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."
You have not answered the question put to you. How is "somebody imagined everything up" different from "God imagined everything up"?
Because researchers kept meticulous track. Why wouldn't it be so? The various breeds/species differentiated to match beak morphology to food supply specialization. If the environment hasn't changed significantly, the forces that brought about the specialization will penalize half or more of your offspring for having the sub-optimal beak configuration.
um, viable, in this context, has a larger meaning than just breathing on their own, it is a measure of the long term success of a given line of descent.
Ayn Sof is an ancient Hebrew name for God at creation. You might find this interesting:
We exist in creation, the Ayn Sof, therefore, is a type of anti-creation. Indeed, the Hebrew word Ayn is best translated as "nothing". In a manner of speaking G-d was nothing before creation. Within the nothing (the Ayn) the Kabbalists say, arose a desire for G-d to be called by His Names. The focus of this desire was said to be at the very "center" of the Ayn Sof.
This description raises a number of puzzling questions. The Ayn Sof is infinite. It has no boundaries. It is the most pure form of consistent unchanging simplicity. How then could a desire arise? This would imply change. And there can be no change in an unchanging simple nothing. So what does it mean that there arose a desire?
Another problem is the "place" where the desire arose. It arose in the "center" of the Ayn Sof. Yet, where is the center of infinity? It is clear that the Kabbalistic terminology is not literal. Yet, just what does it mean?
Another age-old question is when did G-d create the universe? According to Jewish Biblical chronology Adam was created 5759 years ago. According to a simplistic reading of the Bible, creation began six days before that. Yet, how long a "day" of creation is in human terms is a matter that some Kabbalists have interpreted using logic similar to Einstein's view of relative time. The six days of creation actually occurred over a period of 15,340,500,000 years. This date, of Kabbalistic origins, is very close to modern scientific measurements for the age of the big bang. Regardless of how old the universe is, when did G-d create it, not in relationship to us, but with regards to Himself? In other words, how long was G-d around before it finally dawned upon Him to create the universe? The question itself is a trick question being that time only came into existence with the beginning of creation.
G-d, the Ayn, in the beginning is nothing. The ultimate zero. Yet, zero maintains a property unique from any other number. It exists before all positive integers and it exists after all negative integers. In essence zero is not nothing, it is in the middle between positive and negative. So the universe was created in zero time. Time started to tick immediately with the Kabbalistic big bang, the tzimtzum.
When this occurred is a question that can only be asked within the context of time, which at that time, did not exist. So when did G-d create the universe? The answer is "when there arose a desire." And what does it mean to have a desire in an unchanging essence? It means that the desire was not an aspect of change. In other words, for G-d to have a "desire" means that such a desire is an essential aspect of the unchanging nothing. This would seem to be a process of transformation. For when nothing becomes something, this indeed does manifest an essential change in original nature. Or does it?
When we are dealing with "nothing" we are dealing with laws of nature which are totally unknown and unknowable to us. Nothing and something, desire and non-desire appear to us in creation as irreconcilable opposites. Yet, within an existence of "nothing" where the laws of its nature are possible to be the opposite of everything that we understand, opposites can indeed be one unchanging whole. Indeed the Kabbalists teach just this; that all forces in creation however different they may appear to us, are essentially one and the same. This is the secret of the unity of G-d.
So when did the desire arise in the Ayn Sof? It did not happen in time. It happened out of time. As such the arising desire in the Ayn Sof is happening now! Creation is beginning now! Not in creation, but outside of it. Inside creation, we recognize the beginning as having happened. Outside creation, creation is beginning just now and will always be beginning just now.
Obviously, my faith is based upon reasonable evidence, therefore it is logical. One must reason in his mind before he chooses to believe in God. Please give me your basis for saying faith and reason are mutually exclusive. This gulf between reason and faith began with Kierkegaard who assigned faith to a non-rational category thereby creating the split with reason. As I have stated on this thread several times now, Christians have made most of the biggest scientific discoveries, and they were able to do so because they believed in a "reasonable God" who created an "ordered" universe - they understood the big picture. Obviously then, faith and reason are absolutely compatible. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Whitehead have both said that Christian worldview was key to the amazing scientific discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries.
I didn't answer because the implicit premise in your question, i.e. everything was "imagined up," assumes the universe is an illusion which it is not of course. God CREATED the universe - matter is real - isn't it?
As I have said, without an infinite reference point, you (in the words of your hero JW Gould), are no more significant than a "dried twig." That would make you and all the rest of humanity a big fat zero. So, you see, your faith is much more fantastic than mine. You believe there is no God (that is a faith choice on your part), therfore, you must deny the mannishness of man.
Tell you what - when you see your family today, I will expect you to be true to your atheistic naturalistic materialistic worldview by taking the correct perspective on your family. You should not think any of them have any value becuase they don't - they are mere dried twigs; and that love you feel for them -that us just your materialistic brain reacting to some random stimulus - it's not real and it has no meaning or significance. You live a hopeless dichotomy every day of your life.
The ecliptic plane is determined by the earth's orbit, not by the average of the masses of the other planets orbits. Remember, the earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees, and the celestial coordinate system is earth-centered, not sun-centered. We measure celestial coordinates in right ascension and declination, where declination refers to the vernal equinox, also known as the first point of aries.
RA says he will post information on mass perterbations plus other interesting tidbits later when he can get online.
In actuality, researchers find that the F1 and subsequent backcrosses are highly viable. You can find this information and the reasons why it would be so in Science 2002;296:707-11 Unpredictable Evolution in a 30-Year Study of Darwin's Finches by Grant and Grant.
How am I to distinguish between "God CREATED" and "someone imagined up"? If God did not imagine the universe up from nothing, than he created it out of something? Yes? What would that something be? Did that something's existence preceed God's existence? Is God a tresspasser and interloper who took over some other entities property to create us?
I must have missed something. I never said that, seeing as how I pretty much think that everything is implementable on a Turing machine.
What I did say (in a great many more words) is that you need to implement a brain equivalent on n-order machinery because it is demonstrably intractable on a zero-order machinery (insert the usual disclaimer about certain theoretical assumptions here). These are all Turing machines (obviously, since you can implement an n-order machine on a computer), so for the sake of distinction when making the distinction, zero-order machinery is sometimes called "Shannon" machinery, and n-order machinery is sometimes called "Kolmogorov" machinery. I only know of two implementations of n-order machinery in existence, and both are recent and strictly research tools at the moment. But it is very important that people figured out how to implement them at all.
I have sensed a sea change in the intelligent design movement since late October last year. Previously, the movement concentrated on legal argument and techniques. And they have won quite handily with the “jury” being the school boards, the parents and the public.
Since late October, the movement seeks to become a disciplined science. The same presentation style may apply, but the jury now consists of scientists, and likely biased scientists at that, so the rules must be those the scientists live by. Included in those rules are formal hypotheses and methods of falsification.
Dembski is contemplating the potential of steganography for an intelligent design hypothesis. That’s not surprising to me considering his background. I think information theory holds potential as well and have suggested on this thread my layman’s version of a hypothesis and method of falsification.
Historically, young earth creationism eschews parts of science which intelligent design embraces. Friction has been developing between the two and it may be get worse because of the sea change. IMHO, that will be largely due to the perception that refutation is not equal to falsification under the scientists’ “rules of engagement.”
As to your supposedly "hard questions":
This would be humorous if it weren't so insufferably delusional. For thread after thread I have watched creationists duck simple and obvious issues illustrated with massive evidence, by such artifices as creating impossible and artificial formal hurtles for natural sciences to jump through that are unshared by the general population of natural scientists, and irrational in the extreme--to the point where science would be choked to a halt if we waited around for these absolutist requirements to be fulfilled. Science is an approximate art that simply makes it's best guesses--get over yourselves about it--that does not make it a criminal enterprise, or an arena for fools, your clownish pretensions notwithstanding.
Tandem placemarker.
Stop addressing everyone who corresponds to f. christian as f. christian. This is not an aid to clarity.
Indeed it is a huge clue. Perhaps you can answer the question exmarine & f.cristian are ducking. What is the essential, detectable difference between the notion that God created the universe, and that the universe was imagined up by someone, as per Bishop Berkeley?
I really don't know what you mean by "imagined up" - is that some sort of semantical rabbit trail? And your conclusion is not related to your premise. How, logically, do you conclude that since God didn't imagine it up, he must have created it out of something? Moreover, how could something (matter?) exist prior to God creating it unles you are assuming eternal matter? - which is one of the four options I gave. The vast consensus of your naturalistic scientist heroes pretty much agree that the universe and all in it had a begining. So, let's establish how matter could be eternal before we go further.
What is the purpose of this exercise? It seems to be purely polemical.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.