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."
You and your fellow evolutionists have been encouraged numerous times to share the evidence you have of evolution with the rest of us. You all seem to be very much afraid to share it with us. Is it that you do not wish us poor foolish folk to become as enlightened as you, or is it because you do not have any? Inquiring minds want to know.
Didn't they make a movie about you?
SCIENTISTS claim that the Universe was designed. SCIENTISTS claim that abiogenesis is impossible and life was designed. SCIENTISTS claim that the develoment of a baby from conception to birth is a program and hence not subject to random change. Now I call that a trifecta, a very important trifecta for Intelligent Design.
As far as I know, ideas about evolution are as wide ranging as ideas about creation. The definition you've adopted is understandable, and it is good, I suppose, to have at least this mooring by which you might test other ideas. Just as absolute certainty with respect to the nature of gravity, electricty, light, etc. remains to be discovered, so too absolute certainties with respect to evolution and/or creation remain to be learned.
Nobody knows it all, but certain folks are good pretenders.
It can't be very difficult for someone who has surveyed all Nobel Prize winning work and has declared that it all disproves evolution. An intellect of such sweeping power should be able to give us his answer. HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?.
I certainly did. Your question was:
The first life had to be able to reproduce itself, this is not possible without a fully formed cell.-me-
Back to the question I've been asking for 400 posts: Upon what evidence do you base this assumption?
You asked a stupid question, you got a stupid answer. I knew that you would challenge my answer giving me another opportunity to show how ridiculous and desperate your position is.
Frankly I cannot even engage in logic with you unless intelligent design is involved. Logic by its very nature entails the same. Are you willing to concede that intelligent design exists anywhere at all in the universe?
While I agree with you that evolution is bunk and with your other points, I do disagree that micro-evolution is a scientific fact. The two examples of it given by evoltuionists, the moths and the Darwin finches, have been disproven. The story of the moths was based on fraud. The story of the finches has been disproven by observations made some 20 years ago. First of all, the finches are not different species. These finches can and do interbreed. Not only that, but the 'mixed' breeds are more viable and produce more and stronger offspring than the unmixed ones. The change in beak size is not unidirectional as evolution would require. Instead the beak sizes change back and forth according to the amount of rainfall each season. What this show therefore is not mutation (which is what evolution requires) but adaptation of the species through inherent abilities already in their genes. This adaptability is true of all species. A simple example is our developing a suntan to protect from too much sun.
This discussion began when some asserted that one proof of the Bible's truth is that none of it's statements are obsolete. The passages giving permission to own slaves, and permission to beat them to the point where they cannot move for two days, are obsolete. Even worse, there is no way that such behavior could be moral at any time or in any context. If the Bible is correct in attributing thes permissions to the word of God, then the God of the Bible is evil.
The other possibility is that these rules were made by men who were doing what they thought best within their time.
The guy's got some perceptual problems. He noted (#1769) that:
My own two cents here. According to our present knowledge, whatever may have existed before the BB -- if anything -- was crushed to plasma;
Maybe you should offer to tell him how old the world is after he explains how anything could be "crushed to plasma", frozen into a gas, melted into a solid, or anything else like that.
Here's a link to a Google search on Ted Holden. Over 55,000 hits. Virtually every site (except his own) claims the guy is the biggest flake in cyberspace. Now, what made me bring that up?
No your statement was a lie. You were strongly implying that chester's post was refuting me. It is called dishonesty of which you are amply PROBEN to be in post# 1817.
Patrick Henry the 'open minded' slimer keeps going on and on like the Energizer bunny! To anyone watching this it will be clear what you are doing - persecution of an opponent because the little arrogant slimer who can never engage in a scientific discussion with anyone, does not like to have people show the cavernous holes in his atheistic theory.
You started that stupid smear campaign due to my daring to ask questions about evolution which neither you nor your friends can answer. As I have statedDIRECTLY TO YOU numerous times, I will not answer your irrelevant question. Your dishonesty in not even addressing your post to me is self evident. You are a lamer gratuitously attacking me because I have thoroughly disproven your atheistic/materialistic, pseudo-scientific evolutionary nonsense. The proof is all over this thread from the inability of any of the evolutionists here in showing that abiogenesis is even remotely possible within what science knows to be absolutely true, to the inability of any of the evolutionists here to refute the following posts made some 900 posts ago:
Neither you nor any evolutionists has ever given proof that a single species has transformed itself into another more complex species. If I am wrong, let's see the proof. Come up with a real arguement that slams evolution can you do it?
There are many. The bacterial flagellum is one. The program by which a single cell at conception turns into a 100 trillion cells at the time of birth - with every single cell of the exactly proper kind in the exactly proper place is another. There are many more which have been scientifically proven, but these two should keep you busy for a while.
988 posted on 12/23/2002 7:07 AM PST by gore3000
'Gradual loss of egg laying' is more easily said than done. You must remember that the you need to provide nutrition to the developing organism throughout its development - as well as after the birth until it can feed itself. To say that all these changes can occur simultaneously is totally ludicrous and you have disproven nothing. Let's see an article describing how this change occurred in detail. Can you find any? I doubt it because this is one of the things evolutionists never speak of.
989 posted on 12/23/2002 7:14 AM PST by gore3000
And where did you debunk the flagellum besides in your own mind?
As to the eye spot, your article only says that because it happened more than once then therefore the eye spot could have occurred. It is not a refutation of the complex mechanism required for an eye spot.
BTW - a blog from Don Lindsay is proof of absolutely nothing. The guy cannot even give references for his nonsense.
991 posted on 12/23/2002 7:28 AM PST by gore3000
That none of you evolutionists can refute these scientific questions central to the theory of evolution, shows quite well that your adherence to this theory has nothing to do with science but to your arrogant atheistic proclivities.
Patrick Henry the 'open minded' slimer keeps going on and on like the Energizer bunny! To anyone watching this it will be clear what you are doing - persecution of an opponent because the little arrogant slimer who can never engage in a scientific discussion with anyone, does not like to have people show the cavernous holes in his atheistic theory.
You started that stupid smear campaign due to my daring to ask questions about evolution which neither you nor your friends can answer. As I have statedDIRECTLY TO YOU numerous times, I will not answer your irrelevant question. Your dishonesty in not even addressing your post to me is self evident. You are a lamer gratuitously attacking me because I have thoroughly disproven your atheistic/materialistic, pseudo-scientific evolutionary nonsense. The proof is all over this thread from the inability of any of the evolutionists here in showing that abiogenesis is even remotely possible within what science knows to be absolutely true, to the inability of any of the evolutionists here to refute the following posts made some 400 posts ago:
Neither you nor any evolutionists has ever given proof that a single species has transformed itself into another more complex species. If I am wrong, let's see the proof. Come up with a real arguement that slams evolution can you do it?
There are many. The bacterial flagellum is one. The program by which a single cell at conception turns into a 100 trillion cells at the time of birth - with every single cell of the exactly proper kind in the exactly proper place is another. There are many more which have been scientifically proven, but these two should keep you busy for a while.
988 posted on 12/23/2002 7:07 AM PST by gore3000
'Gradual loss of egg laying' is more easily said than done. You must remember that the you need to provide nutrition to the developing organism throughout its development - as well as after the birth until it can feed itself. To say that all these changes can occur simultaneously is totally ludicrous and you have disproven nothing. Let's see an article describing how this change occurred in detail. Can you find any? I doubt it because this is one of the things evolutionists never speak of.
989 posted on 12/23/2002 7:14 AM PST by gore3000
And where did you debunk the flagellum besides in your own mind?
As to the eye spot, your article only says that because it happened more than once then therefore the eye spot could have occurred. It is not a refutation of the complex mechanism required for an eye spot.
BTW - a blog from Don Lindsay is proof of absolutely nothing. The guy cannot even give references for his nonsense.
991 posted on 12/23/2002 7:28 AM PST by gore3000
That none of you evolutionists can refute these scientific questions central to the theory of evolution, shows quite well that your adherence to this theory has nothing to do with science but to your arrogant atheistic proclivities.
Not much longer than the time that the earth orbited Saturn.
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