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."

Thank you so much for your post!

when someone advocates a position like evolution, there's an unfortunate tendency to automatically attach to that person a load of unrelated ideas. This is a source of considerable ill will.

I absolutely agree with you, PatrickHenry! Many posts ago you drove home the importance of defining and coming to an understanding of the words we use.

The effort has been very rewarding. Hostile posts are few and far between and that surely helps all of us to listen.

Thank you! Hugs!!!

It was mighty late when I posted last night and it didn't occur to me that, for the lurkers following this discussion, I was doing a terrible job of communicating - that I ought to explain the terminology and relate it to the examples that you used. Sorry about that! In my layspeak, for lurkers following the discussion:

When Chaitin speaks of randomness he is saying that the string of numbers we are looking at cannot be created by a set of instructions (algorithm) smaller than the numbers themselves. If the string of numbers can arise from an algorithm, it would be algorithmically reducible information.

For instance, if you see a string of 300 numbers that look like "12312312312313123123123123..." you would say that is algorithmically reducible because it can be created in three steps:

For N=1 to 100
X$=X$+"123"
Next N

Various researchers believe the genetic code, which looks something like a string of a limited number of characters, can also be reduced in this fashion.

In the "airplane parts laying around v. assembled aircraft" illustration, the assembly manual is like an algorithm for building the aircraft.

Although I don't wish to venture whether the aircraft is algorithmically reducible under Chaitin, if we were talking about genetics instead of airplanes, that assembly manual would roughly parallel the subject of evolutionary computing. That is a very interesting subject to me, but not the one that has caused my ears to perk.

If the airplane came alive - was self-organizing and reproducing itself with ever increasing diversity and sometimes, complexity - we would be looking for the algorithm whereby it accomplishes it. That's the part that interests me, because (thanks to Nebullis) I now know that the genetics involved have the characteristics of information theory.

That is to say, it works like a software program, remembering the past (database), being able to decide friend or foe (conditionals/symbols) as well as actually doing the deed (process.) In other words, it can be reduced to algorithm.

Wolfram has shown that complex, seemingly random, structures can arise from very simple algorithms. We are trying to sort out the distinction between complex, random, and structure (and perhaps more before we are done.)

In biology, I would think that the "system" should include not only the DNA but also the system using such DNA. Sort of like a computer and the code for the computer.

Thanks for your input!

I used the example of a virus and its host to demonstrate that the information content is not a property of DNA sequence alone. In general, DNA sequence is unchanging but it exists in a highly dynamic environment. From my perspective, the environment is analogous to software, while DNA is analogous to hardware.

You are right that the "system" in biology must include the DNA with the environment. There's fixation on the Universal Code (a code that is not absolute, either). But that's one level and not the only crucial one to think about when considering information content of a specific sequence. Just for example, the structure of that sequence determines the interaction of regulatory factors, affecting the "interpretation" of the sequence. DNA structure is independent of the Universal Code.

So, we know about some of the complicating factors. It's not a very straightforward problem to compute the information content of a system in biology.

To clarify a little: we can easily compute the "channel capacity" of DNA. This tells us how many messeges can be sent.

There, again, I'm not so sure this is easy. We can calculate the channel capacity of a specific state. We know how many errors can kill the interaction between a sequence of DNA and another molecule in a specific environment. Such an interaction is kinetic and the downstream effect of errors are not binary. That is, the "message" doesn't arrive either whole and readable or with too much noise to be read at the destination, but, instead, a reduced message or a message with noise becomes a different, yet readable, message.

Maybe this is all simple for those who love their differential equations, but I don't think it's a simple matter to compute either the information content or the channel capacity of a DNA sequence, per se.

As Christians claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God then I would expect all the accounts to be the same. I mean do you expect God to inspire the writing of your Father's memoirs. :) Of course not but if it is God's Word don't you think God would have a little better continuity department? Some angel wasn't doing his editing job very well in the first couple centuries after Christ. My Bible professor was a Greek expert and he gave special emphasis on the differences in the Gospels, the cultural background, and on the "hard" sayings. To sum it up, he said that a large amount of the original author's personal style got in each of the Books.

You already know what I meant by the analogy of my father's memiors--his wife would write about Dad as a husband; one of his co-workers would write about him as a military officer, etc. In this way, Mark, Luke, Matthew, and the author of the gospel of John each chose to "remember" the events in Jesus's life and His sayings that resounded best with them--and not necessarily in chronological order.

That does not prove that any of the accounts are "incorrect". Would a gigantic timeline in the place of the Gospels change your mind about its divinity? I don't think it would.

Put together, the Gospels give us a full picture of Jesus's different sides, and each has its own "feeling" and portrait of Jesus, something that no encyclopedia entry would capture. You are right, however, that it is very difficult to put together a timeline in Jesus's life from the Four Gospels--they are human memiors compelled by the Holy Spirit with the author's own bias, not encyclopedia entries.

Paul is a christian writer and Joseph Flavius gives jesus about two lines of text to jesus and it says . Jesus is a Holy man and does many wonderous things. Thats it hell Flavius writes alot more about John the Baptist even some of the apostles are mentioned but not in conjunction with jesus.

John the Baptist was still a direct witness and a Christian, and to brush off Paul as a "Christian writer" is like brushing off Holacaust biographers as "Jewish writers". :P

Well there are many political references on "Gilligan's Island" and thousands of people wrote the Company that produced the show asking them why they didn't rescue the castaways, does this mean that the show is true or that people are basically stupid.

True, but one could say the same of any event in the world. My only reason for arguing this with you is to let you know that some of us have given the historical evidence, and the hard parts of the Bible, considerable thought--and we decided to believe in Jesus despite, or because of, the evidence. Many people have the impression that Christians are being played for fools, and that if you showed Christians the "historical evidence" enough, they'd cease to believe (at least if they were being honest with themselves). "Not so" is the only point I'm trying to win. :-)

Again, best wishes, and I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. :-)

Thank you so much for your post!

In biology, it's called replication.

Indeed, that is one perspective and no doubt the most important for many disciplines - biology, medicine , etc! Notably, these are the more "real world" disciplines.

I’m sure that each discipline may have a different way of looking at the same thing and exploring those differences might be at the root of improving our understanding. For instance, it could be that the quandary I am in has to do with the difference between randomness in algorithmic information theory v statistics. I’m not sure, but I’m confident Doctor Stochastic can help clear it up.

Likewise, you have a different concept of hardware/software than Doctor Stochastic’s (and mine.) To me, the software (algorithm) is the recording and the hardware is the record player. IOW, the DNA is the recording of the algorithm, the organism is the DNA player.

Others could say the software is the music, the hardware is the record. As PatrickHenry might say, that’s a ‘wafer thin’ difference but an important one nevertheless as we look at information theory and molecular biology.

From your quote:

By contrast, DNA is a random string of atoms - the ‘aperiodic crystal famously predicted by Schrödinger (1944) - and so has high algorithmic information content; it is then hard to see how such an entity could be a product of law alone. In this respect it is worth noting that although the backbone structure of DNA is determined by the laws of physics and chemistry, the precise sequence of nucleotides the ‘letters of the genetic alphabet are not. There are no chemical bonds between successive nucleotides; chemistry is indifferent to the sequence chosen...

This gets me every time. Chemistry and, most certainly physical laws, are not indifferent to the sequence chosen.

The determinists are dependent on this fact. You might not be aware, and, apparently, Paul Davies is not aware that the DNA molecule interacts with a whole host of molecules in the environment, using laws of chemistry and physics. It's especially foolish to use this silly canard with respect to an argument about determinism. I'll boil down what his argument amounts to. Life is not dependent on universal laws because a particular reaction is not dependent on specific chemical bonds. He's making a gross generalization error based on anectdotal information.

Thank you so much for your post and analysis of that portion of the article!

I might have cut the article too short. Here are the paragraphs that followed the paragraph you quoted through the next excerpt at 4507:

Those like de Duve who espouse a less teleological and conspiratorial form of biological determinism argue that because the stuff of life is common in the universe, then so must life be. Oft-cited is the commonness of the life-giving elements C,H,N,O,P,S, and the ubiquity of simple organic building blocks like methane, formaldehyde, alcohol and even amino acids. These molecules are easy to make, and are found across the universe, in meteorites, comet tails and even interstellar clouds. Therefore, the argument goes, life should be common too.

This argument is, however, flawed. The building blocks of life are easy to make because their synthesis is thermodynamically favoured. But stringing them together in an aqueous environment into complex molecular chains like proteins and RNA is thermodynamically ‘uphill. Just as a pile of bricks alone don’t make a house, so organic building blocks alone don’t make life. Put a stick of dynamite under a pile of bricks, and you don’t make a house, you just make a mess. In the same way, merely throwing energy willy-nilly at a collection of amino acids, for example, to drive it against the thermodynamic gradient, won’t produce a protein. Just as a house requires the delicate assembly of bricks into an elaborate and specific arrangement, so amino acids need to be carefully linked in a precise way to make a functional protein, rather than gunk. The same goes for nucleic acids.

A hundred years ago, it was commonly supposed that life is some sort of magic matter, and that life’s origin would be analogous to baking a cake. All it needs is the right ingredients mixed in the right order under the right conditions. Today we know that the living cell is less magic matter, more a supercomputer; i.e. it is an information processing and replicating system. The key property that distinguishes life from other forms of complexity is the informational aspect, the message in the genes. Chemistry cannot explain information. Chemistry is the medium of life, but one must not confuse the medium with the message.

I've pointed out that this analogy applies only to some simplistic cases. The picture, in reality, is quite different, as I started explaining, above.

You don't get different music when you play a record on different record players.

There are a lot of ways of looking at biology and evolution. If I had a penny for every model devised, particularly by physicists, I'd be rich. It's advisable to actually learn some biology.

The folk that support these theories [evolution, abiogenesis, random universe] do not do so for the sake of science, they do so for the sake of justifying their atheism. -me-

This statement and the whole previous post are nothing but an indirect assault on every non-Christian.

You are trying to turn something which is a discussion of facts into a personal thing. Clearly this is because you cannot discuss the facts. The fact is that you cannot give scientific proof for any of these. The fact is that others holding on to these theories cannot give such proof either. There is more scientific proof against all these materialistic/atheistic theories than there is for them. Nevertheless those who hold to them claim their views are due to their love of science and their following scientific truth not a personal predilection. Now it seems to me that if people holding to these views cannot justify them from a scientific viewpoint but must instead rely on some vague possibility for which there is no scientific evidence, then such people are clearly following some personal predilection not science.

Now the way you can refute the above is by showing that the scientific evidence for your materialistic/atheistic view is greater than for the opposite, not by insults. Let's see if you can meet the challenge.

Thank you so much for your post and for sharing your views!

You don't get different music when you play a record on different record players.

That's why I say that the record is like software (algorithm.) There may be differences however when you take the computer analogy, i.e. software can act differently when executed on different hardware.

There are a lot of ways of looking at biology and evolution. If I had a penny for every model devised, particularly by physicists, I'd be rich. It's advisable to actually learn some biology.

Agreed! I'm going as fast as I can.

The folk that support these theories do not do so for the sake of science, they do so for the sake of justifying their atheism. -me-

This is the type of bigoted remark that is typical of Creationists. Lacking the ability to do scientific research, they resort to attacking the motives of people who actually are doing science.

Nope, again trying to make things personal. If you hold that abiogenesis is true for scientific reasons then kindly show how based on scientific evidence abiogenesis is more likely than the intelligent creation of life. To do so, you need to exaplain away the following:

There is a tremendous amount of proof against abiogenesis. First of all is Pasteur's proof that life does not come from inert matter (and this was of course at one time the prediction of materialists). Then came the discovery of DNA and the chemical basis of organisms. This poses a totally insurmountable problem to abiogenesis. The smallest living cells has a DNA string of some one million base pairs long and some 600 genes, even cutting this number by a quarter as the smallest possible living cell would give us a string of some 250,000 base pairs of DNA. It is important to note here that DNA can be arranged in any of the four basic codes equally well, there is no chemical or other necessity to the sequence. The chances of such an arrangement arising are therefore 4^250,000. Now the number of atoms in the universe is said to be about 4^250. I would therefore call 4^250,000 an almost infinitely impossible chance (note that the supposition advanced that perhaps it was RNA that produced the first life has this same problem).

The problem though is even worse than that. Not only do you need two (2) strings of DNA perfectly matched to have life, but you also need a cell so that the DNA code can get the material to sustain that life. It is therefore a chicken and egg problem, you cannot have life without DNA (or RNA if one wants to be generous) but one also has to have the cell itself to provide the nutrients for the sustenance of the first life. Add to this problem that for the first life to have been the progenitor of all life on earth, it necessarily needs to have been pretty much the same as all life now on earth is, otherwise it could not have been the source of the life we know. Given all these considerations, yes, abiogenesis is impossible.

he evolutionists always keep claiming that 'the next one [fossil] will really show evolution to be true. -me-

That a plain and simple lie. All that anyone can expect fron new evidence is that it will be consistent with theory. Your continuing assertion that "proof" is expected is a lie. And if you believe in god, it is a sin against God (remember the ten commandments).

No, you are the liar. Darwin himself says in numerous places, and specifically in regards to the Cambrian explosion that the fossils proving gradual descent would be found. Well they have not been found. Evolutionists keep looking for the 'missing link' between man and monkey. They are now back to some ten million years and still no missing link.

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