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."
At least we'll reach 5000 pretty soon, now that the blue streak is on autopilot.
The last six sentences are the last six sentences that Nebullis posted at 4529. Was your message truncated or something?
I suspect I created a communications problem from the onset by cutting the excerpt too narrowly at 4507. I added some key missing paragraphs at 4531 which addressed the chemistry issue.
I think that Newton's and Leibnitz's coming up with calculus independently and at almost the same time is pretty strong proof that these mathematical theories are discovered.
Actually, several scientists coming up with approximately the same thing at approximately the same time is not that surprising to me. Evidently they "network" among themselves quite a bit and will occasionally approach a challenging question (like von Neumann's) somewhat competitively.
Von Nuemann asked the "most intriguing, exciting, and important question of why the molecules . . . are the sort of things they are." The Physics of Symbols - Pattee
Wow. Such good news, tpaine. I just can't wait for the fulfillment of your vision as described here. :^)
P.s.: You have a really low opinion of humanity in general, n'est pas?
Like two patent applications for the telephone being filed on the same day. Was the telephone discovered?
I have a rather low opinion of the current state of A.I. research. Twenty years is dreamland. Of course a breakthrough could be made tomorrow, but it's not currently in sight.
What are you talking about? My post addressed the issue that intelligence was required to manufacture stone tools, and that this information had to be passed on through education...not genetics.
Both Newton and Liebniz had access to Barrow's work and to that of Fermat. The fact that finding areas and tangents were inverse operationa had been know for some time. What Newton and Liebniz did was to produce a coherent set of formulae to unify what was a hodge-podge collection of procedures. Newton's methods were clumsy and the Leibniz formulation is what is generally used now. Boyer points out that the calculus was "in the air" at the time.
You're having some sort of a dream that I described any 'vision' of mine, betty.
Millions are being spent on AI, and you can bet on results. - Perhaps as theorized.
That bothers you? Why?
P.s.: You have a really low opinion of humanity in general, n'est pas?
Again, -- you seem to be transfering your own dreams/fears/whatever onto me. What in my post triggered your 'low opinion' reflex shot? -- I'm amused at your little 'digs', betty, but is your own conscience?
Just between you and me: I dunno. In my more cynical moods (like right now), I imagine that human beings have "de-volved" to the state of lemmings; and all they really want to do is find a nice high cliff to run off of and thereby kill themselves, en masse.
This is hardly a cheerful or cheering thought.
Strangely, I just posted a quote from this very article, but since it may have some bearing on the observer question – here we go again. The Physics of Symbols
By the 1970s, I believed I had some insight on Pearson's question. These ideas, which I will summarize below, were presented in the four volumes of Waddington's (1968-72) Bellagio conferences on theoretical biology. My first question then was: How can we describe in physical language the most elementary heritable symbols? It has turned out that for even the simplest known case, the gene, an adequate description requires the two irreducibly complementary concepts of dynamical laws and non-integrable constraints that are not derivable from the laws. This primeval distinction between the individual's local symbolic constraints that first appear at the origin of life and the objective universal laws, reappears in many forms at higher levels.6 From von Neumann (1955) I learned that this same epistemic cut occurs in physics in the measurement process, i.e., the fact that dynamical laws cannot describe the measurement function of determining initial conditions.
Later I saw these as special cases of the general epistemic problem: how to bridge the separation between the observer and the observed, the controller and the controlled, the knower and the known, and even the mind and the brain. This notorious epistemic cut has motivated philosophical disputes for millennia, especially the problem of consciousness that only recently has begun to be treated as possibly an empirically decidable problem (e.g., Shear, 1997; Taylor, 1999). My second question was whether bridging the epistemic cut could even be addressed in terms of physical laws.
I can truly relate to your personal experiences. I’ve had several myself over the years and they seem to be increasing exponentially.
Like yours, they usually they take the form of night travel; it is always about pure worship and love; there are no words but always music and both space and proportion collapse or expand as we travel, i.e. they mean nothing. I have had several experiences while wide awake, two of these are recorded on the thread when my sister graduated to heaven. I felt her spirit go through me when she slipped into a deep coma even though I was 4 floors away. It was the same feeling I had outside the emergency room when my mother slipped into a coma. In both cases, it was a calming, reassuring feeling of “I’m alive, I'm happy, see ‘ya later.”
Another one – the first I ever had – I want to mention here because some Freepers had been discussing how nobody had seen the empty tomb. Not so fast. In this one, I wasn’t quite asleep and saw a place, everything dark. In the distance was what looked like a bluff with a large hole, big enough to walk through. People were standing around. When it dawned on me what I had just seen, I sat straight up and praised God!
I write these things fully aware that some might think I’ve gone off the deep end. But to say anything else would be a lie and to not testify to it would be a loss.
I agree with you that science needs to be more open minded on the non-physical, both the temporal and the extra-temporal.
But is my own conscious -- WHAT??? I mean, what the hail are you talking about, my friend? Better send me a clue pretty quick, 'cause I am just not following you at all.
Like two patent applications for the telephone being filed on the same day. Was the telephone discovered?
LOLOL! I think the claim of discovering telephones is limited to young teenagers.
But A-G, I imagine that God is completely outside of time. Yet He can nonetheless work in time -- through human souls. Especially through a beautiful soul like yours: You were made for Him. JMHO, FWIW.
I didn't realize that a self-organizing structure could be actualized by an external force!
Again, -- you seem to be transfering your own dreams/fears/whatever onto me.
What in my post triggered your 'low opinion' reflex shot? -- I'm amused at your little 'digs', betty, but is your own conscience? -4590-
But is my own conscious -- WHAT??? I mean, what the hail are you talking about, my friend? Better send me a clue pretty quick, 'cause I am just not following you at all.
You claim I have a 'low opinion of humanity' in good conscience? So be it betty.
I'd like to see your reasoning on why, but if you can't explain, that's fine.
Thank you so much for the clarification that you see God as outside time! That is my experience of the Father; Jesus and the Holy Spirit I view as both.
But God is not at all bound by time. Time is but an image of God's eternity, part of His creation.
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