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."
Actually, if you re-read my posts, you will find that I recognize that atheists do indeed value their loved ones and act as if love had real meaning, but they have no basis for doing so. They live a hopeless dichotomy between their worldview (no God, all is matter) and their behavior as human beings (love is meaningful, family members have real value and are not just dried twigs in an impersonal universe). Don't you see the contradiction?
Perhaps because I am not an atheist. I simply don't believe the bible is inerrant. And I don't think I will be punished for eternity for disagreeing with you.
I am glad you are not an atheist. Agnostic then?
I said: IMHO, that will be largely due to the perception that refutation is not equal to falsification under the scientists’ “rules of engagement.”
You replied: Don't quite understand what is seen as the difference between 'falsification' and 'refutation'.
In layspeak, a refutation is a dismissal, a hand-wave of sorts whereas a falsification is a structured rebuttal. Methods of falsification are part of hypotheses under the scientific "rules of engagement."
As an example, it would be a refutation to say that "species B could not have descended from species A because there are still species A alive."
On the other hand, a falsification would say: "species B could not have descended from species A because the oldest geological age of a species A fossil is X and the oldest geological age of a species B fossil is X-Y."
I do not think the Bible is a historical document without error. I do not believe in an afterlife of winged angels floating on clouds. Nor do I believe that forcing one's thought into conformity with the assertions of the Bible writers is the ticket to heaven. All this mind control stuff is common to human totalitarians. It strikes me as unworthy of a God capable of creating the universe. If skepticism and curiosity are tickets to hell, then I'm on that train.So when you ask if I am an agnostic, I have to say there are plenty of things I believe, some things I actively disbelieve, and a universe of things I don't know.
Possibly. I have a couple of Trash-80s that date to that era.
There's a Platonic table???
I think the following is what Gore3000 is speaking to:
Like Sherlock Holmes' saying that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left no matter how improbable must be the truth. The shortcomings of Formalism, Inventionism, and Intuitionism lead us to take a new look at Platonism. Barrow explains Platonism this way:
Plato's approach to these universals was to regard them as real. In some sense they really exist 'out there'. The totality of his reality consisted of all the particular instances of things together with the universals of which they were examples. Thus the particulars that we witness in the world are each imperfect reflections of a perfect exemplar or 'form'. (pg.25)
The view as pointed out earlier is this: Mathematics exists. It transcends the human creative process, and is out there to be discovered. Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is just as true and real here on Earth as it is on the other side of the galaxy. Hence the book's title Pi in the Sky. This is why it is thought that mathematics is the universal language of intelligent creatures everywhere.
I used to read the Bible like a book, studying words and phrases and the whole nine yards. But when I actually sat down with the Bible and read it casually, like a letter, it suddenly came alive within me.
It probably sounds strange, but the verses leap off the page and into my heart. I understand things I could never before figure out - I know exactly where to look for answers now, I don't struggle to find things.
It is not like any other written manuscript known to me. It is the living Word of God.
Part of the reason for the universality of Pi is that its components are constructs. There are no real and perfect circles, despite the claims of the piston ring company.
Second, I would argue that a number of Platonic constructs are embodied in the functional structure of our brains -- either as a result of evolution or by the designer. ;^)
Thirdly, constructs like chairness or transistorness are embodied in the minds of the people who experience chairs and transistors.
I believe there are actual new things arising in the universe, things that have no precident, no prior form -- things not foreseen or forshadowed. Marterialistic, evolutionary miracles, so to speak.
First, let me say that no one can force you to believe anything. Where does the bible speak of "mind contrrol"? This comment shows me that you do not know what the bible says about how to attain eternal life. Christianity is certainly not about force - that is what muslims and communists do (check out persecution of Christians in N. Korea or China). Christianity was spread through the roman empire, as it is today, by simply mouthing the words of the gospel of Jesus Christ - and it has changed the world. Later on, there were people who CLAIMED to represent Christianity that did some evil things, but these deeds were not consistent with the teachings of the founder of Christianity Jesus Christ. However, muslim violence and mayhem is absolutely consistent with the teachings of their founder. America was founded upon Christian ideals and it is the free-est country in history. Compare that with any communist nation and see the contrast. So, people may try to force you to believe things, but they do not represent God.
It appears you are an agnostic, but your arguments and comments seem to indicate that you do have an anti-Christian bent. On what basis do you say the bible is not trustworthy? Have you ever read it with an open mind, or are you going on hearsay? The bible does not say that winged angels float on the clouds, but it does say that non-corporeal beings exist - immaterial beings. If you deny the existence of immaterial beings, especially God, then you are going strictly on bias as these beings could certainly exist outside of your knowledge, and as I have said, the meaningful human experience in this life demands that God exist.
Our human yearning and desire and hopes and dreams all point to the existence of an afterlife. This life is not the end. There is a personal infinite God who loves us. There have literally been thousands of finds that confirm the biblical accounts, but not one that incontrovertibly proves even one biblical passage wrong.
I believe there are actual new things arising in the universe, things that have no precident, no prior form -- things not foreseen or forshadowed.
I suspect you are correct, though I wouldn't venture as to the cause. You mentioned evolution and perhaps that is so, but I wouldn't want to exclude the possibility that something has been there all along but doesn't manifest until a future point in time.
For me, some do and some don't. You have to understand that I do not count myself as hostile to religion, even if I am occasionally rude to certain believers. I think religious thought evolves, as does other kinds of thoughts.
Consider, for example, the discussion of slavery that I beat into the ground several thousand posts ago. It is clear that religious thinkers have modified their attitude towards slavery over the millennia. I find it interesting that Quakers, among the least doctrinaire of Christians, were among the most vocal opponents of slavery. (There is some of your "restful thinking" going on here. Folks who are not afraid to question literal interpretations of the bible are open to the message of the heart.)
Someone also gave an example of Jesus overriding the law of Moses on divorce, clearly stating that the older law was obsolete.
So if you tell me there are deep ideas in the Bible that are inerrant, I will listen, but I expect people to listen past the noise of literal historiography (is that a word?)
God is spirit, and to understand Him, one has to read with the spirit and not the mind. That is what I discovered. It shamed me, because it was there all along, in the first few chapters of John (1-6) - the people were taking Him quite literally and couldn't deal with it. I can see why.
After I quit trying to read literally, with my mind, those very words, read from the spirit, come alive.
Likewise, the debates over slavery and divorce - like the Pharisees' arguments over working on the Sabbath, taxes and adultery - are moot to me. That's like arguing endlessly over a twig and missing the entire forest. But if you want to talk about forests, I'm your girl!
I don't think so. Slavery has always been wrong and authentic Christians have always recognized this to be the case. Contrary to what skeptics say, the bible does not condone slavery, it instructs masters to love their slaves and slaves to love their masters. What happens when this occurs? Slavery is abolished as it eventually was in the Roman empire.
‘The truth will set you free.’ (John 8:32)
"God's dismissal in the 19th century, and the humiliation of truth in the 2oth, was supposed to set the world free."
"The experiment has been under way for some time now, and it is fair to ask, what are the... results---so far?"
"The Nazi experience in Germany provides a case study. There, a government and a society were organized on the principle of God's non-existence. Did liberation come to pass? On the wall of one of the death camps there is a plaque. It preserves the language of one of Hitler's speeches. The plaque overlooks large mounds of human hair, piles of personal effects; shoes, spectacles. The plaque reads: "I freed Germany from the degrading fallacy of conscience and morality. We will train people capable of violence-imperious, relentless, cruel. . ."
"Those sentiments were nurtured on the same continent that gave the world the reformation (( American Republic // revolution too )) . Which was more liberating? If someone came today and said: "I am the truth," we would not take him seriously. But when Jesus says it, we are tempted to let him get away with it. If he is mad, it is a beautiful madness; such an attractive insanity. Let us not be ashamed to offer Christ to the world."
‘The truth will set you free.’ (John 8:32)
I would argue it's more to the point that refutation is a positive disproof, or disproof by deductive reasoning. Refutation is holding out for a countervailing example. And the reason we make this distinction so loudly and often these days, is that we don't, and oughtn't, trust deductive reasoning as much as we do tangible counterexamples.
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