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."
No, you have lied as usual as my posts #2046 and 2058 show.
Absolutely false. They are not even different species (as evolutionists continue to claim after it has been disproven). The beaks of the finches grow larger and smaller according to rainfall. They go back and forth in size within a few years. This is adaptation, not mutation and is therefore not evolution. This has been known since 1980 when it was published in a Pulitzer Prize Winning book but evolutionists continue to tell this lie.
I've seen a few of them. But how do we know the peer committee is open to critique? How do we know an assortment of peer reviewers isn't cobbled together to keep any dissenting points of view squelched or bamboozled? Open inquiry must allow for the publication of differing points of view.
Evolutionists are notorious for keeping their "peer review" groups closed to opposition. They're as emotionally and financially vested in their ideology as anyone else.
I don't know about you, but I would not trust a "scientific community" that would ipso facto discard the possibility of intelligent design.
And yet I must admit, the assumption of intelligent design is not essential to scientific progress. I don't need the scientist to tell me God made it. That's a given, and it's not a bad given to have on my side. It's not an excuse. It doesn't have to take on a mystical meaning. It's a reasonable side to take because the immensity of design that surrounds me is too great to be explained by purely natural causes.
Thanks for the help. Since 4 -2 does not equal 6 and survival of the fittest or natural selection only destroy, then evolution is false since you cannot get from bacteria to man without creating lots of stuff.
More half-truths which make the above A BLATANT LIE. As has been already pointed out to you (and cited) Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin but Darwin continuing to try to hide his atheism in order to deceive his readers declined.
To the extent that you mean "yes," then null turns into the question of "the time before the big bang."
I can see that we are not making progress after all. I was not disputing Physicist's post. Indeed, our space/time begins at inception, i.e. the big bang. My point was that time is part of the creation and not something in which the Creator exists.
It is very similar to the difference between zero and null and I was hoping that a discussion of it would help our ability to communicate and open the board for the related topics of multiple universes from quantum fluctuations, consciousness, algorithms and information content.
Oh well, maybe someday we can get into these topics in more detail.
How do you base a political philosophy on the theory of evolution? That would be essentially the same as basing a policical philosophy on Bernoulli's principle or on Maxwell's equations.
You have not provided any evidence necessitating the assumption of a designer. I once again extend the invitation to do so.
Can you cite a source for this? I really think you're trying to stretch this thing a bit far. Face it. The two ideologies fit together nicely. Marx would not fancy a dedication to Origin of Species unless he held it in high regard.
Of course we know the source of Patrick's statement. He knows what Marx's intentions were because he has this little gizmo that reads the minds of dead people! One must wonder why he wastes his time over here when he has such an ability.
They're a general way of contemplating and expressing various phenomena. Always tentative. Never claiming to be "the truth" whether held by communists or Christians.
So why is it not important that the theory you call "the truth" holds sole reign in the classroom where my children should be taught "maybe, maybe not?"
Martin Anderson's "Imposters in the Temple" contains a number of comments on the topic of peer reviewed journals:
"For most professors, the surest route to scholarly fame (and some fortune) is to publish in the distinguished academic journals of their field. Not books, or treatises, for these are rare indeed, but short, densely packed articles of a dozen pages or so."The successful professor's resume will be littered with citations of short, scholarly articles, their value rising with the prestige of the journal. These studious articles are the coin of the realm in the academic world. They are the professor's ticker to promotion, higher salary, generous research grants, lower teaching loads, and even more opulent office space.
"...These are supposed to be scholarly pieces, at the cutting edge of new knowledge.
"But now I must confess something. Many years ago when I read these articles regularly as part of my academic training and during my early years as a professor, I was bothered by the fact that I often failed to find the point of these articles, even after wading through the web of jargon, mathematical equations, and turgid English. Perhaps when I get older and wiser I will appreciate them more, I thought. Well, I am now fifty-five years old, and the significance of most academic writing continues to elude me."
"In recent years, I have conducted an informal survey. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I ask scholars about their academic journal reading habits. For example, I recently asked a colleague, a man with a solid reputation as a scholar, what he considered to be the most important academic journal in his field of study. An economist, he immediately replied "The American Economic Review".
"Let me ask you a question", I said. "Take, say, all of the issues of the last five years. What is your favorite article?"
"...Sure enough, he answered like all the rest. There was a silence of a few seconds, and then he cleared his throat a bit and, looking somewhat guilty and embarassed, said "Well, I haven't been reading it much lately." When pressed, he admitted that he could not name a single article which he had read during the last five years which he found memorable. In fact, he probably had not read any articles, but was loath to admit it.
"...There are exceptions of course, a handful of men and women in every field who do read these articles and try to comprehend any glimmers of meaning or significance they might contain. But, as a general rule, nobody reads the articles in academic journals anymore.
"...There is a mystery here. For while these academic publications pile up, largely unread, on the shelves of university libraries, their importance to a professor's career continues unabated. Scarcely anyone questions these proofs of erudition on a resume.
"...One reason why these research articles are automatically accepted as significant and important is that they have survived the criticism of "peer review" before being published.
"...Some of the manuscript reviews are done 'blind', with the author's name stripped off, while others are not and the reviwer knows exactly whom he or she is evaluating. Given what is at stake in peer reviewing... it would not be unreasonable to worry a little about corruption sneaking in.
"But these questions are not explored. The fact that some fields of study are small enough that the intellectuals involved in them are all known to eachother, or that friends review friends, or that reviewers repay those who reviewed their own writings favorably in the past -- all these potential problems are ignored...
Because the evidence doesn't support "maybe, maybe not". If you want your children to be taught a falsehood by being taught that it does, so be it. But please don't presume to impose that upon mine.
I was listening to CSPAN while running errands the other day and caught a bit of my buddy Vine DeLoria speaking at the 2002 National Book Festival, an event sponsored by the Library of Congress and apparently Hosted by laura Bush. The main topic was a new book of Vine's, titled:
Library of Congress Book Festival, 2002
Vine is a former president of the National Council of American Indians, and the best known native American author of the last century or so. Several of his books are standard university texts on Indian affairs. He views all western religions as things to be avoided and hence is more than a little bit difficult to write off as a Christian fundamentalist.
Help me out here. To begin with, can you think of anything in all of existence that has "design" as one of its features? Pick anything you wish.
From my own reason and senses, I am inclined NOT to ascribe design to such things as static, rocks, dirt, water, etc. Their forms appear to me as random, unordered.
I just want to make sure we can at least agree that certain objects around us are more than that; that they give some indication of being formed for a purpose. Like, for example, a pencil. Yes. Do you see any evidence of design in a pencil?
I know I am being overly simplistic, and I wish not to come off as trying to make anyone look foolish. Can you at least accept the fact that "designed things" are present in the universe?
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