More on Texas: Good guys winning, but it’s dicey

According to the Dallas News and the NCSE report (and noted by Genie Scott yesterday), the Texas Board of Education voted down (by voting a tie) for the “strengths and weaknesses” clause discussed here yesterday:

Against the proposal were three other Republicans and four Democrats.” A final vote is expected on March 27, 2009, but the outcome is not likely to change. It remains to be seen whether the board will vote to rescind the flawed amendments undermining the teaching of evolution proposed at the board’s January 2009 meeting.

But the fight isn’t over yet: Board member Barbara Cargill is trying to slip in an amendment requiring children to learn that “there are different estimates for the age of the universe”!!! We all know what that means: she doesn’t mean 13.7 plus or minus .2 billion years, she means 6,000 to 13.7 billion years. In other words, this gives wiggle-room for the ridiculous Biblically based estimate of 6000 to 10000 years. Here’s the report from the live blog on the meeting by Steve Schafersman:

I can’t get a copy of these amendments right now. However, the first one she wants is to strike the current standard for the Big Bang and remove the 14 billion year old age from it. She says she wants teachers to tell students that there are different estimates for the age of the universe. What would these be? 13.7 billion years and 10,000 years? She is promoting a Young Earth Creationist view, of course. Many times in the past the SBOE has changed standards and textbook content that mention millions and billions of years to simply “a long time ago.”

Cargill wants to substitute a standard from Astronomy that simply adds, “and current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe” to the Big Bang standard 4A. This Astronomy standard is poor in several ways: it is vague, it is non-specific, there is only one current theory for the origin of the universe, and there is currently a well-established consensus that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, so there are not multiple “estimates.” It is sad that the astronomy teachers came up with such an incompetent standard, and now it is being inflicted on ESS. Cargill’s amendment that strips a very ancient number of years and replaces it with vague “estimates” that are equivocal about the age of the universe.

While speaking for her amendment, Cargill says she “has no intention of opening the door to teaching Creationist ideas about the age of the universe.” Yeah, right. Next, she made a Freudian slip and her secret intentions were revealed. She said “universal common design” when she meant to say “universal common descent.” Her unfortunate amendment passes by a vote of 11-3, with only Knight, Miller, and Nunez voting no. So the SBOE holds true to its wonderful tradition of stripping any date older than 10,000 years from science standards!

Stay tuned. In the meantime, some video clips from the controversy. First, the good guys (gals): Genie Scott testifying about the S&W clause the day before yesterday:

Second, the benighted dentist and chairman of the Texas Board of Education (it makes me cringe to write that), Don McLeroy, reading from Stephen Jay Gould in an attempt to prove that “stasis is God”.  I only wish Steve were still alive to respond to this — he would crush McLeroy like a bug.