First, I’d like to point out to ultimate175 and ftk that I didn’t say there were YEC arguments in the 2005 standards. In fact I wrote in #73 above:

The standards themselves did not contain YEC arguments as the 1999 ones did, but most of the supporters did offer YEC arguments at various times when discussing the standards.

and I wrote,

most or all of the rest of the ID group on the standards committee and the conservative members of the state BOE were YEC, and a substantial number of the witnesses at the 2005 science hearings.

Ftk says that Board members Abrams and Morris “leaned toward the YE perspective,” but that is too mild of a statement: they are definitely young-earth creationists and have readily said so, and so is Board member John Bacon and then-Board member Iris Van Meter. Kathy Martin may not be, and I don’t know about Ken Williard.

There were eight members of the ID group on the standards, and I know that a majority of them were young-earth creationists, and that they occasionally offered YEC arguments during discussion during the committee meetings.

Also, a number of other YEC were supporters of and workers for IDN during this time: Celtie Johnson, Mark Mathews, Paul Ackerman, Ken Carlson.

The truth is that there are lots of YEC in Kansas, and I believe from extensive interaction with the issue that most of the people who have vocally supported the IDN in Kansas are YEC.

Utimate175 writes,

Jack, if you would, I’d like you to elaborate on the YEC witnesses at the hearings. Who were they? How do you know they’re YEC?

I know because we asked about 2/3rds of them how old they thought the earth was, and a number of them said young: Sanford, Leonard, Ely, DeHart, Bryson and perhaps others. You can read the transcripts of this at http://www.talkorigins.org/faq.....garoo.html if you’re interested.

Ultimate175 asks,

And if they are, how is it relevant to the 2005 standards, since those standards had nothing to do with YEC matters? It seems to me that this is really a double fallacy (red herring and guilt by association).

I’m not making any claims about all this – I’m just trying to answer some factual questions about the situations in Kansas that were raised by ultimate175 in posts #62 and #66 above, including supporting his claim that YEC stuff was in the 1999 standards but not in the 2005 standards.

Kathy Martin is Catholic and NOT a YEC, and she was one of the three board members who was involved in the science hearings. I know this because I had several conversations with her. The only two I know who specifically leaned toward the YE perspective were Abrams and Morris.

There was nothing in the 2005 standards that the conservative board approved that had any impact on the age of the earth…no YEC arguments in those standards whatsoever.

Several news articles went as far as saying that evolution had been taken out of the standards and curriculum altogether. In reality, the changes that were made were highly insignificant overall. They could have possibly opened up classroom discussion to considering some of the controversial issues surrounding the ToE, but that’s about it.

Jack and KCFS went off the deep end with their scare tactics and ended up making the state of Kansan look foolish. In reality, the conservative board members were NOT a bunch of raving fanatical YECers. They were reasonable, rational individuals who had concerns about the dogma being forced upon Kansas schools.

If my participation is still welcome here, could you look into this matter.

Thanks,
Jack

I can assure you, however, that the 2005 changes were extremely controversial to people like Jack and the Darwinist machine, precisely because they did “give room to question a lot of neo-Darwinism”.

What I read was changes to the science standards in 2005. None seemed to be really controversial and it gave room to question a lot of neo Darwinism while not proclaiming anything that was YEC.

Is that how you or others read these changes.

There was nothing about the sub-text of who argued what either in 2005 or in 1999.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anything in writing or on the internet about what was done during each of the years?