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 think that would be the perfect time to let the kid think and answer for himself. Don't you?
Very few things in science are directly observable. When did you last see a continent shift?
Intelligent design however certainly is observable. Just like we can see that a painting had a human maker, we can see design in the Universe. That's why atheists have to propose infinite universes in order to counter the design argument. Life too is obviously intelligently designed that is why atheists cannot even formulate a hypothesis of abiogenesis which fits scientifically known facts. Everywhere we look in science, we see design because after all if we lived in a random universe there could be no scientific laws at all.
Sigh. Apparent design does not demonstrate the existence of a designer. That is only one of any number of equally likely hypotheses that can arise in a fact-vacuum. It only demonstrates the intractable nature of your commitment to fallacies of the the excluded middle.
All present evidence absolutely supports the Copernican model of the solar system. Is that a proof that the Copernican model is primally correct: that it has actual, visceral existence behind it?
You are pre-supposing that there are only two points of view. Your views of god/creation are not your neighbors view. - Thus, the needed separation.
I've always thought our forefathers were more concerned about the Federal Government somehow advocating/establishing/funding a particular denomination of religion than a generic understanding of God and the rights we have from Him by nature.
Again, you seem to base your thought on a preconceived view of a type of 'god'. The founders arguably did not. In fact, I doubt that there is, or ever was, a 'generic understanding' of god. -- Despite the lip service by politicans.
Originally the word liberal meant social conservatives(no govt religion--none) who advocated growth and progress---mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality... UNDER GOD---the nature of GOD/man/govt. does not change. These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!
Evolution...Atheism-dehumanism---TYRANNY('EXCLUSIVE'-pc/liberal/govt-religion/rhetoric)...
Then came the SPLIT SCHIZOPHRENIA/ZOMBIE/BRAVE-NWO1984 LIBERAL NEO-Soviet Darwin/ACLU America---the post-modern deist redacted age
If you'll permit, me, I'd like to take a brief pass at this.
I'll beg off on the evidence of God's shout producing the cosmic background radiation variation, which, while charmingly clever, doesn't seem altogether pursuasive to me.
What I did want to talk about was the proposal that we look for an instruction manual in the junk DNA. Or, for example, a decoded message saying "I, God, did this!".
I'd put all such proposed evidence from left field, as it were in the just-so-story bin. When IDers are challenged to come up with an experiment, what we mean is a critical experiment--one that might say yea or nay to a thesis on the table, and expanded to sufficient detail to make such an experiment constructable. As you know, this the Popperian commitment to falsifiability in science.
If you should unambiguously decrypt such a message, or if God appears in the midst of a burning bush on MTV and takes full credit, then we'll be on a new footing with ID. But until then, proposed evidence not presently on the table is outside the technical competence of science.
Otherwise, this notion remains on the sideline right alongside the argument for design. It has the potential to be science, since nobody can demonstrate that it couldn't be true, but without some form of compelling evidence to hand, science it is not.
Oh, I don't have the strength. Don't go there. Really. Trust me.
And to have a general consensus from more sources would even further corroborate creation theories.
If you presume all creation theories are equivalent and thus freely substitutable, sure. As a matter of fact, I do, but I doubt you'd agree with my reasoning.
But really, these are two different world views, and I really don't see great harm in giving each some air time in the public arena.
Neither do I, but science class is not a public arena. It's a place for teaching and learning science. By its very nature, some viewpoints must be excluded, including the story of Raven. And the Book of Genesis. They aren't science, and special creation in general isn't science, and doesn't belong in science classes.
But there are other places where such things might easily be included. I have long thought that a class in comparative religions would be an excellent addition to school curricula, wherein the Book of Genesis and the story of Raven could be discussed at length. I don't see why such a class wouldn't pass constitutional muster, assuming that it didn't espouse one particular viewpoint over others.
I think that would be the perfect time to let the kid think and answer for himself. Don't you?
And thereby withholding information that you believe to be true? Who does that serve? How does it educate children to refuse to honestly answer honest questions?
And in their turn, we all struggle against both...the trouble is that by the time we understand when to let either one loose, we are often too old (or too stuck in a particular lifestyle) to enjoy the results.
Hiding messages in unrelated media by bit twiddling. The most obvious example commercially extant is hiding watermarks in the noise in photographs so that the casual observer cannot detect the changes made. Check out the company "Digimarc".
Am I wrong in assuming there are only two possibilities? 1.) designed things exist, or 2.) designed things do not exist?
You exclude the counterargument. Not playing fair. Things that give the appearance of design exist, snowflakes and diamonds for example, the assumption that a designer therefore must exist, however, omits some important common steps in critical analysis of evidence you'd never get away with in a decently run courtroom.
Perhaps a third: All of existence is a figment of my imagination, but I don't think those kind of skeptics inhabit this place.
Yes they do I've argued with several. I myself hold that it is inherently impossible to disprove this notion, only to disapprove of it.
Another fan of proof by repetition? Of course things have been observed evolving, as most creationists have by now acceded to, while claiming that macro-evolution has not been directly observed, which is true, but not devastating as arguments go. No one's ever see a star go through all the stages of stellar evolution--do you reject astronomy on that basis? No one's ever seen a continent drift--do you reject modern geology on that basis?
No one has "seen" gravity, either. The best we can hope for is to observe the effects of a particular force or influence...either by getting bonked on the noggin by an apple, or by uncovering the fossil remains of progressively more complex organisms.
Extremely practical advice! :-D
More wise and practical advice! But perhaps our beloved crevo threads would then be abandoned...once people understood the proper venues for discussion.
Sigh! Sometimes all apparent paths to that destination end in futility...and I'm not big on seemingly unending vexation.
No. I am suggesting that teaching children what we think they need to know to take an adult's place in the world is not primarily an exercise in intellectual equality between peers--it is adults making and enforcing unilateral decisions upon somewhat resistant unformed minds. If you don't think teaching them about the present state of science should be part of that curriculum, I can go along with that. If you do, I can go along with that.
What I cannot abide, is teaching them something is science (or somehow mysteriously "stands on par" with science), when it isn't. ID is not science--it fails nearly every qualification exam anyone has ever thought of. I personally happen to think it is the best fit of the currently available facts, and I can and have gone over why that is at length, but I am not deluded into thinking that this notion has the detailed, critically diciplined evidenciary trail behind it that it now takes to qualify as a modern science.
Is that like being nearly pregnant? The official communist biological uber-theory was Lysenkoism, not Darwinism. Stalin purged adamant Darwinists. The communists were hell-bent on seeing the world as determined by will alone which made Lysenkoism, not Darwinism, an apparently necessary assumption. Lysenkoism rejects variation and selection as the tuning agent of evolution, opting instead for direct intervention in their own DNA by the present generation of beings. This has been represented on these threads as just a minor variation on Darwinian evolution to try to save your argument that communism and darwinian evolutionary theory are hand in glove, despite the fact that Stalin wiped darwinian evolution out of Russia using the firing squad argument.
More blue science in action. 3000 is mis-representing "The Beak of the Finch", which field report's primary point was that the finches varied because their diets had specialized, with the beaks matching against the various food source specializations. That the beaks varied in size with availability is no more relevant to this central point than the fact that humans average size increases with dietary improvement.
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