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."
So? Torquemada decided to torture spanish jews because of this readings of the bible. The contention before the table was that communism and darwinism were intimate bedfellows. Such has not be demonstrated, and seems both contrary to common sense and familiar historical record. The Popes are now officially Darwinists. Does the make the Popes communists? Why not abandon this and find an argument that has some traction?
Sorry, Patrick. I missed your post. I disagree. Our humanity is the justification for our rights. I believe idiots have basic rights, I'm afraid.
Disagreeing with religious orthodoxy does not make one a weed.
I sense a slight amelioration in your views, and I DO understand why you would want to make a strict separation between the two disciplines of science and religion. There is a sense in which the two must be thoroughly distinguished.
But given the general perceptions, beliefs, experiences, observations etc. that comprise the people of the United States who pay taxes for an educational system that should be second to none, I do not see why creationism must of necessity be twisted into a nefarious impediment to learning and kept strictly out of the schoolroom. Can you understand that?
My local public school system is fairly good sized. They are able to address both sides of the issue in the classroom with little difficulty, and are willing to accomodate those who object on either side to any kind of perceived "indoctrination."
The creationist scientists I am aware of usually do not arbitrarily emphasize their creationist views. As I've said a couple times, that isn't necessary and it doesn't do any good. At the same time, creationist scientists often must bear the burden of rejection simply because of their fairly reasonable deduction that so much incredible design in so many places could not have come about by chance.
Like Stalin, who went to an Orthodox seminary.
Madrassas only teach Biblical = Koranic creationism. No pathological types coming out of them, that's for sure
I was thinking more like Dylan Klebold.
YOU:'Unknown' Fester? We have a tradition, -- separation of church & state. If we must have state supported schools, they must avoid teaching religious theory. ------
First of all, you've never answered the question as to whether there are more than two possibilities with respect to the universe as we experience it, namely 1.) it exists by accident,< and 2.) it exists by design.
You claim only the two possibilities, - I'd say 'we' are far to stupid, yet, to know or even imagine, all the possibilities. We need more facts.
While you were waiting for me to "concede" I was waiting for you to answer this simple question. Would you care to answer it now? What other possiblities are there?
My, but 'concede' seems to be a hot button. - Calm down fester. - The possibilities seem infinite, imo.
Then you launch into an assumption as yet unknown to American history, namely that our forefathers merely paid lip service in using words like "God," Creator," "Divine Providence" and so forth, as if they were intent on castrating every notion of religion from the public arena.
Hype. -- That concept has been long known & argued, here at FR & elsewhere.
Would you care to back that up with some references?
No thanks. I don't do 'cites'. It's a waste of time and only leads to silly 'quote battles'.
Please address this small portion of your shotgun, knee-jerk reasoning, and then we can press "ahead" to the further digressions you've soiled yourself and this thread with via your infamous post 2457.
Whatever.
Could we possibly check into it and see what Torquemada brought to the table when he read the Bible, which parts of the Bible he read, and how he interpreted those parts of the Bible?
I do not know the details of what Stalin read of Darwin and how it affected him, so you may be right in asserting I've stretched the truth to the breaking point. I believe he may have been a theist before reading Darwin.
One thing for sure, yours is another thought-provoking post. I understand that just because one is affiliated with a certain book or teaching, the following conduct in life may not necessarily therefore be attributed to the same. For all I know there are people who've read "The Three Little Bears" and then gone on to commit serial murders.
Meanwhile I hope you've understood that I do not count all evolutionists as communists. I will only say that communists by definition must adopt atheistic tenets, one of which is evolutionism. There may be theistic evolutionists, but I don't think you'll find them among die hard communists.
Can anyone point to anything in Marx's writings that cites Darwin, or that mentions any of Darwin's works? Hint: don't bother looking at any of the numerous writings by Marx before 1859, when Darwin first published Origin of Species. Further hint: don't bother with the correspondence wherein Marx asks permission to dedicate a book (presumably Capital) to Darwin, and Darwin refuses, because this doesn't prove much of anything. If there is any reference in Marx's work to Darwin, it would have to be in Das Capital (written after Darwin published about evolution), and after a very brief search I can't find anything. Perhaps one of the creationists could point out the smoking gun which shows that Marx was influenced by Darwin's work.
I'd like to see creation in a photo. got one?
As a matter of fact, I believe there are certain elements of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America the highly esteem communism.
Only by our grace, which we all freely grant. If humanity were all idiots, there would be no rights. Apes (a poor analogy to a species of idiots), have no rights.
Darwin was influenced by marx/engles!
What do you think the dialectical materialism was all about...inevitability---the state will wither away?
-Thomas Huxley, Friend and Champion of Darwinism.
Hey we need this kind of "science" in our schools!
/sarcasm
For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.Source: Book 2, Chapter 10, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
-- Adolph Hitler, creationist
This little quote comes from Kelly Hollowell, J.D., Ph.D.
Does it concur with the facts?
Do you believe the attributes of these atomic particles to be coincidental even though this is the only known configuration by which life as we know it can be sustained?
What is the mathemetical probability of so much substance arising with this kind of consistency?
If the probabilities are slim, would that necessarily favor a theory that "design" objectively permeates the universe?
If so, does it necessarily follow that the probabilites are false and must be kept out of the classroom because it might incite religious backlash?
If not, what kind of mechanism might an evolutionist propose as a cause for this kind of consistency throughout the known world?
Do you believe it is preposterous to infer that some kind of design may be at the bottom of this?
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