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."
Did stellar astronomers actually ever observe a star going though it's Hartzsprung-Russel life cycle? Did modern historians ever actually observe the signing of the declaration of independence? Did anyone ever actually see a crystal vibrate at 2MHz?
Inference is a fundamental part of all science. If you can't learn to accept it, perhaps your time would be better employed on the golf course.
No, but the inference on stars is much more credible than the fantastical inferences made by evolutionists. Tell me, precisely how is new information added to the genome in the NS+random mutation process? Has Dawkins or anyone else figured this out yet? Until they do, their inference is a wild guess based on their worldview presuppositions.
Inference is a fundamental part of all science. If you can't learn to accept it, perhaps your time would be better employed on the golf course.
No, but we have the declaration of independence and we know that men signed it as there is no other way for it to exist. It didn't just self-assemble as is required for the first life on earth. I see you are not discriminatory in your ad hominem attacks. Any creationist or Christian is a target, right?
There are, in my view, no reasonable explanations for such a profoundly amazing thing.
Just restricting myself to things I remember on FR:
1) It's turtles all the way down.
2) God whopped it up from scratch.
3) The Great fox pooped it out.
4) Baal gave it as a gift to Magog
5) It never came into being--it's always been
a) it loops back on itself
b) it's only one basic particle that jumps back and
forth in time to weave the whole megilla
c) It's part of the megaverse of universes, and our
matter is interweaved indetectibly with the matter
of other universes.
6) Its the illusion of
a) my mind.
b) god's mind
c) some other mind.
d) a mutually interlocked set of illusionary minds
imagining each other into existence.
7) It's an attenuated adjunct of entwined superstrings in
other Xverses--an afterthought, or junkyard whose
laws and motions are created to provide counterbalance,
damping, and waste dump to more rationally operating
universes.
8) It's the equivalent of a miscellaneous particle in a
super-universe, which is, itself, a miscellaneous
particle in a super-super-universe.
9) 8) with a loop. The highest universe is a particle in
our universe.
That's your definition, not mine. I don't agree with your erroneous conclusion. You redfined objective and subjective - fallacy of equivocation as I said. I told you what I meant by objective and subjective, yet you insisted on ignoring my definition and using your own anyway! The reason you do that is with my definition, you don't stand a chance. All you can do is to keep insisting on your definition which is indeed the fallacy of equivocation. I don't like it when people are not intellectually honest.
Sorry. I'll try to hold fire until the range is unoccupied.
Based on what measure? No one's ever seen but a handful of stars go through a single stellar change, much less the whole evolution.
Tell me, precisely how is new information added to the genome in the NS+random mutation process?
Tell me precisely how a star goes to brown dwarf? Do you have the exact chemical and physical constraints mapped? Do you understand precisely the dynamics of collapse? Perhaps you can describe in a few equations the nature and extent of the turbulance features on the surface I can expect to be able to map with a telescope?
Has Dawkins or anyone else figured this out yet? Until they do, their inference is a wild guess based on their worldview presuppositions.
Again, not "wild" guesses--incisive guesses based on--and checked against--detailed inference about known behaviors. Do we know all the details? No. That doesn't differentiate micro-biology from any other natural science.
By the way, I'd be cautious about throwing that "information" argument around as if it meant something. Mutation, genome capture, and sexual variation and recessive hibernation create changes, sometimes increasing, sometimes decreasing the complexity of genetic heritage, and thereby changing its responses to the environment. Whether that is information, and whether that information content went up or down, is an environmentally dependent notion, and is a hard point to demonstrate, or do anything useful with.
Sure there is. A cabal of revolutionaries could have made up this whole story and cobbled together the evidence as an afterthought for to unite and inspire the revolutionary colonists. Do you have a credible chain of first-hand or sworn testimonial witnesses going back from the present moment to 1774? How do you expect me to take such a theory seriously with so many missing links?
It didn't just self-assemble as is required for the first life on earth.
Self-assembly is not the only, or even the most popular, biological theory on the table.
I see you are not discriminatory in your ad hominem attacks. Any creationist or Christian is a target, right?
If you will check, oh sensitive one, my interlocuter himself made a reference to hieing himself off to the golf course.
So Betty, -- you reject the conclusion below?
--- "the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group" --- ---- "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"
-- To me, it is fairly obvious that Christian groups are the ones trying to 'indoctrinate kids into religion'.
And, --- that the state is simply obliged to 'make no law respecting' any establishments of religions.
3493 -tpaine-
WRT to Louisiana Family Forum: I dislike the word "force." Other than that, I think LFF is simply exercising its First Amendment rights; i.e., to peaceably assemble for the purpose of petitioning the government to rectify a grievance.
In context, they are clearly trying to force the state to present a religious POV in public schools.
The grievance is that the government is in violation of its First Amendment responsibility to uphold the second phrase of the "religion clause": the LFF wishes to recall the government to its constitutional obligations. (These are all state matters anyway, it seems to me; so we really need to look at state constitutions to see what is permissible within a given jurisdiction.)
States must abide by the bill of rights, - see the Supremacy Clause, Art VI.
The religion clause has two parts -- the first one says that the government may not "establish" any particular religious sect as a national religion;
Not at all. - It says "make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Religious dogma, books, etc, are all among the 'establishments of religion', as the word was used in those days. It was used as an all encompassing term. - The USSC agrees.
the second part bars the government from "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (i.e., the free exercise of religion).
Exactly. -- In the private sector, free exercise could not be prohibited, -- but the government at all levels was so prohibited.
What are we really talking about here? IMHO, no one is seeking to "establish religion" here. What is at stake is the ending of a certain monopoly in educational instruction of the life sciences in the public schools. Personally, I have no objection to the theory of evolution being taught in the public schools. I strongly doubt LFF is trying to censor it, they are just looking for "equal time" in what amounts to a key cultural as well as scientific debate.
Equal time for religious theory in public schoools would promote instruction in 'an establishment of religion', -- religious thought & principles.
However, I would like to see other theories that man has evolved dealing with issues of origins taught right along side of it (e.g., ID, Punk-Eek, even Genesis as a "baseline theory" if you will). Present all relevant information fairly, in a balanced way, and you will simply be carrying out the mandate of excellence in education.
As noted elsewhere, I could see these types of theories taught at higher levels, collage prep, etc, - but in grade schools? - No.
People who have an opportunity to work through a wide variety of materials, and drawing their own conclusions therefrom -- this is the only way I know of to really and truly "learn" anything -- are getting "educated," not "indoctrinated."
Public schools should not, and need not, be involved in any sort of 'indoctrination'. If we must have such schools, they must be kept non-sectarian.
If we all had balls you're suggestion would be fitting, but I'm afraid at least the better half are lacking, and that's by design.
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