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."
Let me re-phrase: There was no constitutional dispute before mid-20th century. Prayer in school was accepted for 200 years and no one questioned its legality. Congress even printed a bible for schools in 1780s (egad!). Then there are the real founders of our nation - the Puritans (who invented universal education btw) - who taught from the bible in schools. Schools now are nothing more than indoctrination centers for atheism and libertinism.
I thought we all agreed on that point.
Define alorithm in a non-circular way.
Sure, I'll be glad to. An algorithm is a step-by-step instruction. In Emperor's New Mind, Penrose uses Euclid's algorithm as an example. In BASIC code, it looks like this:
My hypothesis algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design is that such information content cannot arise from null - either at the inception of life, abiogenesis - or at the inception of the universe, the big bang.
If it is irrelevant, then I will thank all of the cultural marxists to stop telling people that the founders and Constitution INTENDED "separation of church and state" as it is practiced today.
Moral truth is not invented. It has either always been true that "all men are created equal" or it has always been false. Otherwise, truth is relative, and I hope you don't want to go there.
I do agree with you that the Constitution protects the minority (we live in a republic not a democracy), but there is no constitutional protection from being offended by Christianity.
OK, I'll do your thought experiment js1138. It won't be "rigorous" in the experimental sense, for I'm not a scientist. But I'll answer your questions: :^)
1. I wouldn't have a clue about the age of the earth. Physics hadn't weighed in on that question at the time. But if I bothered to think about this question at all, I probably would focus on the idea that nothing can have an "age" unless it had a beginning in time.
2. I would believe in mutation, for I had seen mules. I think I would also recognize that there is something different about a mule that is not the same as the result I get from selective breeding of my horses and dogs for charactistics I like.
3. If I found any fossils at all, there would be no way for me to tell whether they were hominids or not. I'm not even sure I would recognize them as "fossils," but maybe as just some indescrimate but long dead animal in my field. Since more than likely I wouldn't be looking for fossils in the first place, the idea of a "sorted array" would be meaningless to me. Anyhoot, I don't think there was any such concept as "hominid" before Darwin; but I could be wrong about that.
So where does that get us, js???
The next step is to propose a test of your fundamental assertion that an algorithm cannot evolve from a non-algorithm. I would like to step away, for a moment, from "null", because I take no stand on why existence is the way it is. I only propose dealing with currently observable processes.
One of the currently observable processes is variation and selection. Canyou deny, absolutely, that variation and selection cannot produce an algorithm?
Canyou deny, absolutely, that variation and selection cannot produce an algorithm?
I didn't attempt to address the rise of algorithms subsequent to inception. However, work on genetic algorithms is currently exploring the issue:
Complexity International – Brief Comments on Junk DNA (pdf)
Language Like Features in Junk DNA
If he is right, do I get a cup of coffee? BTW, he is not supportive of either intelligent design or creationism.
Simply not true. Lord Kelvin published an estimate of the age of the sun, based on thermodynamics, in 1862. Remarkably, he was the first to challenge Darwin on sound (at the time) scientific principles.
‘What are we to think then of such geological estimates as 300,000,000 years for the “denudation of the Weald?” Whether it is more probable that the sun’s matter differ 1,000 times more than dynamics compels us to suppose they differ from those of matter in our laboratories; or that a stormy sea… should encroach on a chalk cliff 1,000 times more rapidly than Mr Darwin’s estimate of one inch per century?’Kelvin was a great scientist, but he turned out to be wrong.Kelvin, Age of the sun’s heat (1862)
I would believe in mutation, for I had seen mules.
Mules have nothing to do with mutation, and I'm pretty sure that biologists in Darwin's day would have agreed. The sterile hybrid phenomenon has been observed for millenia.
If I found any fossils at all, there would be no way for me to tell whether they were hominids or not.
I think you underrate the state of science in Darwin's time. Biology and geology were both established on sound footings before Darwin began his voyage.
The reason is this. Originally the Constitution prohibited only the national government from interfering in religious matters - the state governments were not so constrained, although they could not violate other constitutional provisions (e.g. no religious test to run for federal office). They could, for example, establish a state religion or mandate prayers etc. In fact, I doubt any of the Bill of Rights applied against the state goverments.
After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed. The Supreme Court thereafter pursued the so-called Doctrine of Incorporation and applied over time more and more restrictions to state and local government actions. One of those is the free exercise clause.
There are excellent chemistry modeling programs that can determine which compounds are possible and stable. Or you could devise an arbitrary system with arbitrary rules.
tpaine! I had a Eureka! moment just driving to the post office: I finally realized (DUH!) the source of the difficulty you and I are having with this text. It's that "respecting" word. I gather you interpret it to mean "an act of conferring respect."
Not at all, to "pass no law in respect to', - refering to general objects like the 'establishments of religion', makes perfect sense.
It's the archaic wording of the phrase, and the little used meaning of 'establishment', that leads to all the confusion, imo.
Thus, the USSC clarified that the phrase means that church/state functions must be separated, and that no level of government can make laws 'in regard to' such functions.
But in the context, all "respecting" means is "with regard to." Arguably, it does not and cannot have the meaning you attribute to it. For the founders of this nation -- the people, acting through the Framers -- were overwhelmingly a religious people (back then anyway). It is inconceivable that they would have ratified language that would have authorized the government to "disrespect" its own people.
No disrespect was intended. -- Government was to stay out of religious matters. -- This was original intent according to the USSC.
Why is this concept so difficult for you, betty?
Try parsing the text with the "in regard to" meaning in place and see what you get.
'Congress shall make no law in regard to respecting an establishment of religion.'
---- I see no real difference, -- sorry.
Algorithms are a notion invented by people. How can you possibly think they existed "at inception?"
These things happen, js! :^) Lots of scientists turn out to be "wrong" in the course of time. But only partly wrong in a certain sense. For generally science is limited by the tools it currently has, but often the key insights evidence true genius, and are just as good as they can be, given the tools constraint. Generally what happens is that new scientific insights rest on what has been discovered in the past -- we do stand on the shoulders of giants. For instance, Ptolemy's theory of epicycles -- though crude compared to current theories of planetary motion -- did explain pretty well what could be "seen" in his time, and had good predictive value.
Analogously, it is just remotely possible that Darwin got a few things wrong, too. I don't think you would disagree with that statement. What he got "right" will be "preserved"; the rest will get chucked in due course.
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