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."
So you cannot back up your claims. Another 'the dog ate the homework' excuse. You have been bluffing all along and you got caught.
Again, don't confuse what "seems" with what it is. I know for a fact that there are very elegant programs that can do exactly what you are talking about. One of the very best is less than 2,000 lines of C (so I've been told) at its core. It doesn't require any magic, though it does require some very powerful and somewhat esoteric mathematics and clever programming.
Most of the really powerful and elegant software of this nature is not available commercially nor is there a particular interest in making it available. Algorithmic machinery that can do this have vastly more interesting (and profitable) applications than handwriting recognition, and from a competitive standpoint there is little to be gained by making sure everyone else has the same capability. I will not back up this assertion, so you'll just have to take me at my word that there is software in existence that has capabilities that would probably surprise you very much. I'm sure there is probably at least one other Freeper who can vouch for the existence of software that greatly exceeds your expectations and intuition about its limitations.
Isolating fundamental algorithms is a hard problem in computer science because the mathematics frequently does not proscribe an obvious and useful implementation. You seem to forget how many important standard and fundamental algorithms in computer science were only discovered in the last ten or fifteen years that everyone already takes for granted. This is still a very active field and some of the longstanding hard problems ARE being solved as we speak.
Oh, hahaha! You thought I meant...well, let me assure you we are serious scientists engaged in real (read "severely underfunded") research.
I know exactly what you are talking about. Some of the most brilliant theoretical works in computer science that I know of are not likely to see the light of day for a long time. There is far too much value in keeping that information exclusive to the parties that control it. There are plenty of hard problems left in computer science that will bring fame and fortune to those who can solve them, and which will open up the doors to many possibilities when solved. Some of these solutions can be exploited to support all manners of ends, and there are people who fund this type of research who would just as soon keep the solution to themselves when they find them.
I have a language usage quibble here. He has "stated" his point often. I wouldn't say that he's "made" it.
And I simply pointed out the absurd contradiction between your assertion that nothing can come of nothing and your assertion that God did.
You accept on faith that God exists outside of time. Physics can demonstrate that it is possible for the universe to exist outside of time. Neither proposition sits well with our everyday experience and neither lends itself easily to rational understanding.
The two are certainly not equally reasonable. I think the preponderance of logical reasoning coupled with sensory perception tend to tilt the balance in favor of a real universe, don't you?
That aside, I do not see any conflict between God thinking up the universe in his imagination and the ordered complex universe we have today as long as we believe it is all real and can function well within it (which we can). How is one antithetical to the other in the practical sense?
But what if matter is an illusion? Do our senses lie to us? If this all just one big "Matrix"? (I think you watch too many movies. ) In my mind, illusion is akin to mirage or chimera or phantom. Is that your definition? Conversely, matter is real - you can touch it, see it, hear it and feel it, and when you manipulate it, it performs in an ordered and expected manner according to natural laws - it does not surprise us or behave like a phantom - it is consistent and perpetual. But what if the matter we see is real to us, but in reality, is an illusion - so what! - there is no practical difference from our perspective. Even if God did produce the universe as a collosal illusion, from our perspective it is real! Even if it is true that the universe is an illusion, someone must create an illusion since there are no known ways for such complex and ordered illusions as ours to just create and maintain themselves.
Finally, what reason do you have for believing that a mirage could produce such empirical results? I must deny my senses to believe all is an illusion, and, as a rational person, I must conclude from my 5 senses that the universe is real and is not an illusion. Mustn't you also? No honest naturalist would agree with you that the two theories (illusion vs. real universe) are equally valid, especially since empiricism and logical positivism demand that matter be real not an illusion.
There is no way for a naturalist to demonstrate that the universe simply "exploded" from NOTHING, and that the result was the fantastic complexity and mind-boggling order we we have before us today. But that is precisely what most naturalists believe. Logically, nothing cannot produce anything because by definition, it is nothing. That is much more of a leap in my view than my believing that ordered complexity on the scale we have must have come from a creator. I must conclude that you have no view whatsoever on the origins of the universe, because regardless of what view you might hold, it would be a leap - wouldn't it?
There's a Platonic table???
Help me here, AG.
Dr. Evil, no doubt.
"The popcorn you're eating has been p*ssed in - film at 11."
Anybody remember the classic movie that line is from?
Why don't you try taking this down to the level of everyday life? My faith is in line with human experience. Is yours? Reall? The existence of a personal infinite God perfectly explains the meaningful mannishness of man (our loved ones and our lives have meaning there is a personal infinite God who is the source of that meaning); but the mannishness of man is absolutely excluded in atheism if the atheist be consistent and honest (Nietszche, JW Gould, and Carl Sagan all concluded that life was ultimately meaningless and nihilistic since God does not exist).
When I attend the funerals of my loved ones, I KNOW THAT I KNOW that the grief I feel in losing them is meaningful - it is not just some chemical process in my brain. If grief is just atoms colliding in my brain, I should be able to just ignore those feelings and not let them affect me at all - why does it feel so profoundly meaningful and real? Could it be....it feels that way because grief is meaningful and real? And love is meaningful and real (not just some material process?
You have a 19th century view of what materialism is, and what matter is. It's been at least 75 years since anyone could blow off material processes as billiard balls bouncing around.
No, I am saying that without a belief in God, one cannot find an universal basis for the "meaningfulness" of human experience. Without God, the value you feel for your loved ones is reduced to a subjective chemical process in your brain (I have been over this and over this with Junior on this behemoth of a thread); and time+chance+energy+matter cannot produce intrinsic meaning or value. I know you can't see that - but that doesn't change the truth of the matter. Obviously, people are much more than the sum of their parts. (Another question: Just how does personality come from non-personality?) Why are your values so dependent on a god?
Without God, moral values are reduced to personal preference (as a man becomes a slave to his chemical processes), and man is reduced to a MACHINE. Machines do not have and intrinsic value. Universal Human rights are also excluded. If you like, I can e-mail you the essay I wrote that refutes moral relativism.
No one on this thread has yet been able to come up with a source for morality besides man or God. I am still waiting (and I will be waiting a looonggggg time).
Again, you refuse to look at this at the personal level. You keep talking about materialism, but I want to know how your atheism is compatible with your mannishness. Could you explain to me how your loved ones or your love for them could be anything more than a materialistic process without God?
I know that 19th century Materialism is refuted - but many naturalists don't know it yet! How does the new view of materialistic processes help you?
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