Creationist assigned to head SBOE; audio from 2003 textbook hearings

As Phil noted at badastronomy, clueless creationist Don McLeroy was just appointed by Rick Perry to head the Texas State Board of Education. My favorite quote from the linked article: “Given all the time in the world, I don’t think I could make a spider out of a rock. However, most of the books we are considering adopting, claim that Nothing made a spider out of a rock.” Oy. It’s bad enough that he’s a creationist, but does it have to be such a dumb creationist?

Those of us who attended the SBOE hearings in 2003 are very familiar with McLeroy’s antics. If you haven’t read about that before, you can read the full report on my blog.

Martin Wagner emailed me to ask if I still have the material I collected from the hearings: pictures, audio, and speech transcripts. Since they are no longer available on the ACA site, I have gone ahead and uploaded everything to my web site. Linked below are the sound clips record from my video camera. I will upload other material later.

Atheist Community of Austin members

• John Koonz Texas educator, speaking about creationist dishonesty and misquotes.
• Michelle Gadush Michelle asks: How come most of the board’s questions go to creationists? Characteristically, the board doesn’t ask her any questions.
• Russell Glasser Relating the cold fusion scandal to current creationist attempts to skip peer review. Includes some fun cross examination by Terri Leo.
• Don Baker Universal evolution and evolutionary algorithms should also be taught in schools.
• Steve Elliott A cautionary recap of what happened to the school board in Kansas. Unfortunately, the camera ran out of batteries during Steve’s testimony, so I missed about a minute while trying to get to a plug.
• Martin Wagner Introducing the concept of “The Wedge Strategy.”

Texas Freedom Network

• Amanda Walker The importance of solid science education.
• Samantha Smoot Head of TFN, Samantha deviates from her written material to do a recap of how the esteemed representatives of the Discovery Institute have behaved themselves throughout the evening. Just a wee bit shocking.

Other pro-science speakers

• Dr. Sahotra Sarkar Philosophy of Science professor from UT. Dr. Sarkar debated an Intelligent Design guy the year before the hearings; you can see my full report on this page.
• Dr. Steven Weinberg Physics Nobel Laureate. They let him go on for all of thirteen minutes about the topic “How do we know anything in science?” This one is a must hear.
• Dr. Eugenie C. Scott Head of the National Center for Science Education.
• Dr. Alan Gishlick Another NCSE guy. Excellent speech, one of the best of the wrap-up bunch.
• Dr. Robert Pennock Philosophy of Science professor from Michigan; author of Tower of Babel and Intelligent Design and its Critics.

Creationists from the Discovery Institute

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