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."
Darwin definitely got a few things wrong. But the principle of variation and selection remains.
What a perfectly charming "dialogue," Physicist -- and so helpful a description of the "ins-and-outs" of nonlocality! Thank you so very much!
I have a couple questions begging for answers (that I do not have): Is a photon "material?" Where does each of the paired photons get its "instruction set" from?
The big question is not whether DNA has features that resemble algorithms, but whether such features can arise through variation and selection.
That is the issue being raised by creationists and proponents of directed panspermia. I really am not interested in piling onto that work-in-progress. All those challenges will be forthcoming from the likes of Francis Crick (double helix fame) followers and the much maligned creationist/ID crowd.
I am interested in digging deeper into Hubert Yockey's work (Information Theory and Molecular Biology.) He has already determined that such algorithms could not arise in a primordial soup (Yockey on a discussion thread.)
Yockey is agnostic and very well respected. But I believe his work can be taken a step further to show that algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design. And I suspect that Rocha's efforts will be key in showing that inception RNA editing would be algorithmic in itself - recursive process and syntactic autonomy.
My hope is that such a discovery would help rid the taboo of speaking about a designer.
Does science credit the idea of causation -- cause and effect?
Honestly, Junior -- I have no idea. In the vicinity where they found the last one? Maybe you should just tell me! Thanks for writing.
Algorithms are a notion invented by people. How can you possibly think they existed "at inception?"
Hubert Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology and genetic algorithms.
Please see my above posts to js1138 for links and more information.
Language, like algorithm, is an invention of people. Either can be used to describe that which already exists.
Exactly. "Original intent, according to the USSC."
But not the original intent of the Framers. If you don't see this, tpaine, then I respectfully request that you and I continue to respectfully disagree. Thanks so much for writing!
It's really very straightforward. Devise a testable hypotheses. Set up a few very simple experiments. Preliminary results are publishable and can generate grant money. Mind you, it's what all scientists have to do. Why should IDers get a free pass?
Pretty neat way to ditch the whole issue, no?
On one level, it's a way of keeping junk out of journals. Junk still slips through--it's not a perfect system. On another level, it's how science is done.
I disagree with that modern interpretation of the first amemdment, afterall, the second clause is there for a purpose. There are many USSC decisions made since the '40's that a conservative would be loath to hang their hat on.
Since you agree "algorithm" is an invention of people, you must agree it could not have preceded them. I conclude that either you think people have been around since the big bang or your "from inception" has some other, non-obvious meaning.
BTW I've looked at some of the articles you've linked recently. They read like science fiction devices. One basically posited that every conceivable mathematical outcome was physically realized. I don't see the point in looking at the conclusions drawn from that assumption.
The central problem with ID, and the reason it should not, in its present form, be taught is that it asserts that certain things cannot happen. that kind of thinking shuts down curiosity, a terrible thing to do to children. Much better to have people trying to prove things can be done.
Perhaps you can point me to a certified ID proponent who has discovered a useful medicine and has credited his or her ID thought processes to the line of research leading to the discovery.
An algorithm is a step by step instruction. The genetic code contains algorithms.
Where do you think they come from?
BTW, I'm very selective on the articles I post. If you are questioning the credibility of one of them, could you be more specific so I can follow-up?
Thank you for pointing out my error here, which I see clearly in retrospect. Sorry! I'm getting a little tired, js -- been "arguing with folks" all day long. I've been known to make ghastly mistakes when I'm tired.... So I'm very glad you corrected the record. Thanks for taking the time to converse with me today.
Yes, no more or less than an electron, an atom, or a kumquat.
Where does each of the paired photons get its "instruction set" from?
The point is that there is no instruction set. Any instruction set would cause the photons to satisfy Bell's Inequality, but experimentally they don't.
To create entangled photons such as the ones that are described in the dialogue, it is necessary that they result from the same quantum wavefunction (for example, the two-photon decay of the pi0 meson). The original wavefunction only contained a certain amount of information, and that information gets imparted to the daughter photons. But the photons themselves are in an indeterminate polarization state, until one of them is measured. When the polarization of one of them is measured, it collapses into a well-defined polarization state.
When the other photon is measured, its polarization collapses into a well-defined state, too...but remember, there was only a limited amount of information to begin with. The two states, though initally undetermined, must necessarily collapse in a correlated way. Note that QM predicts (in fact, requires) this correlation based strictly on the amount of information in existence, without postulating either a local instruction set or any sort of signal from one photon to the other.
Einstein thought that the photons carried the information with them, in the form of "hidden variables", but he never had the chance to know Bell's Inequality, let alone the result of the Aspect experiment that confirmed the violation of it. Bohm came up with an interpretation involving superluminal signals (which nevertheless could not in principle be used for communication). I myself don't favor this interpretation, as it postulates an untestable mechanism that is not required for the theory, but it does hold exactly the same mathematical water as the Copenhagen Interpretation.
I myself am of the opinion that QM may be better off without an interpretation, although I realize that one is necessary for a lay audience. If I started throwing equations around, you'd all say, "that's fine, but what's really going on?" The problem is that words will never get it right, whereas the formalism does.
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