Steven Schafersman on the Texas Vote, Casey Luskin and the Future

Steve Schafersman, who live-blogged the Texas hearings for the three days that they were held has these parting words:

What is the bottom line? Did we win or lose? Neither. We got rid of the worst language, but a great deal of qualifying language remains. I am not going to claim either victory or defeat. I realize that Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute will declare complete, unqualified victory, but it is not that for them. Neither is it for us. The standards adopted were generally good, but there are several that are flawed, fortunately most in minor ways that textbook authors and publishers can deal with. I think we can work around the few flawed standards. But the point is that there shouldn't be ANY flawed standards. The science standards as submitted by the science writing teams were excellent and flaw-free. All the flaws were added by politically unscrupulous SBOE members with an extreme right-wing religious agenda to support Creationism.

I would like to think the best of my fellow Christians. The problem is that there are incidents like this here in Texas and what happened at dover, in 2005. On reflection of that trial, Judge Jones said the following about the witnesses for the defense (in this case the school board, aided by the Discovery Institute):

In the realm of the lay witnesses, if you will, some of the school board witnesses were dreadful witnesses and hence the description “breathtaking inanity” and “mendacity.” In my view, they clearly lied under oath. They made a very poor account of themselves. They could not explain why they did what they did. They really didn't even know what intelligent design was. It was quite clear to me that they viewed intelligent design as a method to get creationism into the public school classroom. They were unfortunate and troublesome witnesses. Simply remarkable, in that sense.

The word"mendacious" should never appear in a paragraph describing the witness of a Christian. We are all fallen creatures, but God asks us to live life with integrity and honesty and that when dealing with all people out in the wide world, "the end justifies the means" is not a philosophy by which to live.