Evolution Disclaimer Supported

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 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.

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."

Evolution is a scientific theory that explains how the first life on this planet evolved over billions of years, to the life that we have on the planet now. It does NOT seek to explain how that first life form came to be, that is for the purview of chemistry and biology and genetics. Evolution just tries to put the pieces that we have, and put them together in a cohesive and logical whole.

Life was here, that is how evolution starts, not, "this is what created life", but life was here, and it changed over time. That is the foundation of evolution, life was here, and it changed.

This reasoning seems plausible until one presses it to its logical conclusions. For example, if a person disagrees with an evolutionist on the ‘fact of evolution’, the evolutionist will employ a definition of evolution [“Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time”] that makes it impossible to disagree and, if one does argue, then that person comes across as being uninformed or irrational or fanatical. This might be acceptable if only it remained right there.

But it doesn’t! That statement about evolution (which happens to be accurate, i.e., genetic characteristics of populations do vary over time) is subsequently modified / extended throughout the evolutionist's other statements and responses so that not only is the person to accept the (empirically corroborated) fact of change, but also that this change is the sole causing agent for the diversity and complexity within an organism (internal organs, cellular structures, etc.) as well as outside of the organism including Earth’s entire flora and fauna. The metaphysical extrapolation of the data that is required to accomplish this feat is somehow always glossed over by the evolutionist - either by ignorance or by design. What’s more, if we are to remain exclusively within the natural (material) realm then the term ‘evolution’ must somehow be further extended to include life from non-life, i.e., the emergence of life itself must also be accounted for by the ever-stretching definition of evolution.

There’s more. The origin of the basic materials that make up all objects (living or not) must also somehow be accounted for so yet other forms of evolution enter the scene—chemical, stellar and planetary. In fact, the universe itself must also be accounted for by evolution.

Thus, whether you hypothesizes a Big Bang, a quantum fluctuation, aliens from another dimension or some other natural explanation, the universe began and has ‘evolved’ to what it is today.

Few would argue with the notion that ‘things change.’ But to take the step from ‘things change’ to ‘and therefore, that’s how it all got here’ is a leap of blind, irrational faith that would send even the most fanatical snake worshipper reeling.

It is science. To say that evolution isn't science, is intellectual dishonesty and sorry, just plain STUPIDITY!!

The question of origins is largely a matter of history—not the domain of applied science. Contrary to the unilateral denials of many evolutionists, one’s worldview does indeed play heavily on one’s interpretation of scientific data, a phenomenon which is magnified in matters concerning origins, where neither repeatability, nor observation, nor measurement — the three immutable elements of the scientific method — may be employed. Many proponents of evolution nevertheless persist in claiming exclusive “scientific” status for their popularized beliefs, while curtly dismissing (if not angrily deriding) all doubters. That is both unreasonable and unscientific!

The question of origins is largely a matter of history—not the domain of applied science.

There is written history and there is "pre-history".

...in matters concerning origins, where neither repeatability, nor observation, nor measurement — the three immutable elements of the scientific method — may be employed.

The assertions being made about radioactive decay can be used to make a point here. Decay rates have been studied, restudied, pondered, graphed and measured for a hundred years. They are not just as reliable as Newton's law of gravity, they are more reliable. Just as a planitarium program can plot the position of the planets backwards through time, physicists can plot the age of rocks backwards through time. If you try to deny this you reveal yourself an ignoramus of the first order.

You can, of course, play word games and assert that god created the world and the universe with an apparent age, but you have to assert it as a miracle, not the subject of science.

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