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."
Ah, so you don't only have a problem with the Theory of Evolution but with biology and every other branch of science (physics, chemistry, geology, etc.) in general.
Now I'm sorry to disappoint you but no scientific theory needs a deity to explain observed facts and if it did it wouldn't even be one.
As I already stated, many of the pillars of modern-day science (Newton, Kepler, etc.) were able to make their discoveries only becuase God was in the equation.
And yet Laplace made his discoveries although God wasn't in the equation. It is even reported that he said to Napoleon that he didn't need that hypothesis (i.e. God) to explain the orbits of the planets (please note that he didn't say that a god does not exist). Until then many (including Newton) believed that devine intervention was required to keep the planets on course. Laplace demonstrated that this hypothesis was superfluous.
Of course Laplace wasn't the only party pooper who showed that you don't have to invoke the supernatural in order to explain observed phenomena.
Friedrich Woehler for instance was an other one of these party poopers who made the God of the Gaps shrink even more.
Regards
Not in dispute, and never has been.
All the Constitution requires of the federal government is that it stay completely neutral as to faith confessions: It may not favor one or disfavor another. It does not have a mandate to prohibit religious expression.
'Expression', no. The consitution has a mandate in the 1st clause to pass no laws allowing governments to favor religions, & all the 'establishments' of religion. -- They must be neutral, as you admit.
Again, recall that the religion clause of the First Amendment consists of two phrases. On the surface, they may appear incompatible. But if you think them through, using logic and reason, you will find that they are actually complementary.
Exactly my point, -- Nebullis & I just had an exchange of posts to that effect. - Did you read them?
The USSC's "interpretation" of "separation of church and state" effectively means, translated into actual practice (as we have seen), that the federal government has placed itself in the unconstitutional position of favoring one religion over all other religions. That favored religion is called Secular Humanism.
Not at all. - The original intent of the constitution is being upheld by the supreme court. They are attempting to be neutral. -- You disgree with their judgement, and seem to have difficulty articulating as to why.
Precisely. Count me among them. My point, which I failed to make clear, is that natural selection is far more capable than it is usually given credit for, even to the point of making such apparently teleological changes. However, I don't know whether Wolfram is addressing the inadeaquacy of naive gene-at-a-time variation, or has some other hobgoblin in mind.
Feminist panspermia?
No, I haven't heard of anyone suggesting feminist panspermia.
Government wouldn't be "favoring" a religion by allowing it to have a presence in the public square -- just so long as it treats every other religion in the same way.
This is what we mean by the government being barred from "establishing" a religion -- that is, giving a particular religious confession or "establishment" (if you will) preferential sanction while disfavoring or suppressing all other religious confessions. Government must be "neutral" as to religious confessions; that's not the same thing as saying it must be HOSTILE to ALL of them alike.
tpaine, you wrote, "[USSC] are attempting to be neutral. -- You disgree with their judgement, and seem to have difficulty articulating as to why." I do disagree with their judgment; for it says the only way the government can be "neutral" is by ridding the public square of all religious expression. That doesn't sound like "neutrality" to me. That sounds like open and active hostility to all forms of voluntary public religious expression -- which the second phrase of the religion clause absolutely forbids.
Yes, exactly!
If you assume that the mind itself evolved, that's some Swiss Army knife.
I have Wolfram's book and have read every indexed reference to evolution. I see no skepticism towards evolution, although he may have doubts about specific assertions of mechanism.
I may just be ignorant or simple-minded, but what he calls automata look to me an awful lot like the rules of chemistry.
That's a fact! -- but how could it be, Physicist? Still, he got so much right. Something in his discussion of limit seems analogous to QM's "observer." I'm mulling it over. Maybe I'm mistaken about this, but it's something to think about.
Thanks for your book recommendation. I'll check it out. Also thanks for all your help to me in working through my understanding of QM. Which I'm still working on. :^)
And thanks for writing!
A-G, that is brillant. That is very similar to my view although much better articulated.
Looking at Life with Gerard 't Hooft
This is, of course, very much a case of feeling and belief at the moment - we can't say anything for sure. But my feeling is that it is quite likely that nature is built extremely logically, with precisely defined laws that can be expressed simply given the right "ingredients". We haven't yet understood at all what these ingredients are, we don't know how to describe the degrees of freedom in nature at this time, or how we should formulate the mathematics. But many of us are trying, each in our own way, to see if we can make further progress, if we can improve our understanding of what is going on.
Physicist proposes deeper layer of reality
This information gets lost very quickly, 't Hooft explains. By the time we start trying to probe and measure a system, we are like archaeologists trying to make sense of ancient Babylonia: we have only the scantiest of information to go on. We can say only what the system was probably like.
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