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."
The parlor debate seems pretty pointless when faced with something as described in Post 5186
If you by evidence you mean evidence measurable in a laboratory, I agree with you.
In order for your assertion to have any merit, you must show how the universe we live in can be an illusion. Go ahead and try. It is obvious that the universe is real, I am real, you are real (who are you talking to - a mirage?), and to say it is not is completely non-rational - quite out of character for a rationalist or naturalist like yourself. Perhaps you are referring to is the ultimate drug-induced hallucinatory experience...where we all find our own reality? (chuckle)
I do not assume either that matter exists eternally, not that matter exists before God. I simply ask a few questions about your position you refuse to answer. Did God make the universe and all its matter out of something or nothing? If the former, what--and how can I detect it? If the latter, how is that detectibly different than the claim that "someone imagined it up"?
Quite obviously, I believe that God created the universe ex nihilo. I still don't know what you mean by "imagined up" - what is that? If you are asking if the complex rational universe began as a thought in God's mind, I would have to say, yes, since it took 6 days. When you created your last paragraph, did you think before you wrote the ordered structure of the words?
What is the purpose of your question concerning the 4 possible explanations of the universe's existence? Something other than to simply ask a question? If you wish to withdraw this contention before the bench, the prosecution will withhold further questions.
My purpose was to show that the most reasonable explanation for the existence of a rational and ordered universe is that it was created. Since then, you have posited several non-rational possibilities. I am only interested in rational possibilities. If you can come up with another "rational" (keyword alert) possiblity aside from the 4 I gave, I have an open mind. So far, you have not done so. Berkeley is not a rational thinker - he is non-rational as he denies his own senses. Do you?
I myself am skeptical of the collision theory for exactly that reason. As I pointed out in my response to you and Piltdown Woman, the orbits of the objects that condense out of the accretion disk tend towards circularity, because the radial components of the motion cancel out. In order to have a mars-sized body in an intersecting orbit, it has to have formed in a circular orbit and then been kicked out. This is difficult to do within the system, as the large objects in the system won't form in such positions as to be able to kick each other out, else they'd have kicked each other's raw materials out of the way when they were in the process of forming. (This is the reason for Bode's Law.)
The only solution is to have the Mars-like body be an interloper, or to have it knocked out of its orbit by an interloper. But then, why should I expect it to be in the ecliptic plane at all? The fact that the net angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system is close to parallel with the norm of the ecliptic plane means that it couldn't have been that far off.
Personally, I feel God is outside the realm of evidence, so I doubt anyone's feelings about God will be enhanced by tangible evidence of any sort, but who knows?
IMHO, it would make no difference to those who already believe, so the only ones who would personally benefit are the intellectually agnostic, i.e. having new reasoning to believe.
I suspect the kids of the future would have the most to gain, by being exposed to information which is now taboo in public schools.
Thank you very much for expressing exactly what my concern was.
Just another way of saying, "God created the universe ex nihilo". Substitute "God" for someone, and you have Bishop Berkeley's position. Which, I point out, is, a few near-meaningless fluff words notwithstanding, identical to your position.
Contrary to your contention, there is no way to physically demonstrate that the universe is not the product of some overheated imagination, any more than it is possible to physically demonstrate that God didn't whop up the universe out of nothing. Both are immaterial ontological conjectures beyond the competence of material beings to either confirm or deny.
Unprovable is not the same as non-rational. Given that there isn't a hint of evidence either way, you have no qualitative basis for assuming my explanations are any more rational or irrational than yours.
But it certainly wasn't following any teaching of Jesus, and the Lord, in fact, had warned specifically that there would be people who praise his name, yet reject His way.
Correspondingly, Post 5186 seems pretty pointless, given the title of the thread and the thrust of the present argument.
Because the momenta of the particles are random. What are the odds that all of the motions with respect to the center of mass will sum to zero? In the case of momentum, we can adjust for net proper motion by a change of coordinate system, but net angular momentum can't be normalized away.
You mean typically "does not", not "cannot". There are reasons this is the case, and they are consequences of history more than anything.
This possibility has been explored: The Simulation Argument
So now you should also see why it's ludicrous to expect that Venus has meandered around the solar system.
I see that Yoda is joining us for dinner...
I would expect 1. It seems to me that something not moving is something not moving. I don't expect to see a salt crystal, which has a center of mass, to suddenly start spinning for no reason.
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