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."
Really? So then you propose 'subjective science'? Doesn't that sound ridiculous to you? It does to me. The only valid scientific criteria is objective criteria and when it comes to speciation viability in reproduction is the only objective criteria.
The axis in question is precision/imprecision. Speciation as a classification scheme is precise, but innacurate, relative speciation of variable degree is all one can actually detect in nature.
Which is why evolutionists try to redefine speciation! Because it cannot be found in nature.
Of course. I suggest you read up on Mach's principle. Once you have digested that, you might move on to frame dragging and the Lense-Thirring effect.
The whole point of this exercise is to determine why something would spin.
That's a different question. Something spins because something has transferred angular momentum to it. It's like asking why something would be electrically charged.
I am essentially saying that the impetus is external to the body. IOW gravitational forces directed towards a central point is not enough to impart angular momentum to the body in question.
Again, gravitational forces do not impart angular momentum to a collapsing body. The angular momentum it has at the beginning is the angular momentum it has at the end.
I don't think so. Why do you say this?
From the major study done on Darwin's finches:
A longitudinal study of Darwin's finch populations on a Galapagos island shows that hybrids exhibit higher fitness than the parental species over several years.
From: Grant, P.R., and Grant, B.R. (1992). Hybridization in bird species. Science 256: 193-197. Selected Abstracts
Every scientifically known evidence tells us that nothing comes from nothing. Even energy is conserved. So as far as science goes the source of the Universe is unexplainable by science. So your claim is more incorrect than the Christian one. Science itself tells us that the answer must lie outside of science. It is therefore both more scientifically and logically legitimate to say that the Universe arose as a result of something outside the material realm. We call this Creator of everything we see God.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA! I couldn't let this absurdity pass!
Who is that can't deal with reality here? Who is that posts "liars", "slimers", "thugs", "Taliban-evos", "communists", or "athiests" in almost every post?
... uhmm, and in what language should that copyright notice have been written in?
Clearly the request is totally unreasonable. However, what intelligent design tries to do is show that DNA has to be a result of intelligence and try to find something which is universally understood to be the product of intelligence. This is for example what we are trying to do with the Seti program to distinguish a message in an unknown language from random noise.
This evidence of intelligence has been found already within living things. Letters are a sign of intelligence as are any kind of symbols from mathematical ones to other symbols used in many different fields. The ability to represent one thing by another and have it understood for what it represents is a sign of intelligence in both those who 'write' the symbols and those who 'read' the symbols. Such a relationship is the one found in DNA and RNA. DNA writes symbols which have no legitimate significance, these are the three letter codons which RNA reads and interprets as the 20 amino acids from which proteins are formed.
I suppose I too should comment here, but why bother? Everyone knows the truth of the matter. So I'll let it pass.
Only in your twisted, hateful imagination. You have the narrowest worldview I have encountered on these threads. You have no way of knowing what others are capable of knowing or feeling.
There are lots of people on these threads who disagree with me, some who love shouting about how ignorant I am. I can take that, and sometimes even learn from it. But you are the saddest case because you think you sit beside God in judgement of me.
I have some news for you. Even in the strictest and most literal interpretation of your Bible, you have nothing to say about the state of my soul.
Well, from what I read in your answer we do not disagree.
Now, if you want funny, I have somethin' for ya.
Don't quite understand what is seen as the difference between 'falsification' and 'refutation'.
Oh come now! Who is the person that said the following?:
by searching for God's copyright notice in the junk DNA. This bars the usual, and effective, dismissal of ID that apparent design could have resulted from natural forces.
5180 posted on 01/16/2003 8:55 AM PST by donh
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.
The big problem with your post above though is that you and evolutionists claim that science proves that evolution is true but when cornered and asked to explain how science can show that evolution is virtually impossible you end up bashing science as not really proving anything.
You mean typically "does not", not "cannot". There are reasons this is the case, and they are consequences of history more than anything.
Hate to disagree on that, but it seems to me that with all the work, time, and money spent on trying to achieve hand writing recognition, (and the humongous programs needed to try to achieve it) we are talking here about something more than 'history'. If there was a simple way for a computer to perform such abstractions, I would think someone would have tried it by now. Since you have joined this discussion a bit late, let me make clear what I mean by abstractions. I mean basically the platonic forms that we easily recognize a table as a table even though we have not seen every table.
I am not shilling for anybody. Those folk were the first ones on my search. Now if you wish to contradict my statement, let's see you back it up instead of insulting me. You have yet to give a single example of a program that can truly do hand-writing recognition. Your claim that those that can do it are not publicly available does not cut it. Anyone who had such a program would not keep it to themselves but would try to make money from it. Back up your statements instead of insulting people.
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