The Texas Freedom Network helpfully posted a live blog of the State Board of Education hearings on textbook standards, and although they characterized it as a "lopsided victory for science" there was plenty of testimony by people who wouldn't know the meaning of the word "science" if it...well, free free to insert the cliche of your choice. It also Included testimony by one (very un-) usual suspect:
2:28 - Don McLeroy, former SBOE chair and leader of the creationist
faction when the board adopted the controversial science curriculum
standards in 2009, is about to testify. McLeroy lost re-election to
current member Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant in the Republican
primary in 2010.
2:30 - McLeroy claims that textbooks are “filled with dogmatic” support
for evolution. But he says the board should still vote to adopt the
textbooks because they will somehow destroy evolution (“strike a major
blow to the teaching of evolution”). Huh? He claims that while the
textbooks claim solid evidence for evolution, McLeroy says, the books
actually don’t do so. Yeah, sure. If it makes you feel better to believe
that, Don.
2:32 - What we see around us supports what the Bible says, McLeroy says.
He claims even the textbook chapters on evolution supports what the
Bible says.
2:34 - McLeroy is essentially arguing that the textbooks make such weak
cases for evolution that the only alternative is what the Bible says.
(“It’s weak!”) Interestingly, the creationists serving on the textbook
review teams seem to disagree. Their reviews are filled with objections
that the textbooks claim that evidence shows that evolution is
well-established, mainstream science.
2:38 - Thomas Ratliff, who defeated McLeroy in 2010, asks McLeroy to try
explaining again. McLeroy says students will see so little evidence for
evolution in the textbooks that they will think that God didn’t use
evolution.
2:40 - And with that, McLeroy’s fascinating (and nonsensical) testimony ends.
Seriously, where do they find people like The Deranged Dentist? And can we actually send him back?
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