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."
Ummm... Those are all pretty standard Turing implementable functions. You may not associate them with Turing machines, but they most definitely are.
Okay. Now I'm curious what it is about the brain that you think is not implementable on a Turing machine.
Biological information, that is, the functional effect of DNA, is independent of Shannon information. It is for that reason I disagreed with you about DNA being essentially a Shannon computer.
Anyway, this is far afield for me, but I've learned some things.
To look at it another way, it is very plausible that another algorithm applied to the same state space would produce results equally as "interesting" as what occurred in our state space. One of the benefits of a rich state space is that there are a multitude of simple algorithms that will produce lots of interesting output and structure over time.
Indeed, but the algorithms I perceive are there - from all that I've read - are not simple (as I had previously expected) - and do indeed work more like a finite state machine:
2. The state of a FSM is a way of remembering what has occurred so far. In addition to the FSM state, there may be variables that remember other details. The designer has to use judgement to decide what to model with a FSM state and what to leave as a variable.
3. A transition occurs when an event in the environment causes the system to change state (either the FSM state or variables).
4. A FSM can be depicted either by a bubble diagram or a transition table.
5. In text stream applications each transition corresponds to a single input character.
6. The while-switch idiom gives a method for mechanically translating a FSM to a program. Simplifications can be made by taking advantage of special features of the FSM.
tortoise, what I'm seeing in all that I've read of the genetic code, are classic properties within the information content, properties which facilitate process, conditionals, symbolization and memory.
So if randomly generated configurations and randomly generated rules are allowed, (at least) one of these will eventually be self reproducing.
That sounds like the Anthropic Principle or plenitude rebuttal. That is at least as metaphysical as my hypothesis:
An interview with Nicolò Dallaporta, one of the fathers of modern cosmology.
To get away from this evidence, cosmological scenarios are offered that in one way or another repropose a form of the old principle of plenitude ("everything that can exist, does exist"). The existence is thus postulated of an infinity of chances, among which "our case" becomes an obvious favorable case (today the most popular form is that of multi-universes). What is your view on this?
It is very possible, but it is not physics. It is a metaphysics in which recourse is made to a chance that is so enormously limitless that everything that is possible is real. But in this way it becomes a confrontation between metaphysics in which chance collides with purpose. This latter, however, seems much easier to believe! Physics up to now has been based on measurable "data." Beyond this it is a passage of metaphysics. At this point I compare it with another metaphysics. Those who sustain these viewpoints (like Stephen Hawking, for instance) should realize that this goes beyond physics; otherwise it is exaggerated. Physics, pushed beyond what it can measure, becomes ideology.
A key point in my hypothesis is that algorithm cannot arise from null. By null I mean void, empty. A numeric data field may be able to contain any number, including zero. But if there is no data for that field, it is null. So, to falsify my hypothesis, one could show how an algorithm (step by step instructions) can arise from null.
I am confused about the algorithm. Is there something that isn't embodied in DNA? Are you saying that DNA will never be synthesized? I am confused by the apparent assertion that something can be designed but not made.
I haven't stated my position as to whether or not DNA can be synthesized, but I will assert now that I believe it can be, both biologically and by computer modeling. I do not however believe that consciousness can be synthesized with our current scientific methods.
Nonsense, as I have said, you still need to train them personally in hand writing recognition:
smARTwriter®
A compact, complete word or sentence recognizer for the user's own natural handwriting, this solution seamlessly integrates case-differentiated letters, numbers, symbols and punctuation with no additional operational actions required. Self-trainable recognition software allows adjustment for idiosyncratic characters and control gestures or special handwriting needs. smARTwriter supports most European languages and most popularly deployed operating systems.
From: Art Andvanced Recognition Tehcnology
I have always found that pulling the electric plug is an essential part of computing.
The article says no such thing. From the article you linked to:
The reigning theory about what sets the timing of the glacial-interglacial oscillations says it involves periodic changes in the earth's orbit and its position relative to the sun.
In one type of periodic change, the angle of tilt in the earth's axis varies over periods of about 41,000 years.
In another, the magnitude of a wobble in the earth's rotation about that axis (much like that of a spinning top as it slows down) changes over periods of 19,000 and 23,000 years. In a third cycle, the shape of the earth's orbit varies, from more circular to more elliptical, over a period of 100,000 years.
In theory, the overlapping effect of the three orbital cycles alters the angles and distances from which sunlight strikes the far northern latitudes of the earth.
When less sunlight falls there, less snow melts in summer and over time is compressed to form growing continental ice sheets. When more sunlight falls, the ice melts back.
This elegant theory has been confirmed, in its adherents' view, by studies of the relative abundance of different forms of oxygen preserved in the fossilized shells of tiny marine animals called foraminifera, or forams, in deep-sea sediments around the world.
Doesn't matter when the catastrophic change occurs only a portion of animals that can survive do and those become the template for the animals that exist into the next age. This logically means that extinction events are a factor in evolution because only certain type creatures exist past them . Example 65 million years ago dinosaurs die off all that are left are small reptiles and mammals. Mammals being warm blooded rise to fill the niches left by the death of the dinosaurs. That extinction event allowed mammals the chance to fill the niches without it dinosaurs would still be here.
You keep forgetting that Darwinism is about gradual evolution and that catastrophism does not explain the gradual evolution which evolutionists claim has been going on through all time. And again this discussion is about the evolutionist claim about the 'struggle for life' which supposedly is a constant struggle with each living species struggling to keep ahead of the rest in the struggle for nourishment. Catastrophism has nothing to do with it and that you are wasting so much time in such an obvious attempt at diverting from the point shows that you know I am correct - the Malthusianism of Darwinism has been proven false.
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