Mandating the teaching of lies directly into a state's constitution?

[acroyear]

Yeah, the liars are working on it...

Nev. Proposal Raises Evolution Questions - Yahoo! News:

A proposed constitutional amendment would require Nevada teachers to instruct students that there are many questions about evolution [...].

Las Vegas masonry contractor Steve Brown filed his initiative petition with the secretary of state's office, and must collect 83,184 signatures by June 20 to get the plan on the November ballot.

[...]

The plan says several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered by teachers, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself."

Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link,'" the proposal says.

Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries" and that some scientists contend that sexual reproduction "would require an unbelievable series of chance events that would have had to occur in the evolutionary theory."

By the way, the scientific response to all three of those is not true, not true, and not true (with a note from myself that if a creature didn't have a sex drive, it would not have sex and therefore die without progeny and thus only creatures with a sex drive would survive: BASIC evolutionary application).

As for trying the back door of "some scientists argue..." - its all fine if you

1. cite them by name specifically
2. cite all of the (dozens) of counter arguments and analysis of faults of their arguments, and most importantly
3. teach them that every single organizational level above "species" (and even species itself), as well as the word "transitional" are human-constructed terms (mostly from the 18th century and predating Darwin) for cataloging that means nothing to nature itself.  Nature doesn't care about Orders and Families and Classes.  Populations simply are what they are - WE gave them names to keep track of them all.

Most of those that argue that there are no transitional fossils tend to argue from the fact that at no point in this planet's history did any creature consciously think or decide (nor did nature "decide") that it would be between some class X and other class Y.  To them its a defintional/philosophical argument and distinction, not a scientific one.

Comments

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

(with a note from myself that if a creature didn't have a sex drive, it would not have sex and therefore die without progeny and thus only creatures with a sex drive would survive: BASIC evolutionary application).

it depends on what you mean by sex drive, or sex. Certainly some animal species don't copulate, but rather a female lays a clutch of eggs, and the male fertilizes them in the nest, rather than in the female. They don't have "sex" but they are following reproductive instincts. It's also easy to imagine "accidental reproduction" wherein a female occassionally just plops out an egg -- no instincts, no active "plopping," it just falls out when it is mature, and a male may continously leave a sperm-laden slime trail that might accidently cross over the plopped egg, fertilizing it. I don't know of such a species, but it could occur.
Also, here is a website about abalone reproduction that suggests an external stimulus (in this case hydrogen peroxide) caused the release of gametes (eggs and sperm) into the surrounding water. Is that a sex drive?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Is that a sex drive?

now? no. previously? i'd hypothesize that it works under the exact same circumstances as animal pheramones, scents that trigger the release. it may have been that scent and HO were similar enough that at some point in the history of the species, the HO alone became enough to do the trick.

as you say, it depends on "sex". flowers certainly don't need sex drives, as they simply create circumstances to maximize the potential for polination, including self-polination with what the insects/wind/other hasn't already done for them.

granted, i simplified my summary and nature will ALWAYS produce exceptions to any simplification rule.

the point being is that to scientists, the exceptions can still fit the rule, when the rule (the theory of evolution) adapts to handle them by looking at the species history and the genetic information and discovers where a non-conforming species (to others in its genus or order or whatever) and seeing where it differentiated.

creationists, on the other hand, take ANY exception to what they perceive as the norm as evidence that science is entirely wrong in every way, and that's the point of view they're trying to "teach" and it is not how science works at all.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

hence how scientists take the "jurassic beaver" as a fascinating thing that allows us to build up a better picture of (mammalian) life in the jurassic...

...and creationists are out there bragging that "biologists have been entirely wrong for decades about mammals in the jurassic! what ELSE might they be wrong about??!!"