Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[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."

[donh]

You've suggested the following as a "mechanism" for consistency in the universe, namely, "Conservation laws arising from symmetries born of the balancing act of particles and forces in the beginning."

Later you debunk ID insofar as it presents an "immaterial cause."

I do not debunk ID, I am a proponent of ID. I merely recognize that the flavor of ID arising from immaterial causes is a peak unassailable by science, due to fundamental epistimological constraints on the power of reasoning from evidence. Namely, the need for evidence that can be disambiguated by further observation.

May I ask how your suggestion qualifies as a "material cause?"

All theses that attempt to explain the world by examining material, or relationships between material with an investigatable causal connection are, by philosophical definition, material. To students of philosophy, material only means excluding immaterial explanations, it is not confined to tangible, touchable physical entities.

In the modern world, trying to adhere to such a strict regimen regarding materiality would leave you gasping for intellecual air--you would have to exclude, for example such tools of inferencial observation as the oscilloscope, the electron scanning microscope, and the spectroscope.

Abstract theories about how the universe operates are built into our modern fundamental scientific instruments. No one has ever seen or felt a radio tuning crystal oscillate, we can only observe secondary effects, and infer the cause. Just as astronomers and physicists do in trying to peer back into the Big Bang.

[B. Rabbit]

Moral judgements from within a universe that has "chance" as its only guiding principle have no weight to carry with them. If we're all just a bunch of organized gasses anyway why should your comments have any more weight than a single quark?

Please leave the moral judgments to those who understand the universe is predicated on principles of design and purpose.

You are only succeeding in this post and the previous couple of posts in showing your blatant NEED for religion. However, there are many here on this thread who have no such need and are perfectly happy without it. The absence of a god in this universe would not stop morality from existing. Morality is universal and absolute. Right is right with a god or no god. You have made it clear that you would not be able to live without your beliefs, but the fact that so many do not follow your beliefs and still function as moral members of society shows that people can base their morality on something other than Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism, or Islam (thank god!).

[Condorman]

Euthyphro Dilemma

[longshadow]

Do it again, whatever you get will be similarly improbable. Every time, you're guaranteed to get one and only one from a large space of possibilities.

Another example (I forget who originally posted this, but hats off to whomever it was): the chances of a leaf following a particular path from the limb to the ground, out of ALL possible paths between the limb and the ground, is EXQUISITELY small..... but the odds that the leaf will follow some one of them is.... ONE.

But this does not stop leaves from falling from trees, nor does it incur our astonishment when we observe a leaf slowly meandering its way to the ground.

[Nebullis]

Natural processes are constrained by physical laws, environmental conditions, and so forth.

For instance, ionizing radiation doesn't have a preference for particular bonds in DNA, but because DNA, in situ, is tightly wrapped in chromosomes with associated proteins, the actual effect of free radicals is only on exposed parts of the molecule. It's random, in that it is non-specific or undirected, but the effect of mutations in the DNA are not random.

[Nebullis]

...is not random.

[donh]

With all due respect to Martin Rees (of which I have plenty) Speculations about the mega-verse do not fall under the aegis of working science, for the reasons I have adduced in my discussion with FC. If the particle physicists find an intellectual wormhole that connects our matter to other universes via particle flipping or dark matter manipulation, then maybe there will be something to talk about--until then, the total lack of available mechanisms for finding confirming or dis-confirming evidence is a roadblock I cannot see a way around. By our present understanding, the Big Bang created space and time, and the other examples you have adduced are not looking beyond the inception of our universe, that I could detect.

I quote your own source again:

A period of rapid expansion in the early moments of the universe could have set these perturbations in place by blowing up microscopic quantum fluctuations to astronomical scales -- seeding the galaxies and nets of galaxies we see today.

You have a very poetic fancy by the tail, and I admire it's scope and detail, and cannot gainsay it--for all the world, for all of time, I suspect, it could be true. And therein lies the root of the reason it ain't science. If I have no means of even attempting to gainsay it, it isn't on the scientific table.

[donh]

Please leave the moral judgments to those who understand the universe is predicated on principles of design and purpose.

Oh, you mean like the Pope, and Martin Luther, who both slaghtered the European Anabaptists down to the last woman and child? Like the Slovokian priests and clerics who helped Hitler pack the death trains? Have a care whom you appoint to high moral office.

[donh]

Moral judgements from within a universe that has "chance" as its only guiding principle

Chance is not a principle, much less a guiding principle. Taken in broad strokes, chance, or a chaotic universe, is a dynamic system, which will respond to the laws it inherents from it's inception. Moral judgements arise from human concerns, as best I am able to detect. Your argument make the a priori assumption that morality arises from some source outside human concerns--you assume the victory of your argument to make your argument.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

Your's is a great example of external conditions provoking what would be called a random mutation.

Another might be the example of the two genes in that antarctic fish (April 15, 1997 - Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.) where one codes for trypsinogen and the other codes antifreeze glycoprotein. It was inferred that the divergence would date back some 10 million years to comport with environmental pressures. Critics argue both genes (or the ability to mutate) were already there, that there was not enough time to go through the necessary steps without extinction.

I assert that whereas random mutations no doubt do occur, that the ability to mutate is encoded in the genes - that mutations are more often opportunistic than random as the organism tries to fight off invading viruses, protect itself from the environment or take advantage of environmental opportunity. I came to this conclusion based upon these sources:

Yockey comments

The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

Syntactic Autonomy: Or Why There is no Autonomy Without Symbols and how Self-Organizing Systems Systems Might Evolve Them

Complexity International – Brief Comments on Junk DNA (pdf)

Language Like Features in Junk DNA

I suggest that evolutionists ought to be more malleable on the randomness pillar, i.e. that natural selection is seeded by random mutations. It appears this work in information theory is going to show that mutations were more often opportunistic. A mutation cannot be random under the Kolmogorov-Chaitin definition if the genetic algorithm caused it.

Natural selection applies in either scenario, so why would anyone want to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater?'

[edsheppa]

you know in advance that your cumulative end result will be one in N x (52!).

I think it's actually (52!)^N - very much larger.

[Nebullis]

I assert that whereas random mutations no doubt do occur, that the ability to mutate is encoded in the genes - that mutations are more often opportunistic than random as the organism tries to fight off invading viruses, protect itself from the environment or take advantage of environmental opportunity.

Evolutionists are as malleable on the random factor as the evidence allows. There is some evidence that on rare occasions mutations are an adaptive response to an environmental cue. This falls under the contingencies I spoke of above. There is no evidence that this is a major source of evolutionary change. Mutations are used in non-evolutionary processes, for instance, in immune system diversity. Non-adaptive mutations also account for diversity between organisms in a species. It's really a bit naive to propose that the changes in DNA that make up the diversity of life were programmed into the first replicative organisms.

[tpaine]

Boiler Plate: "If it is not a big deal why do you even suggest it?"

Obviousy, - because the point was being made that it was necessary to have a creator 'endow' us with rights.
The fact that we have inalienable rights does not depend upon the existence of a 'creator'. - Believe in a god if you will, and leave me to my own beliefs. 2844 -tpaine-

Okay. Then what DOES this fact depend on? -FC-

Our ability to protect & defend those rights, using our constitution, of course. What else?

Let me get this straight. You are saying that our inalienable rights derive from our ability to protect and defend them?

No, - you asked what they "depend on". - They "derive" from our self evident free will, and our ability to use reason to further our will. - Got it straight now?

Ummm, I think you'll have a little trouble finding reasonable people to agree with that. I'm sure there's a public school for you somewhere.

Fester, - you're the one around here having trouble reasoning, as you admit just above.
In fact, your desperation to find 'witty' come backs has become quite amusing.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

You are in good company. In this interview with Nicolo Dallaporta, a father of modern Cosmology, speaking of the multi-verse theories:

It is very possible, but it is not physics. It is a metaphysics in which recourse is made to a chance that is so enormously limitless that everything that is possible is real. But in this way it becomes a confrontation between metaphysics in which chance collides with purpose. This latter, however, seems much easier to believe! Physics up to now has been based on measurable "data." Beyond this it is a passage of metaphysics. At this point I compare it with another metaphysics. Those who sustain these viewpoints (like Stephen Hawking, for instance) should realize that this goes beyond physics; otherwise it is exaggerated. Physics, pushed beyond what it can measure, becomes ideology.

I agree that it crosses into ideology and therefore ought not to be taught in public schools. However, research continues and scientists are working on tests for the various theories, such as the search for extra dimensions at FermiLab.

To me it all quite exciting and I will continue watching and waiting. Thank you so very much for the discussion!

[Nebullis]

Besides, the origin of life is hardly suggested to be a stochastic process as deck shuffling. At each stage of evolutionary history, new environmental effects change the probility of a future event. Phase space has changed considerably over the last three billion years.

[Nebullis]

state space also... (oh, Sundays)

[PatrickHenry]

I think it's actually (52!)^N - very much larger.

I think you're right. An even bigger miracle. Yet one you can perform in the comfort of your own home with a deck of cards. But I am discomforted. By all the rules of the ID gang, this ought to be impossible.

[Nebullis]

...the chances of a leaf following a particular path from the limb to the ground, out of ALL possible paths between the limb and the ground, is EXQUISITELY small..... but the odds that the leaf will follow some one of them is.... ONE.

What these IDers seem to be saying is that because the probability of one particular path out of many paths is small, it couldn't have happened and, therefore, (leap!) that particular path was chosen from the outset and programmed into the leaf.

[tpaine]

Interesting on how many comments you got with #2857, fester. I'll add mine:

Moral judgements from within a universe that has "chance" as its only guiding principle have no weight to carry with them. -fc-

That's an almost godlike pronouncement, fester, imo.
Men make "moral judgements" on their peers. -- Chance in the universe has no connection to mans 'morality' that I can see.

Please leave the moral judgments to those who understand the universe is predicated on principles of design and purpose. -fc-

Again fester, you seem to imply that YOU have some special insight into understanding our universe, and mans moral actions. Is this true? -- Should we kneel?

[PatrickHenry]

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