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."
He also suspects that old-timers like me can search on our hard drives and find saved there old threads with posts by him which attack anything he could ever cite as a reason why he thinks the earth is old. I'm pretty sure that at one time or another gore has attacked radiometric dating, the geologic column, paleontology, and modern secular cosmology.
That's always struck me as odd, since he has also claimed (while declining to defend a Young-Earth) that he accepts an "old" Earth. Nevertheless, I could never get out of him why he does. I think it's a great question, since it's far from obvious why someone who attacks the things he does is not a YEC.
I was responding to webber who had said (at post 1588):
I believe what the Bible says. So show me, by quoting scripture, where it says that the Earth is flat, and the Earth is the center of the Universe? HMMMMM?So I showed him. By the way, I agree with your take on those passages. That's exactly how I read Genesis, therefore I have no scriptural conflicts with evolution.
I made no such equivallent claim as gore3000, and I'm not sure what your intended point it, but I can tell you're feeling awfully clever and proud of yourself so I'll indulge you.
The definition of evolution is a change in alelle frequency in a population over time. The theory of evolution attempts to describe the mechanisms behind the change. Genetic variation of individuals within a population confers unequal survival probabilities upon those individuals. The least successful genetic combinations for a particular environment will be much less prevelant in the 2nd generation of a population. As has often been said, "The race goes not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."
Humans have witnessed changes in populations. Note the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Speciation has been observed most dramatically in the form of several varieties of ring species. And humans themselves have altered a population of Russian silver foxes by the application of simple selection pressure for desirable traits.
Now, I expect an answer in kind from you concerning gravity. Please describe it.
So you are saying that ordinary standards of morality didn't apply before Jesus?
The discussion began with the assertion that things in the Bible didn't change or become obsolete over time. Perhaps I am just too dense to "get it", but the morality of owning another human is a pretty big bite to swallow. Not to mention asserting that it is OK to beat another human being to the point where it takes two days for him to get up. Or that it is OK to have slaves, provided they come from another country.
I accept the fact that religious ideas evolve along with society in general, but I reject the idea that the underlying nature of morality changes.
Does science tell us the Truth about Reality? If so, why do scientific theories change while Reality doesn't? Anyway, is there such a thing as Reality?
Dobzhansky, I believe.
I used Dobzhansky's quote within the context of Penrose's categrorization of theories, allow me to clarify:
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Theodosius Dobzhansky, Geneticist
Roger Penrose put theories in four categories, with examples: *
about which he says "No observational discrepancies with that theory are known -- yet its strength goes far beyond this, in the number of hitherto inexplicable phenomena that the theory now explains."
(Penrose refused to name any of these.)
How about the part where grasses and trees existed before the sun did? The fossil record shows the development of grasses and trees, and life on Earth was around for a very long time before they showed up. That life couldn't have existed without the sun being there.
Because a theory, like a portrait, is an approximation. When a better approximation is found, it is adopted. Some maps are better than others.
Anyway, is there such a thing as Reality?
Yes. The fundamental statement of philosophy is, "I am aware that something is there." You cannot have the subjective ("I am aware...") without the objective ("...something is there"). Existence exists.
"No observational discrepancies with that theory are known -- yet its strength goes far beyond this, in the number of hitherto inexplicable phenomena that the theory now explains."
According to this standard, evolution would rank as a "superb" theory.
Sounds like "evolution lite" to me; a definition you've chosen to adopt for yourself. Even under this definiton I doubt you have literally observed evolution. No. You've become a parrot, a lemming, for those whose definition of the universe fits your pre-conceived notions.
Luckily scientists have not paid attention to this nonsense and continue looking for and discovering the order in nature.
I couldn't possibly agree with you more. Truly, I believe such scientists will continue to find, throughout nature, information content - which is both the evidence of algorithms and the residue of intelligent design. For lurkers interested in my two cents:
post 324 on testable claims for Creation
Wouldn't someone have tried it? Seems to me there would be a market for fake fossiles.
I'm afraid it couldn't, because the entire history of the universe is laid before our eyes, all the way back to the time that atoms first formed. If it were there, we'd see it.
[Geek alert: There is a light predating the sun, to be sure, called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, but by the time flowering plants evolved, it was far too feeble to support life, and in any case its ubiquity and smoothness renders it thermodynamically unsuitable for any such purpose.]
The ONLY way that works is if being an Athenian slave is so far above being a Scythian for whatever combination of reasons, that the proposition is a no-brainer.
Give up trying to judge ancient people by your own standard of morality; it doesn't work.
Why 9-12, why not from the first grade on?
Just like the theory of the big bang. Scientists state that the universe began (they avoid the term created) with a big bang with all the energy needed to form the universe.
Question, where did all the energy needed come from in the first place?
Scientists tell us that energy can’t be created nor destroyed, nor can we create something from nothing.
I have a theory about the origins of universe’s but, it still doesn’t explain where the original energy came from in the first place. It has to be God.
Moreover, the Sun's circular orbit about the galactic center is just right; through a combination of factors it manages to keep out of the way of the Galaxy's dangerous spiral arms. Our Solar System is also far enough away from the galactic center to not have to worry about disruptive gravitational forces or too much radiation.
When all of these factors occur together, they create a region of space that Gonzalez calls a "Galactic Habitable Zone." Gonzalez believes every form of life on our planet - from the simplest bacteria to the most complex animal - owes its existence to the balance of these unique conditions.
Because of this, states Gonzalez, "I believe both simple life and complex life are very rare, but complex life, like us, is probably unique in the observable Universe."
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