Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
By WILL SENTELL
wsentell@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
High school biology textbooks would include a disclaimer that evolution is only a theory under a change approved Tuesday by a committee of the state's top school board.
If the disclaimer wins final approval, it would apparently make Louisiana just the second state in the nation with such a provision. The other is Alabama, which is the model for the disclaimer backers want in Louisiana.
Alabama approved its policy six or seven years ago after extensive controversy that included questions over the religious overtones of the issue.
The change approved Tuesday requires Louisiana education officials to check on details for getting publishers to add the disclaimer to biology textbooks.
It won approval in the board's Student and School Standards/ Instruction Committee after a sometimes contentious session.
"I don't believe I evolved from some primate," said Jim Stafford, a board member from Monroe. Stafford said evolution should be offered as a theory, not fact.
Whether the proposal will win approval by the full state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Thursday is unclear.
Paul Pastorek of New Orleans, president of the board, said he will oppose the addition.
"I am not prepared to go back to the Dark Ages," Pastorek said.
"I don't think state boards should dictate editorial content of school textbooks," he said. "We shouldn't be involved with that."
Donna Contois of Metairie, chairwoman of the committee that approved the change, said afterward she could not say whether it will win approval by the full board.
The disclaimer under consideration says the theory of evolution "still leaves many unanswered questions about the origin of life.
"Study hard and keep an open mind," it says. "Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth."
Backers say the addition would be inserted in the front of biology textbooks used by students in grades 9-12, possibly next fall.
The issue surfaced when a committee of the board prepared to approve dozens of textbooks used by both public and nonpublic schools. The list was recommended by a separate panel that reviews textbooks every seven years.
A handful of citizens, one armed with a copy of Charles Darwin's "Origin of the Species," complained that biology textbooks used now are one-sided in promoting evolution uncritically and are riddled with factual errors.
"If we give them all the facts to make up their mind, we have educated them," Darrell White of Baton Rouge said of students. "Otherwise we have indoctrinated them."
Darwin wrote that individuals with certain characteristics enjoy an edge over their peers and life forms developed gradually millions of years ago.
Backers bristled at suggestions that they favor the teaching of creationism, which says that life began about 6,000 years ago in a process described in the Bible's Book of Genesis.
White said he is the father of seven children, including a 10th-grader at a public high school in Baton Rouge.
He said he reviewed 21 science textbooks for use by middle and high school students. White called Darwin's book "racist and sexist" and said students are entitled to know more about controversy that swirls around the theory.
"If nothing else, put a disclaimer in the front of the textbooks," White said.
John Oller Jr., a professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, also criticized the accuracy of science textbooks under review. Oller said he was appearing on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group.
Oller said the state should force publishers to offer alternatives, correct mistakes in textbooks and fill in gaps in science teachings. "We are talking about major falsehoods that should be addressed," he said.
Linda Johnson of Plaquemine, a member of the board, said she supports the change. Johnson said the new message of evolution "will encourage students to go after the facts."
10 feet? anything you hear? public air waves? newspapers?
You don't have the right not to hear a religious message. Even in a public place. It's not in the constitution.
You might want to read some of the writings of Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia on the first amendment.
Sorry, lassy, you are not protected from an offending message. The threat or action of physical force is an entirely different matter.
Near the beginning of the book, he lays out four possible hypotheses of consciousness. He labelled them A, B, C and D. "A" is that brains are computers, in effect. I forget what "B" was. He advocated "C", which boiled down to "consciousness is material but not algorithmic". "D" states that consciousness is not material (your position).
My apologies. This is from Shadows of the Mind, page 12 of the hardcover edition.
Yes, but she casts herself in the starring role.
It was an obvious troll, of course. So I responded in kind. The difference is that mine was written tongue in cheek. Not only that, but I've got all these fabulous taglines left over from my Usenet/BBS days.
And they say to him, "We're stuck. Can you help us?"
and in textbooks…
“Douglas Futuyma's text (Evolutionary Biology, 3rd edition) he writes: "By coupling the undirected, purposeless variations to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made the theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous."
" Purvis, Orians and Heller, (in Life: The Science of Biology, 4th edition) tell students that, "the living world is constantly evolving without any goals.. . .evolutionary change is not directed."
PH: Evolution isn't 'taking us' anywhere.
Well Patrick is only half right as usual. Supposedly - like Hegelianism with which it is indelibly connected - there is neither an end nor a specific 'goal' to evolution. The 'survival of the fittest' in the struggle for life is indeed a very close translation of Hegel's dialectic of synthesis and antithesis and evolutionists call this struggle the creator of more advanced species through a sort of 'arms race'. Hegel's "belief that individual welfare or suffering simply did not matter in the sweep of world history, advancing like a juggernaut over the corpses of individuals."(1) is abundantly replicated in Darwin's works. So like Hegel, who did not know where it all was leading up to, but knew that it was leading to something greater, Darwin too asserted that evolution was also leading to something greater. Like with Hegel, the way to progress was through the corpses of the less fit.
vvv: It's implied.
And what is implied by teaching Creationism/ID?
I have this feeling that fifteen people are hovering over "post" buttons, waiting for 3999 to appear. The first fifteen posts after that will read, "4000!!!"
Do you know of a particular group that thinks much of the quantum coherence in tubulin ideas of Penrose?
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