Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[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."

[Alamo-Girl]

Please excuse my interruption, but your post to betty boop touches on the very reason why I've been saying the randomness pillar of the theory of evolution is in trouble. You said:

There is no way to model the system from a top-down, macroscopic point of view, but only in a reductionist way, by teasing out the simple rules. However, the initial conditions can be random. Here's why I'm concerned: from the Chaitin papers [ps]

We now turn to Kolmogorov’s and Chaitin’s proposed definition of randomness or patternlessness. Let us consider once more the scientist confronted by experimental data, a long binary sequence. This time he in not interested in predicting future observations, but only in determining if there is a pattern in his observations, if there is a simple theory that explains them. If he found a way of compressing his observations into a short computer program which makes the computer calculate them, he would say that the sequence follows a law, that it has pattern. But if there is no short program, then the sequence has no pattern—it is random. That is to say, the complexity C(S) of a finite binary sequence S is the size of the smallest program which makes the computer calculate it. Those binary sequences S of a given length n for which C(S) is greatest are the most complex binary sequences of length n, the random or patternless ones. This is a general formulation of the definition…

In other words - to sustain the pillar, one would have to presume that random information content can be algorithmic (which is, by definition, not random.)

[betty boop]

However, the initial conditions can be random.

On my reading, to say that the prime mover has random initial conditions would be to say that the laws of the universe are random. Clearly, this cannot be the case. Certainly it wasn't the case with the illustration I gave -- the Rule 110 CA. In that case, Stephen Wolfram stands in the role of the prime mover, specifying the initial condition and the simple rules that, over their evolution, generate both order and apparent randomness -- that is, complexity. Just looking at the later iterations of the evolution, it is impossible to tell what the initial simple rules were.

[js1138]

A.I. has been mired in the imitation game for a long time. I suspect that the real breakthroughs, assuming they come at all, will evolve out of more practical applications like robotic vaccuum cleaners, or something equally mundane.

As for consciousness, I see no real difference between people and higher mammals, except that people (some, at least) are not trapped in the immediate present.

I spend a lot of time analyzing my dreams -- not as psychotherapy, but to try to find some distinguishing feature that separates them from waking consciousness. Aside from the fact that impossible things happen in dreams, I see little difference. I have even made jokes in my dreams -- not very good ones, perhaps, but not much worse than my waking efforts.

Once I dreamed I was piloting a 747 through the streets of Cincinnati (others must have this dream, because I saw it realized in a TV commercial). My wife and co-pilot asked, "What happens when we come to an intersection?" "We have the right-of-way," I replied.

One of the things absent from my dreams is awareness of the past and future. Everything is right now.

I suspect that dreaming is a lot like dog and cat consciousness. And I suspect that for A.I. to become anything more than a dream, it will have to discover and model the most elementary processes of the brain, rather than the observable behavior of the organism.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

No doubt there is much overlapping between the term materialism and physicalism - which no doubt leads to their being interchanged in common usage. But like the previous discussion on observer, the words have a technical meaning, and you made the distinction in what you said:

Penrose believes it is beyond our current understanding of science. Few materialists would disagree with that. Penrose does not believe that it will always be so.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your post!

I agree with your reading on Penrose. IMHO, his level of thinking is much advanced beyond the usual. And I agree with your statement:

If the intangible is real, there would simply have to be some operative interface between it and the brain, and to look for it makes all kinds of scientific sense, to me at least.

I predict Penrose will eschew anything that might appear metaphysical, but will continue to push the ability of science to explore that which it currently cannot.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Actually most dating methods are based on quantum mechanics rather than on presumption of long periods of time. The long periods of time are inferred. It's elementary physics.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Usefulness, beauty, consistency, amusement.

Of course, one tries to invent things that "agree" with the "real" world; at least in doing applied mathematics.

I'm in the "Math is Invented" camp. Mostly because, doing math seems more like invention than discovery to me.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your post!!!

As for consciousness, I see no real difference between people and higher mammals, except that people (some, at least) are not trapped in the immediate present.

I'm going to make a metaphysical/mystic statement to you now. Please do not take offense.

Looking at many of your posts on this and other threads, it seems to me that you have 'ears to hear.' That is very much a spiritual gift; not every one has it.

If you really want to explore it, you must remove your thinking from the physical realm, i.e. get rid of the noise. Rest, do nothing, and let understanding come to you.

Just a suggestion...

[Tribune7]

Did you know that there is NO historical evidence of a census, where the people had to go to different towns to be counted, NONE, the bible is the ONLY book that mentions it, and we have a heck of a lot of records from the Roman government of that time. It should be mentioned somewhere.

Now, we have a lot of records from Rome relevant to say, the Huns, but it is fair to say we don't have most governmental records of Rome. They used scribes not printing presses so making a lot of copies did require effort. And there was a bit of vandalism in the last days of the Empire. And things will get lost after 1,500 years anyway.

But with all that, the evidence is that the cenus occurred as described in Luke. There are 4000 ancient Greek manuscripts (the NT was written in Greek) containing all or part so the New Testament which survive till today. The earliest extant copy of a gospel is a piece of John 19 from 130 A.D. (which is belived to be about 40 years after the Gospel was written.)

The consensus of scholars is that Luke was written about 63-70 AD which would have been in generational memory of the census which means it would have been easily refuted by enemies of the church of which there were many.

With all that there is still corroborating records for Luke.

Since that was a religious site, which you might reject, here is a link to an antiquities site which basically accepts the census as, well, gospel.

Did you know that a prelate or governor as Pontius Pilot was, WOULD NEVER have brought ANYTHING to a vote to the Jews, he would have made the decision himself.

Well, he did. Jesus was killed by Roman authorities at the request of Jewish leaders.

Why are the Jews blamed for Jesus' death, because they were trying to convert Romans, and you don't blame the death of someone on someone you are trying to convert!!

I'm confused as to what you are trying to say with the sentence. Jews weren't trying to convert Romans. They were trying to maintain their traditons/expel them. Jesus wasn't trying to convert anybody. He redeemed us to God. He told us how we should live and gave us a choice as to accept or reject.

Also, the ONLY ones that were nailed to crosses were those that were fomenting revolution against the romans or were traitors. ALL other criminals were put on the cross with rope.

At least we agree that being nailed to a cross was a Roman punishment. What exactly was Jesus' crime? Treason/rebellion would have likely been the crime the Romans offically charged Him with.

Also, it would be PHYSICALLY impossible for a man, nailed to a cross to die in 3 hours

No. You can die sitting on a couch watching TV. I will agree that it is physically impossible to rise from the dead.

Actually, the expectation of a longer death might be why a Roman soldier felt a need to stick a spear in his side to be sure.

If Jesus Had been nailed through the middle of his hands, and a good percentage of the statues have him this way, his body weight would have torn his hands apart and he would have fallen off the cross.

Maybe the statues have it wrong.

The dead sea scrolls being part of such a set.

The Dead Sea Scrolls mostly involve the Old Testatment and scholars are amazed at how little they differ from modern translations of scripture

[null and void]

Nully (if I may use the familiar nick)

Certainly, all my FRiends do.

[js1138]

I have wolfram's book. That's why I asked the question. Chemistry, at least at my primitive level of understanding, deals with particles capable of being joined together, following certain rules of assembly. From a few dozen elementry particle types, everything we see and care about can be assembled. The elementary particles have rather elementary attributes -- they are neither living nor dead, raven nor writing desk.

But as they are assembled they aquire more complex attributes. They can become part of a system -- an object that we name, and perhaps even love or hate.

Going the opposite direction, the rules for assembly can be derived from the rules of quantum mechanics -- a simpler (!) set of objects and rules. We really don't know how elementary we can make the set of object and rules. Perhaps as simple as the rules for celular automata.

Here is an interesting question: can the creator of the rules forsee all the properties that emerge as the game is played. I think Wolfram argues that emerging patterns cannot be foreseen. So you might call this the God Game, and ask if god ever tries to make a stone He can't lift.

[betty boop]

"A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretentions of completeness. Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a genuine description of the world. I would maintain that there is yet no physical, biological, of computational theory that comes very close to explaining our consciousness and consequent intelligence; but that should not deter us from striving to search for one...."

Phaedrus, you wrote: "this is definitively not Materialism and I do not disagree with Penrose. This is a rejection of Materialism."

I agree with your assessment. It looks to me like Penrose is saying, with Wolfram, with Evan Harris Walker, that we really do need a "new kind of science."

Here's Walker: "Maybe the way out of the Bell's theorem problem and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is to stop denying the obvious answer. Quantum mechanics requires that we take into account the fact that conscious observers exist as unique entities, as a part of the total reality of the world. What we have to do now is find a way to understand what consciousness itself is.... Consciousness should have long since been the topic of reasoned scientific study, and yet it has largely been ignored....

"Bell's theorem was an effort to escape this obvious conclusion about quantum mechanics, and that effort failed. It failed because it was an attempt to design a universe that would leave out consciousness. The way out of our difficulty, the path we must take now, is to try to understand what was previously rejected. We must recognize that objective reality is a flawed concept, that state vector collapse does arise from some interaction with the observer, and that indeed consciousness is a negotiable instrument of reality. Our entire conception of reality must be rethought. We stand at the threshold of a revolution in thinking that transcends anything that has happened in a thousand years. Now the observer, consciousness, something self-like or mind-like, becomes a provable part of a richer reality than physics or any science has ever dared to envision."

[Tribune7]

Ceasar's works are probably much closer to being correct as there are other contemporary accounts of Ceasar's actions.

Caesar's Commentaries was written about 60 BC. The earliest extant copy dates from 900 A.D. The Gospel of John was written about 100 A.D. The earliest extant copy comes from about 130 AD. The Gospel is more historically reliable. :-)

"The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be, in fact, negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the N.T. may be regarded as finally established. To be skeptical of the 27 documents in the N.T. and to say they are unreliable is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as these in the N.T."
--Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum

[exmarine]

I see you did reply - I missed it - so I will answer now. Your position is a very dangerous and depressing one - too bad you can't see it.

One can always claim human value to be objective and self-evident; however, this is an assumption. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" implies others may not. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, "all men are created equal" is an arbitrary statement with little or no grounding in reality.

Without this assumption, you cannot say Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot were wrong. That is a strange position to put yourself in, isn't it? In fact, you cannot then say there is any difference between torturing a baby and feeding the poor! If man has no objective value, then mankind has no dignity and is a big fat zero as I have pointed out. This conclusion is undeniable and inescapable.

Folks prior to 1776 certainly didn't hold this view (the "divine right of kings," et al) and many still do not, so to them it is not self-evident.

Yes, and thank goodness Christians were around! Why is it do you think other places had no rights, and why people were slaughtered, and why there was no respect for human life! That is the consequence of your humanist valueless thinking! Compare the French Revolution with the American one - The French one (no Christian worldview of objective human worth and dignity) was extremely bloody and brutal and ended in dictatorship. Then there's Mao, Stalin, slavery and on and on. The American system works because it is based on the TRUTH of human worth.

I see you had no response to any of my comments about the consequences of your thinking.

As a First Principle, the above statements leaves much to be desired. What I'm driving at, in a round-about way, is that your claim that human beings have an objective value is not supportable by the evidence.

I know this is what you think, but your thinking makes man a big zero. Your thinking means that the love you have for your family is just a chemical process in your brain. Your thinking means that your loved ones are, in the words of your evo hero JW Gould, no more significant than "dried twigs". Your thinking reduces humans to twigs, because if there is no objective worth that is the only inescapable conclusion. You can protest all you want that your SUBJECTIVE love for them has meaning, but it can't. Meaning is meaningless unless it is intrinsic and objective. "Subjective meaning" is just a euphemism for a chemical process in your brain. In your world, love, grief, tenderness, gentleness, goodness, kindness, compassion - these are all material processes and are qualitatively no different than meanness, cruelty, malice, rage, and evil. In your world, cruelty and non-cruelty are equal as you have no basis at all for saying otherwise. Marquis de Sade thought exactly like you do!

You may believe it to be and you may gear your moral actions around this belief, but you're basically starting from an arbitrary First Principle. The rest of the universe does not put much value on human life.

Yes, in the big scheme of things in this cosmos, you are no more signicant than a quark or a dried twig. How sad for you. Whose system is more desirable? Whose system - mine or yours - better fulfills the needs and yearnings of people; which one is more conducive to harmony and peace? Surely not yours!

Acts of God claim hundreds of thousands of lives per year, so He obviously does not hold us in as high regard as you believe. Other organisms regularly kill human beings, so they obviously don't value human life. Human beings regularly slaughter each other over trivial matters, so they don't place a high value on people.

Non sequitir. Mixing of categories. Other organisms do not have self awareness, cannot be spiritual, and cannot think abstractly about their existence, don't have any moral inclinations or values. It is no surprise that you compare humans with bacteria. You are really scaring me.

You value human life highly. I value human life highly.

No you don't. You have absolutely no basis to say that Jeffrey Dahmer was wrong, or that Stalin was wrong, or anyone else. You have no basis for any morality outside of yourself.

Neither of us likes to see people hurt or killed -- it strikes at the very core of our upbringing.

It's only a personal preference - it would make no difference if you did like to see people hurt or killed as in your world there is no qualitative difference between the two. I like chocolate and cuddling babies - you like vanilla and torturing babies - no diff. in your world.

However, as humans go we are the exception rather than the norm. Moslems shoot their women for showing a little ankle; Chinese soldiers threw themselves suicidally at their enemies; Russians regularly resorted to decimation to keep the peasants in line. There is no evidence for an objective value for human life.

Yes, from your perspective, cruelty and non-cruelty are EQUAL. ALL OF YOU EVOS - TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT WHERE YOUR FOOLISH THINKING HAS LED YOU! DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME??

You can claim an objective value for people, but you cannot prove it; the available evidence does not fit your theory.

The very mannishness of man proves my theory. Men live AS IF love and grief and people had real meaning. You have to deny it to take your position. You have to deny thousands of years of human experience and desire. YOu must deny the mannishness of man.

[Tribune7]

Great post.

[betty boop]

I think Wolfram argues that emerging patterns cannot be foreseen.

Yes, I think that is correct. Certainly we don't seem to be able to foresee them. Whether God does or not is really a theological problem. I'm not sure this can ever be a problem for science.

[js1138]

LOL. If I rested any more, I'd be comatose. I hve nothing agains spirit. It's just that I think there is no difference between matter and spirit, nor do I accept any ultimate limitations on what is accessible to study.

One of the formative moments of my life came 40 years ago when a high-school teacher asserted that science would encounter a brick wall within 20 years, having discovered everything about the physical world that could be discovered.

I don't know if he meant that literally, but his point was that the really important stuff was spiritual. He may be right about that, but deeply wrong about materialism. There is never going to be an ultimate understanding of the material world, because even if we discover some ultimate algorithm from which all physical laws can be derived, we still know nothing about what is possible. Even if we learn the ultimate equation, it will only explain what is, not what can be.

[Junior]

Without this assumption, you cannot say Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot were wrong. That is a strange position to put yourself in, isn't it? In fact, you cannot then say there is any difference between torturing a baby and feeding the poor! If man has no objective value, then mankind has no dignity and is a big fat zero as I have pointed out. This conclusion is undeniable and inescapable.

Once again, I think we are mixing apples and oranges.  The phrase "all men are created equal" is a reference to value and worth -- what we have been discussing.  Torturing babies is a reference to right and wrong, which we have specifically not addressed.  And, even if value and worth are arbitrary and dependent upon the observer, there is no reason worth would be zero, as you imply, as that would mean value and worth were absolute and objective.  Each observer assigns a value to each person he meets, knows, has sex with, and while this is a arbitrary value it does not mean that value automatically equals zilch.  Of course, it does mean that there are people (Moslems, ChiComs, whatnot) that place the value of your existence fairly close to zero, but this is offset by folks like your parents, spouse, kids, significant other, friends, etc., who place a high value on your life.

[whattajoke]

The Christian Ego boggles the mind of the rational man. What of Buddhist monks high in the Himalayas who don't hurt a fly and have never heard of Jesus Christ? Are they doomed to the lake of fire?

And me... what about me? I'm "moral," I don't cheat on my wife, I'm not divorced (like so many christians), I give to charity, I help old ladies across the street, I'm not violent, etc, etc.

It's always been my contention (when arguing this point, anyway) that I, being an atheist since I was smart enough to figure things out, am actually of higher moral fiber than christians. I do good works, I'm a good guy, and to think I do all of this with no fear of eternal damnation hanging over me head! Therefore, I'm intrinsically moral, whereas the fearful christian is only moral because of the imagined repercussions (or so it would seem).

[exmarine]

You are seriously confused. If humans have no objective value, then each man then holds his own view of human value - that is a fact. If each mans values humans in his own way, then no man can be wrong if he wants to torture a baby. How can you call him wrong - you have already said humans have no objective worth - how can you call someone wrong who kills an object that has no value to him? In your world, he has a right to not value human life - it is SUBJECTIVE, remember? THINK IT THROUGH. Your position has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.