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."
Speaking for others again.
You may expect that as a fairly descriptive word for your posts.
It was not merely a spoof involving alternate identities that No-kin did, but a deliberate attempt at deception for a specific purpose.
You threw out names in your accusations. What basis do you have for saying why they were banned and who they were? Is this information available to all?
I don't doubt that A.I. is possible, but would agree that the current state of affairs is pretty bleak. I will make one general prediction: as more of the problem is understood, it will look increasingly difficult.
What a rebuttal! Yes. To anyone paying attention. But please, remain ignorant if you imagine it convenient. No one is forcing you to know anything.
That depends on how you define A.I. It looks bleak if you are trying to produce Einstein on a chip. It is greatly more rosy if the goal is not so profound.
Yes, that was my impression. However, semantic information, or meaning, or the effect of the message (phenotype) is of great importance in biology. For that reason, I question the usefulness of information theory to biology. In my earlier posts to Doctor Stochastic I listed reasons why it would be very difficult to measure information value or semantic information in biology. As Doctor Stochastic pointed out, IT isn't about that value. Channel capacity may be very useful in communications and computer technology. But how is that of consequence to biology? Errors may change the Shannon information content of a string, but in biology such errors lead to new meaning.
Right Wing Professor weighs in from a thermodynamic point of view and makes it clear that there's about as much information in the Bible [or any other large book] as there is in the human genome.
So, when Yockey measures information in a protein or DNA sequence, it's questionable whether this has any importance for origin of life hypotheses.
I'm glad you're pleased. Now, how do you know this?
Everything known to exist -- all matter -- is something akin to electromagnetism.
I have a hunch you're right about this, js1138. There's more to intelligence than computation.
How so, js1138?
There's always "virtual ignore." It takes discipline, but it's worth the effort.
Don't watch much daytime TV, do you? I suppose there is a definition of information that forces a tie to meaning, but that presumes a God's eye view. For a child, a soap opera might contain information about how adults behave. For reasonable adults, there is nothing new.
The same discussion could apply to 999 of a thousand books. Or almost everything on the web.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this. I know of several groups that are doing de novo protein design, and have made entirely new proteins that are catalytically active. If you have a working protein, synthesizing a gene for that protein and getting it expressed would be trivial.
It takes two to tango, and DK was one.
They died for David Koresh and Jim Jones. Not only that, but they killed their own children. Of course, in the case of DK, they might have rationally expected the government not to behave like a two-year-old having a tantrum. (But I suspect many of them knew what would happen).
I suggest you go back and read the 1500 or so posts that occurred in your abesence. They were nice while they lasted.
Oh, you mean like these kind words.
I suggest you give it up and let them live with their preconceptions (and invincible ignorance) about the "spiritual" nature of consciousness. 4503 posted on 01/10/2003 8:50 PM CST by balrog666 (Boo! Made you look!) |
Call me when you have something as profound as a traffic light that maximizes throughput in the presence of pedestrians, accidents, etc. I don't expect Einstein.
Artificial "Rationality" is not what I would I would call A.I. I'm looking for something that looks like awareness. Cats are not rational, but they are aware.
Glad to see this come up. No one can say what the outcome of a completely new entry in the genome. The "meaning" of a DNA sequence must work itself out in the environment it finds itself in.
How so, js1138?
Because all matter can be expressed as a wave function.
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