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."
Yes, but he's in such a snit over No-Kin's activities of -- when, March of 2002? -- that he's totally forgotten to post in blue. Now that's what I call getting really worked up!
I'm not a fan of the "hoax theory" at all, but it's not impossible to find a dozen people who will behave contrary to all reason. I'm willing to bet (knowing the bet can't be tested) that you could easily find a dozen people in America today who would gladly go to their deaths for the proposition that Al Gore was the true winner of the 2000 election. Pick a cause (globalization, the whale, the redwoods, whatever), you'll find some zealots who will die for it. The truth of the NT is not established by the subsequent behavior of the apostles, but by their message.
Great post. I was looking to reply to that as well, now I have no need. I was going to bring up David Koresh (sp?), but it's probably better that I didn't...
They are not baseless accusations. You are still using (months and months after the fact) an evolutionist agent provocateur as an example to use against those who oppose evolution. This is the same kind of dishonesty that incited this phony screen name. Since you know that this person was an evolutionist your statements are the height of hypocrisy and the height of dishonesty.
Yup, it is being ruined by your friend making totally false charges against the opponents of evolution. Your hipocrisy knows no bounds.
Yes, with evolutionists, like with Clintonites, it is the person who tells the truth, not the liar who is always in the wrong.
From a current thread "Refuting Darwinism, point by point":
To: PatrickHenry
How do we get moved to the Smokey Backroom to minimize the "Blue Spew"?
103 posted on 01/12/2003 3:15 PM PST by balrog666 (PH is really a great guy!)
It is indeed hard to believe that fossils are created in any sort of normal fashion. If this were so, we would be knee deep in fossils. Fact is that biological material is very fragile and does not last very long unless preserved by some very extraordinary and very fortuitous circumstances.
Seems to me that if it has no meaning it is not information. We do not consider a jumbled series of letters 'information' just as we do not call random sounds music, we call it 'noise'.
I have not seen the term phenotype used very often in the information theory and molecular biology articles I’ve read. Perhaps the inquiry is from such a different angle, it’s not at issue at this time?
It is indeed strange that phenotype is excluded from molecular biology. Certainly an organism's DNA is the source of the physical attributes of that organism. In fact it is the different kinds of cells, with different abilities, functions and purposes, which make our bodies work and look as they do. The phenotype produced is an essential function of an organism's development and perhaps the best place to look for a discussion of this question is in the field of developmental biology.
An excellent point! People are unwilling to die for a lie. This was shown abundantly well with the death of Hitler where the day after there were no Nazis in Germany or after the fall of the Soviets where nowadays there are no Communists.
Again, I owe you an apology. I meant information theory and molecular biology as one subject, not two. Sorry about that.
My two bits ...
Not very observant, are you? And I am not in a snit over No-kin, I am addressing the revisionist history.
Oh, and I posted that I addressed Junior in my reply concerning the gutting of No-kin's post. I find that I actually posted to Vade, then apologized to Junior for bringing him into the discussion.
Junior, I see that you consider attempting to set the record straight to "wreck the conversation". How Darwininian of you.
Blue included for the benefit of PH.
Actually, in communication theory, that's exatly what is done.
....just as we do not call random sounds music, we call it 'noise'.
I take it you are no fan of John Cage, Karlheinz Stochhausen, nor of Beethoven. (Vide Ruskin: Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer. ) Chaconne son goût.
Just what we've all come to expect from you.
He was suspect because he acted the shill.
He wasn't the first to take up the "Reason like an Evo" challenge. Tribune7 tried it first. Is he a shill?
OK, he dropped out quickly when he realized that "Reason like an Evo" doesn't mean "Spew like a Creo." In so doing, he demonstrated the expected religious horror of actually assuming something non-strawman along evo lines. He shrunk away like a vampire from a cross. Perhaps No-Kin's failure to do the same was "shill" behavior enough. The point of the challenge itself was whether any creo could use evolutionary logic at all, in this case to answer your buddy gore on whether dinosaurs had mammary glands. Apparently, the answer to whether creos can put on an evo cap at all is "No." If so, this tends to further undercut the creo arguments that begin "By every precept of Darwinism ..."
If he is still on this forum under another name you should apologize to medved ...
Medved's behavior goes beyond spoofing new IDs, which is not what his original ID (the one named "medved") was banned for. I don't believe you don't understand this. IOW, medved wasn't banned for being Piltdownpig, Annflounder, titanmike, nanrod ... I'm forgetting a few. Those other names were banned for being medved. Duh-uh!
Well put.
Was, wasn't it?
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