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."
I have no idea how to construct a testable hypothesis for an algorithm from inception (I suspect that A-G is onto something here...). Do you have any ideas how to go about doing that?
It might be useful to look at The Virginia Declaration of Rights, which existed before the Revolution, and which is regarded as having been the source and inspiration for much of what followed. Section 16 discusses religion, and says that it must be voluntary, and "it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other." Quite non-sectarian, and non-dogmatic, but nevertheless inspired by the Christian religion.
Let me see if I'm following you here, Physicist. When one photon is measured, and collapses into a well-defined polarization state, its "twin" is similarly affected, though it be light years away from the first one. Is the subsequent measurement of the second photon even necessary if all the relevant information was given in the collapse of the first?
I must be a lousy superhero. The only villain I get is The Babbler.
Nevermind that it was ID we were talking about, not Alamo-Girl's assertion about algorithms. :)
I'm convinced there is no testable hypothesis possible for ID and that is why the IDers haven't been able to construct one.
Thank you so much PatrickHenry! Unfortunately, such a statement of "mutual duty", if uttered today by a public official, would probably get him or her sued for violating "the separation of church and state." Or put him on the front page of the New York Times, and not in a flattering light (as in, "this person is an insensitive religious bigot"). That's how "rigid" many people are on this question. We seem to have lost our ability to draw reasonable distinctions about such matters.
Unless it's a democrat about to raise taxes.
Perhaps you are not familiar with the credentials of the players involved with the dates in Yockey's message: John von Neumann and Niels Bohr. Hubert P. Yockey, PhD Berkeley is an information theorist, a physicist and was Chief of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Reactor Branch. Yockey's work is textbook material and von Neumann's work is cited by the likes of Chaitin, Patten and Rocha.
Just like the work of Euclid, Newton, Riemann, Einstein and Schwarzchild does not carry an expiration date, neither does the work of Bohr, von Neumann and Yockey.
Yockey has demonstrated his point. If you care to argue with him, you can join that message board and make your case directly.
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.
The acceptance of Intelligent Design would have no more effect of shutting down curiosity than the Anthropic Principle currently does.
BTW, I don't think either is reason to quit asking questions!
With regard to my hypothesis, I do not have the credentials to take it any further myself - but I believe it can be done. The scope obviously must include inception, so it cannot be taken as a frontal assault of the theory of evolution whose technical definition excludes inception.
I do expect to see testable hypotheses forthcoming for I.D., creationism and directed panspermia.
But it seems to me that Intelligent Design requires that there be such an algorithm, or something closely akin to it. The "Father of Science," Aristotle, called it the Unmoved Mover or First Cause. Given that the first cause spreads its effects throughout the entire causal chain throughout time, and its effects are characterized by it "from inception," all things are as they are (and not some other way) because of the "content" of the first cause.
Aristotle said there had to be a First Cause, because an infinite regression, in effect, can provide no "limit," without which no definite thing can come into existence. Though you might have some kind of an inchoate, eternal "cosmic soup," the absence of the limit means the soup has no principle whereby it can manifest actual living forms.
I expect the hypotheses related to directed panspermia to be a natural byproduct of NASA astrobiology and exobiology endeavors. Much research is already in progress there and I expect the directed panspermia proponents to leap-frog from those foundations.
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