Texas Board of Education chairman is strong creationist, anti-evolution. [View All]

[madfloridian]

Texas Freedom Network has done a great job of keeping up with the religious right in Texas. I thought this was interesting in the light of the fact that Florida is now planning teaching evolution openly, even using the word for it.

One state going forward, one moving backward.

TFN has obtained a recording of a 2005 lecture by Don McLeroy that reveals the newly appointed chair of the State Board of Education harbors a shocking hostility to both sound science education and religious tolerance. In his presentation, McLeroy characterizes the evolution-’intelligent design’ debate as a clash between ‘orthodox Christians’ and all others.

Texas Freedom Network

Here is an audio of Chairman Don McElroy, and a transcript:

Don McLeroy's Lecture on Evolution and 'Intelligent Design'

Let’s see, 1996 New York Times editorial, guest editorial, this is in response to a comment by someone believing in evolution, and so the guy has made this statement, “This whole issue might make for an amusing debate were it not for the potentially grave consequences for society at-large. If we’re unwilling to unilaterally brand scientific nonsense as just that regardless of the sensibilities that might be offended, religious or otherwise, then the whole notion of truth becomes itself blurred and our democratic society is in peril as much by this as any other single threat.” Of course, the guy’s threat that this guy was responding to was not the threat of Darwinism, the threat of God as the creator, and it is just amazing that they can describe my feelings exactly. This is exactly how I see this. It is such an important issue. By the way, it is my first time with PowerPoint. Daniel is making it pretty easy. This is great.

Uh, G.K. Chesterton, 100 years ago, 1908 basically, uh, made an interesting observation that is really interesting: “The Christian is quite free to believe that there’s a considerable amount of settled order and an inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.” And I think that really describes it exactly, when you want to see, these people can’t stand anything getting into their spotless machine. They can’t tolerate anything. We can tolerate a lot, but they can’t tolerate anything. And I can tell you also that the topic for today’s session about naturalism is very important. If you grasp the message of this, I think you will, uh, save yourself a lot of frustration and in this whole series of lessons we’re teaching it’s about the theory of intelligent design, about intelligent design. And William Dembski is, uh, very influential in this. He’s at Baylor, and here is our definition of what intelligent design is: it’s the biological theory, or you maybe leave off biological, theory that holds that a deciding influence was required to account for the complex information, rich structures, and living systems. And one other thing about these lessons, big tent, and this is, uh, in the big tent of evolution we all have disagreements, but we’re united in one thing, and we’re united in what we oppose. And you’ll see this later. This is the power of the deductive argument, but nature is all there is. We’re united against the fact that that’s a true statement.

But what is the main target of intelligent design? What’s the main target? Is it the chemical origin of life? Research? Well, it’s not, certainly, origin of life spontaneously arose chemically is not supported by the Bible. It’s not supported by the evidence, so maybe that is the target. But, in fact, it’s the lack of evidence of, uh, chemical origin of life and the incredible complexity of life itself that played the major role in Antony Flew, that famous British philosopher that just said that he had to abandon his atheism. So it’s very powerful, the origin of life, but that is not the main target of the intelligent design movement. Oh, it’s neo-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism is another description term for just evolution, common descent that talks about genetic variability so it gets it more precise. And is that the target? It’s not supported by evidence, it’s not Biblical, so that must be the target of intelligent design, but really it’s not the main target either. Actually, in intelligent design we are focused on a on a bigger target, and in the words of Phillip Johnson “the target is metaphysical naturalism, materialism or just plain old naturalism. The idea that nature is all there is.” Modern science today is totally based on naturalism, and all of intelligent design’s arguments against evolution and chemical origin of life it is the naturalistic base that is the target. And this is a quote from Phillip Johnson: “The important aspect of Darwinian evolution is it’s naturalistic claim that life is the result of purposeless, unintelligent material causes. When Darwinian evolution and intelligent design stand in a complete antithesis. Intelligent design requires the designing influence to account for the complexity of life where Darwinian theory of common descent claims that life spontaneously arose.”

There is audio at the link. McElroy was appointed by Governor Perry.