• Comments (0)
• Print

Share

• Digg
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Delicious

Subscribe

• RSS
• Atom
• Email

A controversial figure if there ever was one, State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy has been accused of, among other things, trying (and to some extent succeeding) to crowbar religion into Texas’ public science classrooms.  He appeared before the Senate Nominations Committee this afternoon to argue for his job. 

Along with a statement expressing his belief that McLeroy “is not qualified to serve as chairman of such an important board,” Sen. Eliot Shapleigh released a compilation of what he believes to be McLeroy’s greatest hits.

These are the kinds of quotes that are best when shared among friends.  In order to encourage this, they are presented to you here in Mad Libs-style format. 

For those of you that are out of practice on your Mad Libs, what you do is,  without letting them see the text beforehand, have a friend fill in the blanks as directed (or just do it yourself).  Then, read it back using their answers to fill in the blanks.

The “answers” - McLeroy’s actual words - can be found after the jump.  Check back for a post about today’s testimony.

Enjoy!

Don McLeroy’s beliefs regarding:

Disregarding research and expertise

1) “I disagree with all these experts. Somebody has to _______ (verb) up to these experts.”

- SBOE meeting, March 27, 2009, on the debate over evolution

2) “Scientific consensus means _______ (noun).”

-San Francisco Examiner, March 30, 2009, on the debate over evolution

3) “Conservatives like me think the evidence (for human contributions to global warming) is a bunch of ______(plural noun).”

- Austin American-Statesman, March 28, 2009, during the debate on science standards

On religion and science

4) “The old definition was _______ (adjective) in that it undermined both the philosophy of the naturalist and the supernaturalist. By circular reasoning, the naturalist was prevented from using science to prove that ‘nature is all there is,’ and the supernaturalist was prevented from offering supernatural hypotheses. With the new definition, both the naturalist and the supernaturalist are free to make ‘testable’ explanations. The debate can now shift from ‘Is it science?’ to ‘Is it ________ (adjective)?’”

- Austin American-Statesman, March 25, 2009, arguing for a redefinition of science to include supernatural explanations

5) “In critiquing the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) missionary evolution tract—Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, he identifies their theft of true science by their intentional neglect of other valid scientific possibilities. Then, using NAS’s own statements, he demonstrates that the great ‘process’ of evolution—natural selection—is nothing more than a figure of speech.”

- February 1, 2009, endorsing a book that characterizes parents who want their children to learn about evolution as _______ (plural noun), scientists as _____ (plural noun), and pastors who teach that there is no conflict between science and religion as _______ (plural noun).

6) “When I became a _________ (noun), it was whole-hearted. I was totally convinced the ________(adjective) principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate ________ (adverb).”

- Austin American Statesman, March 8, 2009, oddly discussing why his desire to water down public school instruction about evolution isn’t about his religious beliefs

7)  “If evolution is development of life through unguided _______ (adjective) processes, how can we be made in the image of _______ (famous individual)? How can humans be worth anything?”

- Texas Observer, February 20, 2009, rejecting suggestions that science and religion are not in conflict with each other

8) “There were only the four really _______ (adjective), orthodox _______ (plural noun) on the board (who) were the only ones who were willing to stand up to the textbooks and say that they don’t present the _______ (plural noun) of evolution. . . . And the more I look back on it, I believe if we would have challenged the naturalistic assumptions that nature is all there is with our fellow board members and challenged these people that were talking about it a little bit that brought up testimony, possibly we would have gotten a few more ______ (plural noun) because a lot of these dear friends of mine on the State Board of Education are good, strong Christians that are active in Young Life and other activities. But they were able to totally not even worry about the fact that evolution’s assumption that nature is all there is in total conflict with the way they live there life.”

- Lecture at Grace Bible Church in Bryan, July 2005, in which Dr. McLeroy discusses the state board’s adoption of biology textbooks in 2003

On reading and language arts

9) “What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book? You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That’s not going to help you ______ (verb) ... English. So you really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of _______ (adjective) Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?” He added that some words — such as _________ (noun) — might be useful.

- San Antonio Express-News, March 21, 2008, discussing why language arts students shouldn’t be reading the works of authors from different countries

The actual words of Don McLeroy:

1) stand

2) nothing

3) hooey

4) inferior, testable

5) monsters, atheists, morons

6) Christian, biblical, scientifically

7) natural, God

8) conservative, Christians, weaknesses, votes

9) master, crazy, chow mein