty, arrogance, unbending defiance and the most underhanded means they can devise{/me}

Honestly, that sounds more like the modern Republican party than Klingon Satanism.
libdevil on 05/30 at 09:33 PM

See how I bolded the “explicitly” there in this version? Delete it and you’re right of course.

But a bunch of Satanists of this type who openly proclaim these values and steadfastly affirm them no matter what would be less sneaky and more Dudley Dooright honest than their ideals demand; they’d be held accountable. This is why I was a bit silly, inventing Klingon Satanists.

To illustrate, we have EricJG, projecting Nazism, which his policy preferences obviously resemble more than ours or say Richard Dawkin’s, onto “Darwinists.”

Caren:  Yes, I know all the fine detail that Catholics go to in refining “infallible”.  I just didn’t want to get into a long statement focusing on what infallibility is or isn’t.  I wanted to just make clear that infallibility doesn’t pertain to the Bible.

Phylosopher:  You could say I’m a deist, but I really don’t posit a god as the creative force.  I don’t know what the nature of the force is; just that the universe was created.  We make of it what we do and that all people create the concept of god to explain things they can’t explain. 

I have thought of the creation of the universe as an experiment in a giant petrie dish in a much larger universe; god is a scientist who watches his specimen culture and sometimes does things to the culture to see what happens under the changed conditions. There may or may not be a parallel control petrie dish.

Regarding the Theory of Relativity mentioned a few posts back, it seems that some creationists do have problems with it as well:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Relativity

See section 4 onward, especially.

Wait.  Now they need to have a separate and special encyclopedia?

Wait.  Now they need to have a separate and special encyclopedia?

And one of Phyllis Schlafley’s boys put it together.

“Now they need to have a separate and special encyclopedia?”

Reality has a well known liberal bias.  So if you want to fully disengage from the world and live in Rove/Cheney/Fundie Land, you need to have alternative sources of “information” that match your ideas of “reality”.  I’m sure they have great articles on how Global Warming is a leftist hoax, FDR caused the Great Depression, and Barack Obama is the most ultra-radical MarxoFascist LiberoSocialist of all time…

General Relativity is, just as much as the Darwin paradigm of evolution by natural selection, more than a theory—it’s an observed fact. And has been ever since its calculations accounted fully for the until-then anomalous rate of the precession of Mercury’s orbit, which IIRC was shown in 1905 or so. (They also observed gravitational lensing of light, seen as displacement of starlight passing massive objects, very early in the last century). Since then we’ve backed up its predictions in every way, including adjusting clocks in satellites, such as the ones we use for GPS—time flows at a different rate in orbit than it does for objects on Earth, you see. If we assumed otherwise GPS wouldn’t work at all.

So if, as Science Marches On, we eventually get data that can’t be fully accounted for relativistically, it will be time to develop an even more advanced theory—one that converges with GR the way GR converges with Newtonian physics, just as Quantum Mechanics does “in the Classical limit” as they say. So it would be even weirder.

These Conservapedia types wouldn’t even be satisfied if schools “taught the controversy” about whether or not the world is actually flat—they won’t rest until the schools teach it is flat, on Biblical authority. With corners, and a vault of waters above to match the vault of waters below.

All you Turtle teachers would be burned as Hindu heathen of course. Along with Stephen King.

“Behold the TURTLE of Enormous Girth; on his back he holds the Earth.
His thoughts are slow but he is kind; he holds the world within his mind.
He loves the land and loves the sea; he even loves a child like me.”

But “the Turtle can’t help us.” Mockery seems to be the appropriate weapon here.

Also, it leads to ugly things, like, say, Nazism., i.e., the belief that the Strong have the right to wipe out the “weak”

Yeah, because “Gott Mit Uns” is german for “Origins of Species”

I thought that Evolution was already observed (and counts as a Law of Nature) and it was Natural Selection that was the theory. Oh, and it’s been proven a good way to solve very difficult problems in computer science as well.

“Behold the TURTLE of Enormous Girth; on his back he holds the Earth.
His thoughts are slow but he is kind; he holds the world within his mind.
He loves the land and loves the sea; he even loves a child like me.”
Mark Foxwell on 05/31 at 04:38 PM

The Dark Tower: best novel series in history.

Anyway, the only problem with evolution is that it only explains the adaptation of species to cope with a changing environment. it doesn’t explain where the raw materials, or basic mechanisms of life came from. that’s the chink that religious nuts focus on. i just wonder though; if there is a god, and he/she/it is responsible for all life and the processes and mechanisms associated with it, wouldn’t said being have also created evolution? wouldn’t evolution have been created as a way for the creatures and plants to grow and become stronger? see, evolution and creationism don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

and JoeBuddha, natural selection is part of evolution; it’s the term used to paraphrase the concept of life adapting to changes in environment (and in response to the evolution of other life-forms) or remaining the same, with those that don’t change usually dying out in a couple generations.

Lamark had his own take on it.  I was just thinking it wasn’t actually evolution that was defined by Darwin but the mechanism by which it happened.

Also, I’ve always thought that the GREATEST God would have just started the Big Bang and have everything turn out right. After all, only a lesser God would have to keep tweaking it after he set everything in motion…