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."
I'm using Mozillatm, which is the source of Netscapetmhee hee.
It (or they) wasn't even grammatical. The sentence doesn't parse as written.
What started the whole process of existence, whether it be inanimate or animate?
Causality presupposes the existence of time, but the Big Bang does not. The Big Bang doesn't require a cause--indeed, it's philosophically meaningless to talk of it as having one--as it marks the beginning of time itself. Asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is south of the south pole; there geometrically is no such place. Time exists in the universe; the universe does not exist in time.
Christianity does answer that, God.
Please. The statement "God exists" presupposes that existence exists. You and only shifting the question to, "Why is there God and not just nothing?"
Why “take Existence” was created by God as an axiom?
That doesn't parse, either.
Is your hatred of God so fierce that you’ll not even admit the possibility that he does exist?
What are you talking about? I haven't even addressed the topic.
”From admitting the existence of God, it does not follow that any particular definition of God is true, or that the words in any particular book are necessarily the words of God.”
Praise the Lord, you are searching for him.
“… the words in any particular book are necessarily the words of God”
Any book that preaches hatered, is not the word of the true God.
” Asserting that God created existence simply pushes the problem of existence bach one verbal layer, while adding exactly nothing to understanding.”
Understanding is there if you’ll try to open your eyes to the possibility.
This means one chance in the number one followed by 340 million zeros.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. You might want to do a more careful job of plagiarism in the future.
But all of these numbers are irrelevant, because A) nobody has ever seriously claimed that all of this just fell together one day, which is all you are even attempting to refute and B) we can observe very large molecules spontaneously assembling which would similarly be "ruled out" by such a calculation, so clearly the entire calculation scheme is fundamentally flawed.
Semantics my foot--those who practically live in the fallacy of the excluded middle have no grounds for complaining about their deponents taking care with words. Stop, for instance, throwing the word "proof" around as if it meant something significant to you and I will quit complaining.
Well many things have been scientifically proven beyond doubt.
Nothing in science is proven, much less proven beyond doubt, as a matter of scientific principle affirmed by most any scientist you care to ask. Scientific principles are stories, not things to be proved.
One is gravity which we have been discussing. Gravity is a fact of life, an indubitable fact of life beyond denial.
Once again, the clown prince of the fallacy of the excluded middle squeaks up.
You have no deductive proof that gravity will still be working tomorrow. If you had, you would have offered it up long ago. It is simply something we have high confidence in because, well, because we do. Just as we have high confidence in the notion that animals procreate, not all of then survive to have issue, and the resulting population reflects the selection pressure. We have less high confidence, but high confidence none the less, that the same thing was happening 2 billion years ago, just as, and for exactly the same reasons, we have high confidence that the universal law of gravity is UNIVERSAL. In both cases, despite the fact that the only available evidence is millions of years old.
Does time itself exist if there’s no one around to measure it?
The entire problem revolves around one thing and one thing only, Faith, if you have it, no explanation is necessary, if you don’t, then no manner of explanation will matter.
I’ve enjoyed the conversation but, I realize you’ll never understand. I’ll add you to my extremely long list of those to pray for.
I did before I learned that it was a null concept. Do you ever wonder what lies south of the south pole? Why not?
My own two cents here. According to our present knowledge, whatever may have existed before the BB -- if anything -- was crushed to plasma; therefore all information about any prior state of the universe is gone. So, there being no evidence which can, even in principle, be examined, the question of "before the BB" cannot be explored by science. It's wide open for theology, however.
If instead you spent that time studying, you still would have a shot at understanding.
Crushed to plasma? You mean sort of like being frozen and compressed into a gas??
The idea of having all the mass in the universe compressed to a point and then having it somehow or other bang its way out of that is ludicrous on the face of it even without attempts at injecting Mickey Mantlisms into cosmology. The one guy I know of who's ever had anything intelligent to say on the topic is Halton Arp.
Them's your words, bucko; it's in the question. I'll settle for the common definition of "conclusion" if you don't mind.
I asked what you meant by "conclusion" if you do not mean "proof" and I'm still asking.
Read thee, then, to the end of all posts. And lo! Ye shall find thy questions answered, and thyself less a fool, you putz.
Yeah continental drift alright, like your drift away from the subject.
The subject, oh distracted one, was why we don't put a big red label stamp on each page of our introductory micro-biology material in classrooms saying "Danger, Danger Will Robinson, theory ahead!".
Have you been taking lessons from Gore3000 in using Attention Deficit Disorder as a rhetorical tool?
Every once in a while something pops up on these threads that meke them worth reading.
Incidently, reading these threads is much faster and easier since I activated the blue text filter on my browser.
If someone had posted ahead of you, the post whose text was 1777 would not have matched the enumeration of the post. Would have been compelled to issue a correction, if that had happened? If so, how would you have done it?
Here, I'll show you. I'll assume this is going to be post 1779, and assume the rule is that the post number has to be worked into the text. Here goes.
There is no "all that energy." There total energy is zero, which is really nothing to get excited about.
What do you mean by "null"? If you wish to introduce new terms, you should define them.
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