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."
Enter Stage Right - A Journal of Modern Conservatism 5/1/00 Roger Banks “….. Steven M. Wise's Rattling the cage: Towards legal rights for animals has arrived in stores at a time when the idea of animal rights is slithering its way almost imperceptibly from various fringe groups into a respectable faction. Contributing to the momentum of support is wide-spread confusion about what it would mean for animals to have legal rights. In particular, many who support the movement do not distinguish between the notion of "animal rights," on the one hand, and laws enacted to prevent abuse and cruelty on the other. Some who recognize this distinction have interposed only impassive resistance: having grasped the deep flaws in the case for animal rights, they find it hard to take seriously…….”
Reuters 10/20/99 "..... An animal rights group said on Tuesday teachers in Kansas should instruct pupils on vegetarianism, as it tried to take advantage of the state's recent controversy over the teaching of evolution to publicize its views on eating meat. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known for its sometimes unorthodox protests for animal rights, made its statement two months after the state's board of education voted to downplay evolution teaching in Kansas schools. ....."
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. - Matthew 7:1-2
It's okay. We know.
He's trying to get the thread "disappeared" so he can lie about it next time.
It doesn't surprise me that you equate dogs with people. Problem is - dogs have no self-awareness (they do not consider their plight), and can't think abstractly. Thus, you comparison is grossly absurd. Animals have no morals, i.e. they have no sense of "ought" as humans do. Furthermore, you have just stated in other words that morals are man-made. In that case pal, I can't be wrong! My morals (even if my system is objective and not subjective as yours is) are, from the relativist perspective right for me, just as yours are right for you. Therefore, you don't even have a basis to argue the matter since no moral system can be wrong in your rationalist darwinian world. I don't give a flip what natural selection says - I have a will and Natural selection is a non-entity with no moral force whatsoever - if I want to go contrary to natural selection, I can do so and many people do - they slaughter each other for no good reason.
My roots are Southern Baptist, where the going term is "hate the sin but love the sinner." To drive that point home, after Larry Ashbrook brutally murdered all those kids at church near Ft. Worth, this was the Southern Baptist reaction:
NewsMax 9/21/99 Bill Murchison “….On the assumption that Satan, enlisting the help of Larry Gene Ashbrook, set out last week to intimidate Christians ... well, did this unholy pair pick the wrong church! Liberal Protestants of hazy theological outlook -- that might have been one thing. But Southern Baptists! No one in his right mind would put forward the Baptists as subject matter for spiritual intimidation. Confronted, menaced, jeopardized, Baptists reach for a familiar object -- the Holy Bible. They open it, they brandish it, they thrust it right in the Devil's face. Just how heart-warming it was to see them do so on a sun-splashed Sunday afternoon, in Texas Christian University's football stadium, I beg here and now to report. The Baptists, to every appearance, have it right: Spiritual warfare rages in our midst.
NewsMax 9/21/99 Bill Murchison “….Affirm? A mild word for what goes on at the stadium. What about the father of one of the victims, leading the audience/congregation in the singing of a song his murdered daughter had loved? What about the pastor of the desecrated church, the Rev. Al Meredith, whomping up a classic Baptist revival on the spot -- a call to fasting and repentance and prayer? "Raise your hand if you want the killing to stop -- if you want to see the spirit of the living God sweeping over our land like wildfire.'' Up in the air -- a forest of affirming arms, one of them attached to an Episcopalian journalist. Bad news for Satan. He's stirred up the Baptists -- folk who take him with the deep seriousness his malice deserves. The culture wars may have taken a decisive turn….”
‘Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'get up; take up your mat and walk'?.‘ (Mark 2:9)
Jesus experienced forgiveness as difficult, not just because he loved the brothers (his disciples), but because he loved everyone. If you care about anyone at all, it is hard to forgive those who harm them. Jesus offered... forgiveness---to the experts in the law, even though he was angered by what they were doing to the poor, and the helpless. He loved the widows and the fatherless.
If you lived in Yugoslavia, and had seen family and friends tortured and butchered. And if the perpetrators were known to you, and still living in your neighborhood, what would you do if one of them came to your home, begging forgiveness?
In George Eliot's story, Adam Bede is an honest carpenter. He has eyes for pretty Hetty Sorrel. But along comes Arthur Donnithorne, who is swashbuckling and rich. He takes Hetty just because he can, and leaves her, pregnant and sorrowful. Later, realizing he has ruined Adam Bede's life as well as Hetty's, Donnithorne comes to Adam begging forgiveness. Adam struggles, and only with great effort does he give it. "There's a sort o' damage sir," he says, "that can't be made up for. Aye, you whose sin hurts other folk, remember that."
Forgiveness is an wrenching event for the forgiver. Jesus knew this agony because he loved everyone so deeply. His willingness to forgive means healing for the world.
You go to great lengths to sell the absurd but it's not working. My senses know a leaf when I see it, and know coffee when I smell it, the color blue, the feel of sandpaper. Are these illusions or are they real? My senses tell me that the particulars in my world are real. My senses (which have great empirical evidential value) say these things are real, so your statement is silly. What do your senses tell you? Are you now going to say that I have no way of knowing if these objects are illusions? Go ahead - the fact will remain that my senses tell me that they are real. That is the preponderance of evidence I was referring to - sensory evidence. Can't argue with that pal. I'll bet you look both ways before crossing the street, don't you? Sure you do - you know that oncoming car is real, eh.
‘But I say to all of you: In the future, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty One.’ (Matthew 26:64)
"If the universe is moral, (and the fact that such a person as Christ existed, is strong evidence that it is), then what Jesus said about himself and the future, must come true. If morality has an infinite source, and backing, then the moral excellence of Christ will ultimately... triumph---over evil."
"I know some very agreeable people. I know some that I would call gentle giants. But their easygoing spirit is never a threat to greed and corruption. Kindness, patience, understanding, and love are not better than envy and bitterness, if they only ever exist as counterweights to their opposites. A good man who is content to coexist forever with badness, and wrong, cannot be a good man in any absolute sense."
"The goodness of Jesus is surpassing because he not only sorrowed over sin, and was outraged by it, he set himself against it, and warned his enemies that by suffering for it, he would rise above it, and eliminate it."
"If our universe is a moral one, then Jesus' values can never be viewed in any offhand way. Rather, he must be seen as a hazard to every act, motive, system, institution, or law, that is not in sympathy with him. A question that governments and their constituents ought to ask is: Are we making laws; invoking policies that clash with Christ and the direction of his Spirit? If so we are building badly. The universe itself will not back us. The future belongs to Christ-and to all who follow him."
Carl Sagan, if alive, would take exception to you saying he is not accutely analytical. There are many others who call themselves naturalists who believe in the Big Bang - it's a naturalistic theory. Who are you kidding?
Then where do electron/positron pairs come from? Abstract logic is a mighty thin reed to be making vast ontological claims with.
Abstract logic? It's common sense. Nothing means, ahem, "nothing". Nothing by definition is not anything. Where do electron/positron pairs come from? You tell me. While you are at it, perhaps you can tell me where all the matter in the universe came from.
I have such views, I do not mistake them for useful analytical distinctions I can put some meat on the table with. Science has no opinion about the existence of God--it has no competence in that department. It only works from evidence, to produce ideas about evidence, and evidence is one of those material sorts of things. That makes scientists naturalists; That doesn't make scientists philsophical materialists, and most aren't, last I heard.
Well, "most scientists" certainly do have opinions about the origins of the universe. By your standards, they are all whistling in the dark as there is no evidence. (By the way, I think this view is more consistent than taking a stab in the dark and then discounting and ridiculing other "so-called" stabs in the dark). Why don't you tell them to shut up?
I would state that this assertion is very arguable, and attempting to actually derive anything with this as a given is doubly so. I can't know what goes on in another person's head, never mind that of a dog.
What I'm wondering is whether the advanced language skill of humans is one of the considerations in A.I. work-in-progress? If so, is that treated as a symbolization of acquired information in learning? Are there any rules for it?
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