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."
Somehow I think the opposite -- that mathematics is discovered, not invented. I think it has something to do, not with utility, but with the search for Truth.
Don't you get it? If think your life is worthless, then I can't be wrong in your system. So what if you think otherwise, I have my own subjective view and I can't be wrong. On what basis am I wrong? Is morality observed? Can you observe the proposition that objective right and wrong exist? You are seriously confused.
You always have a way of "summing it up" so everyone can see the issue:
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.
Materialism is prejudicial and thus obstructs scientific progress because it presumes to know what lies behind the door. Physicalism makes no such presumption and suggests a new kind of science is needed to open it.
I can't think of how to distinguish discovery from invention in mathematics, but there is the problem that mathematical systems cannot prove their own truth. That seems a strike against the assertion that mathematics is God's alphabet.
Once more, this is a matter of apples and oranges. Some men do place a low value on certain children (Moslems don't think much of Jewish children, for instance). This is a value judgment, which is precisely about which we were speaking.
However, simply because one places a low value on a specific person does not mean he can do whatever he pleases with that person -- especially if he expects to live in a social grouping. "Morals," when one comes right down to it, are simply ground rules which members of groups have agreed upon to limit conflict within the group and hence promote survival of the group. And, typically within a group the members place very high value upon one another. However, when dealing with other groups our perception of their members' values is more variable. Hence you get racists, and whatnot, which supports the view that human value is purely arbitrary. And this is all we are discussing -- whether human worth is subjective and arbitrary (which the evidence supports) or objective and absolute, for which there is no evidence.
If I rested any more, I'd be comatose.
Perhaps, your mental resting is the reason you are able to perceive things which escape the materialists? Truly, I believe the "noise" of everyday life is deafening.
I do not accept limitations on science either (please see the above post 4365.) Phaedrus, betty boop and I are agreeing with Penrose, Wolfram and Walker that a new kind of science is needed.
Sure it does, tpaine. The Constitution as written or modified by amendment is the supreme law of the land. But what if this "supreme law" has been grossly mangled/misinterpreted by nine rather ideological sitting justices, back in 1962? What does that do to the supreme law?
It seems to mean that there was one "supreme law" prior to 1962, and a different "supreme law" thereafter. And the difference is not in the details, but is a transformation of the entire substance and meaning of the religion clause. In effect, the justices simply substituted their own "preference" rather than follow what the Framers clearly said.
It takes an amendment to change the supreme law in such a profound way. Where was the constitutional amendment? Or did the justices just effectively "amend" the Constitution in a way that does not pass muster with Article V?
You force my hand. Tell me the source of your God. Where did He come from? And don't tell me he is above all else and doesn't operate under our rules - "that is a non-answer". You can't answer, because to you He is absolute. Now do you realize how I base my logic on moral absolutes? If something happened tomorrow which comlpetely disproved your God, I would still follow the same absolute morals, and let's be honest exmarine, so would you. It's right because it's right.
I couldn't agree more -- always an "A" for eloquence.
You just keep digging yourself into a deeper hole. Did Stalin care about your "social grouping"? He grouped himself with other murderers who thought like he did. Ground rules have no moral force whatsoever - I have my own rules - I spit on yours, how can I be wrong? The survival of the group? Don't you see how absurd this is? Someone should have told Mao and Pol Pot that natural selection demands that they stop slaughtering people! You have now exposed yourself as a moral relativist - it was inevitable. You must know that you can't win this argument. Every time you post, you will be digging yourself a deeper hole.
Red herring. Answer the question.
Who cares about your perception of anyone's actions?! Stalin murdered 30 million people - do you think they care what YOU think about it? Yes, I already know that you think human worth is subjective - that is precisely the position I have ripped to shreds.
He probably cared about his own social grouping (his immediate circle); I, on the other hand, place a very low value on Uncle Joe's life. And that is what it all boils down to -- value is arbitrary and what we assign it. You have not shown that it is objective in any way, shape or form. Hell, you have definite opinions about the worth of some people (you're always bringing up Stalin and Hitler, for instance). I won't ask what value you place upon me ;^)>
Does “threeness” exist separately from 3 chairs, 3 apples, 3 dogs?
Did Einstein discover general and special relativity or did he invent them?
Uncle Joe could care less about what you think, he's busy murdering people. And you now have to admit that Uncle Joe was not wrong, and that torturing babies is not wrong - as long as someone in their subjective thinking believes it to be right. If value is what we assign it, then so are morals. You can't observe morals - they are arbitrary personal prefernce in your system. Social grouping and natural selection have nothing to do with right and wrong and you admit as much above. Indeed, cruelty and non-cruelty are equal in the objective sense (Marquis de Sade doesn't care about your opinion - his is of equal value). Just be intellectually honest enough to admit it - you have already said the same thing using different words.
AMEN to that, Alamo-Girl! Fact is, materialism may "presume," but has no way to test the presumption. But it jealously guards it anyway. Thank you so much!
I don't think those two ideas are necessarily connected. The first is a fact, the second is a ludicrous assumption (I know that you are not making this assumption). We can't observe many things that are widely accepted to be real.
Yeah, let's look at what atheistic science has brought us: Global warming, human cloning, abortion, embryonic stem cell research - you call the desruction of human dignity success?
I clearly lay out the FACT that the most important scientific discoveries in the history of man were made by CHRISTIAN men - not muslim men. Do you need a list of their names and discoveries? Why is it that these Christian men, and not some atheistic scientists, were the ones to make these discoveries - was it dumb luck? The Christian worldview presents an ordered universe that is rational and can be comprehended to a certain extent - that is the basis on which Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur, Pascal, and other Christians based their investigations. An atheist, however, beginning from himself, has no reason to believe the universe is ordered and comprehensible, does he? And why was it that breakthroughs occurred int eh Christian West and not in China or India or Micronesia or Africa? I'll tell you - their worldview did not drive them to understand an ordered universe. You can't deny the historical facts.
There is a lot in here that is just a blatant attack on atheism, such a shame.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." [From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, published by Princeton University Press.] "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Somewhat agnostic perhaps, but far from the Christian mindset that you believe necessitates scientific thinking.
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