Could you please help me explain what the sentence underlined means? I can’t understand it fully.
Just last month the Texas education board adopted a resolution narrowly voting to drop references in the curriculum requiring teachers to discuss the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories.
The move, which makes it harder to teach creationism in the state’s schools, was hailed by the scientific community, although a final vote after public consultation is not due until late next month.
To me, It sounds like: Last month, the Texas education board narrowly adopted a resolution, the resolution is to use voting to drop references … …
or
Last month, the Texas education board adopted a resolution narrowly through voting … …
The Texas board of education adopted a resolution last month. By voting to adopt this resolution, the board eliminated statements in the school curriculum that required teachers discuss the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories.
That’s an interesting situation, by the way. The board of education is trying to prevent the teaching of the biblical story of creation in their schools, certainly because they believe that it’s anti-scientific. To achieve this, they stop requiring teachers to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, which is also anti-scientific.
Yes, odd. Perhaps “discussing the strengths and weeknesses” was worded as “teachers shall tell their pupils that the theory of evolution is only a theory and not very important, whereas biblical revelation is not a theory, so that it must be fact”.
The problem is that many teachers have never taught the weaknesses of unadulterated Darwinian theory, such as that neither the fossil evidence nor empirical observation has ever demonstrated that one species can evolve into another. Intraspecies evolution is uncontroversial, but interspecies evolution has never been proven.
Another problem is that, while most Christians and Jews consider the creation myth in Genesis to be allegorical, many atheists are fundamentalists when it comes to Darwin and random mutation. They stick to the theory even though life has not existed on earth long enough for random mutation to have created all the species we have today. There are also species that have biological mechanisms whose midway points would have had no function or purpose in survival, so that’s another hole in the theory of Darwin fundamentalists.
However, many scientists and science teachers are hysterical and think that pointing out any weakness at all in Darwinian theory is going to lead to people accepting creationism whole hog. That’s why they try to shut people up. While Christianity is not in conflict with real Darwinian theory, fundamentalist Darwinism is actually a militant atheist movement that seeks to use the theory of evolution to claim that God does not exist.
I believe scientific consensus to be that the notion of animal races is as such arbitrary, that it is just a human definition, that there is no clear line between one race and the next. That, therefore, there is no fundamental difference between intraspecies and interspecies evolution. But I am no biologist.
Again, I do not believe scientific consensus to be such; rather, that it has not yet been proved whether this time could have been long enough or not. Items debating this frequently appear in the newspapers.
Many intermediate goals are being discovered, or at least proposed, such as birds’ feathers’ having developed first for insulation; some scientists are busy trying to fill this hole.
I agree with you here.
I agree with you again - although I would not have used the word “militant” -, the claim that evolution is an arbitrary process is often heard among Darwinists.
From a catholic perspective, this seems sound policy.
