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."
An interesting question which shows the difference between atheists and Christians. Bunnies do not have a soul, humans do. This sets us apart from the rest of nature and makes human life more valuable and due the respect demanded by God. It is this difference in viewpoint that tells Christians not to be racist, not to kill fellow humans - because they are children of God. The atheist has no such problem and can discriminate as he pleases down to the ultimate of discrimination - killing those he dislikes. When there is no rule, no respect for human beings as human beings, then discrimination, and the ultimate discrimination, mass murder, become options against those who are somehow inconvenient. The racist always tries to belittle those he dislikes and makes them less than human. To a Christian, it is impossible for any human to be less than human, to an atheist, it is very easy. An atheist can just call the object of his hatred a 'lower species' to justify his murderous intent.
Not true. You do not need a laboratory. The lava from a volcanic erruption will create close to instant fossils - see Pompeii.
They certainly do. They always try to avoid the scientific questions. Evolution has never been able to show how evolution occurs or be able to give scientific evidence of the process by which species transform themselves into new species. Their 'holy' bones, to which the Church of Darwin prays, are worse than inconclusive of evolution, they disprove it. The appearance of over 40 totally new body shapes of life (not just species) within some five million years at most (by their own geologists determinations) without predecessor of any kind possible for any of them are a strong argument against evolution. Another strong argument made by the bones is the non-existence of those bones which show the transformations from major classifications to others. Such bones should be everywhere if evolution were true. Instead what we find are big gaps where there should be none. Instead what we find is species which have remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
And of course he knew what the correct formula was for the "earyly atmosphere" because he was there and measured the contents of it before he went back into his time machine to re-create it, UM, I mean re-evolve it in the present.....right?
Human eyes? Octopus eyes? Bumblebee eyes? Fish eyes? I suspect all eyes everywhere are "irreducibly complex," but there certainly are many kinds of eyes and all levels of functioning.
So why did an animal decided to begin "evolving" making some parts of an eye but could not use it for seeing for millions of years until the complete eye had eventually formed? Did it forsee itself as one day being able to see? How did it know that sight was possible? Oh yeh, it was an oops - accident that became beneficial through caring around unusable tissues for millions of years until VOILA! I CAN SEE! I CAN SEE!
Am I supposed to educate you on evolution now? You don't know how it works. I'd suggest you find out before you post anything else as dumb as 1544.
Oh how intelligent that sounds.
Whatever it is, you wrote it.
And we creationist are so gullible.......aren't we?
Yes.
Check this out.
Exodus 21:20
"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, (Whole Chapter: Exodus 21 In context: Exodus 21:19-21)
Exodus 21:21
but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. (Whole Chapter: Exodus 21 In context: Exodus 21:20-22)
Exodus 21:32
If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels [ 21:32 That is, about 12 ounces (about 0.3 kilogram) ] of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull must be stoned. (Whole Chapter: Exodus 21 In context: Exodus 21:31-33)
Leviticus 19:20
" 'If a man sleeps with a woman who is a slave girl promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment. Yet they are not to be put to death, because she had not been freed. (Whole Chapter: Leviticus 19 In context: Leviticus 19:19-21)
Leviticus 22:11
But if a priest buys a slave with money, or if a slave is born in his household, that slave may eat his food. (Whole Chapter: Leviticus 22 In context: Leviticus 22:10-12)
Leviticus 25:44
" 'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. (Whole Chapter: Leviticus 25 In context: Leviticus 25:43-45)
Leviticus 25:46
You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. (Whole Chapter: Leviticus 25 In context: Leviticus 25:45-47)
You can use anything I say as you like, with or without atribution. Just spread the word!
No. those are what YOU think are facts. They can not be empirically reproduced scientifically, so SCIENTICALLY, it is thus only a THEORY. Unless you can scientifically, empirically reproduce what you conjecture, then it's NOT FACT, IT'S THEORY. That's why it's called the "Theory of Evolution", not the "Fact of Evolution".
They go much further than this, my friend. They inflict their wishful answers upon the rest of us with demagogery not unlike leftist indoctrination, even using the law to squelch dissenting theories.
What the flaming dork are you babbling about? Is that some kind of whacko threat? Or are you getting some kind of sick thrill as you dream of me burning in hell?
DNA shows us more than information though, it shows something which materialists deny to be possible - symbolism. It took mankind thousands of years to abstract from pictorial descriptions the form of conveying thoughts by abstract symbols which we call the alphabet (in fact the Chinese have never reached this point). DNA is symbolic information. It is like the yes/no of a binary computer only it is more advanced in that it has 4 possible meanings at each position. These DNA units are read in threes in order to give a possible 64 different values. These 64 values are translated by RNA into the 20 amino acids which make the proteins of life. Now let's just think how hard it is for a child to learn to read. How much time it takes, how much teaching it takes. So the question that needs to be asked is who taught DNA to write the symbols and who taught the RNA how to read them and translate them into the proper amino acids? There can be no materialist explanation for this.
I call it a draw too. That is, they have to draw all the missing links between species because they don't have an actual body or skeleton of one. They have to hypothesize what it's suppose to look like, based on what they THINK it ate, how they THINK it walked. They don't even have 1/100 of a skeleton of one. They can't even be 100% sure that the pieces of fossilized bones are from the same animal. That's why their ideas always keep changing. Creation never changes. "God created the Heavens & the Earth." He created all life, "Each after it's own kind."
No I never said it started with Darwin. I did say that Darwin and his theory are racist and that his theory has given an excuse and support for racists and mass murderers. You have to realize that to evolutionists, Darwin is their god (worm-eaten and all) so they consider an attack on him an excuse for attacking Christianity.
Let me finish your sentence: and only an idiot, knowing that all science is a theory, would not allow alternative theories to be taught so that one does not become indoctrinated (brainwashed) by theories which they would otherwise believe to be facts since no other viewpoint was allowed in the discussion.
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