Evolution Disclaimer Supported

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 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.

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."

Because the generally accepted scientific definition of the word "evolution" appears to be somewhat in doubt among the creationists on this board, way back at post 1682, I posted a definition for the word evolution from EvolutionFairyTale.com:

This type of "evolution" is widely accepted by evolutionists and creationists alike and is not in dispute.

Take note of the sentence in bold. It forms the crux of my argument. After a few back and forths (including a surreal detour into a gravity-evolution comparison at post 1802 where gore3000 somehow managed to construe "I did not agree with gore3000" as "Fester Chugabrew refuted gore3000") we arrived at post 1817.

Now, in post 1817, gore3000 takes me to task for omitting the first sentence of the paragraph from which I quoted the evolution definition:

Dishonestly turning around the whole meaning of the quote by deleting the words I have underlined. What this shows Condorman, is that you are a liar and very dishonest.

The Evolution Definition Shell Game

The term evolution often takes on several meanings in today's scientific circles, often in very misleading ways. A 1999 undergraduate college textbook on Biology states: "Evolution is a generation-to-generation change in a population's frequencies of alleles or genotypes. Because such a change in a gene pool is evolution on the smallest scale, it is referred to more specifically as microevolution"

I will reference gore3000's documented history of quote-mining and outright falsehoods only to illuminate the fact that he has once again doctored his cites. As I emphasized above, the author explicity states his agreement with that defintion. That point is curiously absent from gore3000's version of the quote. However, we now have proof positive that gore3000 can't read either. Amused at his cursory and wholly inaccurate reading of the webpage, I wondered if perhaps he would like to reconsider, and offered him the chance in post 1821:

The website I cited is a Creationist website that agrees with the definition of evolution I posted: A change in the alelle frequency of a population over time. The portion of the passage you omitted contains this information.

Unphased and now under full sail, he managed to get his shoes in his mouth up to the knee in post 1897:

Not only are you a liar, you are a shameless liar. With the post showing that the site calls the definition you gave MISLEADING (which you dishonestly did not post) and with the article named THE EVOLUTION SHELL GAME you dare to say that the site supports your definition? You have no shame.

Brazen, really. Somehow, I felt stupider just for reading that post. Had gore3000 bothered to read beyond the first paragraph, he would have noticed (as I'm sure most did) that the author begins by saying that the several definitions of the word evolution are often used in misleading ways. He does not disagree with the particular definition I posted. No, in fact, he explicitly states his agreement. Not only that, but in the next several paragraphs, the author also states his acceptance of speciation through geographic isolation, although he disagrees that this phenomenon is necessarily macro-evolution. Once again, here is the link to the evolution definition page in question.

However, I still had that pesky "liar" charge against me. So I offered him one last chance to retract it at post 1922:

I did not deliberately lie. Your post DOES highlight a fairly significant lapse in reading comprehension, but my statement was not an intentional falsehood. Fair enough?

I'll admit it was a little sneaky, but I'm not above a little sleight-of-hand when I have false accusations levelled against me.

So, finally, at post 2364, I have my answer. And I have to admit, I'm not disappointed:

I ignored the [request for a response] out of kindness, and gave you a chance to likewise ignore it again when you asked me to answer. So you are forcing me to speak my mind.

I ignored it because I could not accept your apology. If you had said that when I first pointed out that the title of the article and the words immediately preceding those you quoted completely refuted your claim, I could have accepted it. However when you denied it again after it had explicitly been pointed out to you that your claim was false, I cannot truly believe that you had made a mistake in good faith.

The mistakes were those of gore3000. Somehow, his innate, overflowing "kindness" failed to manifest itself when he called me a shameless liar. Odd how the magnanimous generosity crystalized only after the mud had been slung. And isn't it astonishing how I have forced him to once again call me a liar.

From the start on this issue, as has been amply demonstrated, gore3000 has been wrong. Naturally I encourage the lurkers to verify this for themselves. But as much fun as this has been, it is getting late, and now that the record has finally been corrected, I'd best be off for the night.

Good News For The Day

‘I am the truth. . ..’(John 14:6)

"For most of time, men and women have assumed that the truth was there to be found out. This began to change in the 19th century and the change gathered pace in the 20th. As people began to question the existence of God, it became obvious to some, that the existence of truth requires the existence of God. With God dismissed, it became impossible to conceive of truth in any absolute sense. This has resulted in the humiliation of truth. Truth is now whatever you would like it to be."

"Truth's demise has filtered down through the great centers of learning, the arts, and on into streets and homes. Everything is possible with truth gone. Everything is permissible. Musicians make music that doesn't sound musical. Painters paint pictures that are incomprehensible to normal folk. Playwrights write plays that are nonsense, and architects design buildings that no one can understand."

"All this is put forward as legitimate, but what does it all mean?"

" No matter how much... popular culture---is encouraged to believe in the relativity of truth, no one can build a decent life on such a notion."

"Inevitably proponents of freedom from God, and from absolute truth, are obliged to reach outside of their own system, and borrow something from theism in order to make their lives work."

"The person who believes that everything is valid, will soon find that he is condemned to meaninglessness."

"Christ is a standing offer of escape from such a hell as this To believe that truth is like Christ, is salvation indeed."

When it comes to existence and how things came to be the way they are right now, however, there are only TWO possibilities I know of. One of them has been - for reasons unknown to common sense - utterly squelched from the public school system for nearly a century. 2106 -FC-

'Unknown' Fester? We have a tradition, -- separation of church & state. If we must have state supported schools, they must avoid teaching religious theory, as per the 1st. #2114

So you want to justify the absence of any creationist teaching in public schools on the basis of "separation of church and state," right?

Of course, -- don't you support freedom of religion, as per the 1st?

In the first place, how is it that the state can co-opt the right to teach my children?

Indeed, -- why would anyone want the state to teach religion in public schools?

Did the state give me my children? No. I entrust my children to the state

You do? Why?

with the hope than can apply the same common sense my forefathers had when they understood and thoroughly defended the fact that our existence and our rights come from GOD.

Yes, the FF paid political lip service to a 'God' in justifying our declaration of natural, self evident rights. -- So what? -- They also took constitutional precautions against mixing religion with politics. -- Smart fellas, but still political.

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