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."
Berkeley's not my pal, he's a rude git. But your response to him is wholly inadequate. You have, longwindedly, in no manner whatsoever supplied evidence that reality must look somehow different--less tangible or detailed or rich--if it was imagined up.
The position you are attempting to argue is the ultimate skepticism that results when men start from themselves and have no infinite reference point. Rationalism only ends in skepticism.
No reference point is an infinite improvement over a reference point you are absolutely sure of, but have no proof pursuasive to skeptics. Popes murder whole peoples because of such cocksurely held "infinite reference points".
I am in line with what most scientists will tell you if asked. Scientists, whatever their convictions about Reality and Truth, do not think they are doing Truth when they are doing science. They think they are making up stories that are useful for predicting or utilizing nature's fruits. Those scientists who dabble in philosophy will almost all tell you, if asked, that they doubt the possibility of ever getting to rock bottom Truth thru science.
Also science has proven itself in numerous ways. Take vaccines, take the atom bomb, take airplanes, computers, spaceflight, genetic engineering, etc.. Seems to me that if their discoveries were not true, the practical applications of those discoveries would not work.
You have the epistimological cart before the ontological horse. We accept and value these things because they work reliably and usefully. No proof was ever offered. There's no such thing as proof in natural sciences.
Could you translate that into English?
Try not to be any more coy than you have to. I have explained this enough. If you are tracking at all, it should be quite clear to you by now that philosophical materialists and philosphical naturalists are not the same thing. Materialists explicitly exclude from existence immaterial explanations of material phenomena. Naturalists don't give a rat's ass either way. Most modern scientists would consider themselves naturalists. How hard can this be?
I doubt that very much. I doubt that people dedicate their lives to just making up stories. Further, if scientists were to really start saying this out loud they know very well that their funding would dry up in an instant.
As to ultimate Truth, I suspect some do believe that they are at least getting closer to it. Einstein for example was trying to formulate a general theory of everything. This was a search for the ultimate Truth.
Also science has proven itself in numerous ways. Take vaccines, take the atom bomb, take airplanes, computers, spaceflight, genetic engineering, etc.. Seems to me that if their discoveries were not true, the practical applications of those discoveries would not work.-me-
You have the epistimological cart before the ontological horse. We accept and value these things because they work reliably and usefully. No proof was ever offered. There's no such thing as proof in natural sciences.
There is such a thing as scientific proof, it is done through experimentation for example. That you do not consider it proof shows a pretty big disregard for reality on your part. Also, regardless of carts and horses, it is an undeniable truth that you cannot build a house that will stand upon a bad foundation. The house of science has been abuilding for many years and it keeps reaching to greater and greater heights. This would not be happening if the foundation was not solidly implanted in reality.
BTW - are you not one of those evolutionists which claim that evolution is true because it is science???????
I have my doubts. I don't think anything practical humans do by way of problem solving in fixed, simple domains of discourse is as hard to replicate as you want to make out. What you want to call abstraction, I want to call pattern discernment, in this constrained context, and it is quite approachable with currently available techniques. The question isn't "can we do it?". The question is, "why should we pay for it?".
Can you beat Big Blue at chess? If so, that puts you head to head with the world's champ. Big Blue makes no pretensions of being some mighty piece of abstract ur-mind, and I expect it can whip your pants off. And how is the problem of winning at chess all that different from, say, running a factory inventory&shipping platform optimally? Well, the problem set to Big Blue is intrinsically harder--much harder. All such real problems as inventory&shipping have going for them is a jumbo-sized set of shallow constraints. That's what plain-vanilla computer programs handle well, without dropping any of the numerous balls--unlike their human counterparts. Can a computer recognize and respond to an out-of-the-box safety problem like, say, an unexpected baby on a forklift? No, but only because we haven't given it nearly as good a set of sensors and manipulators as we possess. That doesn't strike to the heart of the argument.
I guess I will have to defer to you on this, unlike you, I am unable to read minds.
Seems to me that by your premises above, there is something else in humans besides their material nature which allows them to oppose these tendencies.
Not so sure about that. It seems to me that it is humans selecting the patterns and then trying to figure out an algorithm to implement it in a computer. Your example of chess playing computers supports the above in many ways as I have already explained such as by giving criteria by which to evaluate moves and providing an opening book.
Can a computer recognize and respond to an out-of-the-box safety problem like, say, an unexpected baby on a forklift? No, but only because we haven't given it nearly as good a set of sensors and manipulators as we possess. That doesn't strike to the heart of the argument.
Even if it had the sensors and manipulatiors I doubt it would respond as a human. Such an event is so unlikely that there seems little likelihood that it would have been in any way programmed into a computer. And that is the problem I speak of, you only get out of a computer what you put in it. It does not make up its own rules. Humans do.
What I have shown is that all people, including you, must live life as if the universe and all its particulars are real. You can't live otherwise. Your life presents an irreconcilable dichotomy in trying to deny objective reality. Doesn't that bother you at all?
No reference point is an infinite improvement over a reference point you are absolutely sure of, but have no proof pursuasive to skeptics. Popes murder whole peoples because of such cocksurely held "infinite reference points".
This statement merely shows your anti-Christian bias. You are right - the popes committed crimes (I have pointed them out many times to people who revere these self-exalted men) but they are inconsistent with the teachings and example of the founder of Christianity - Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of the faith.
I believe that what we are and what we think and feel is embodied in the structure of the brain and nervous system.
The brain and nervous system is the hardware - period. The software is our soul, which is the seat of the intellect, emotions, and will. Your PC's computer hardware is complex and designed to do a lot of things, but it will not run without the software drivers. Similarly, our human hardware - the brain and the nervous system - while being infinitely more complex than any man-made computer system - is still non-functional until it is animated by the soul. If you doubt this, look closely at the dead body in the casket the next time you attend a funeral. Is it capable of doing anything on its own? I saw my father breathing, talking, moving, thinking, etc. before he died. After the moment of death had passed, his dead body was doing none of those things. The body without the soul is dead.
So I believe that our sense of right and wrong is innate -- with details, customs, laws, manners, provided by culture...the underlying certainty that some things are right and some things are wrong, is inborn.
Oddly enough, your choice of words argues my own point of view rather than your own. Further, I would submit that deep down inside you know this truth and have unwittingly betrayed yourself. If morality is merely 'embodied in the structure of the brain and nervous system', then it is not "innate" or "inborn" - it is simply part of the hardware, and as such is not something we can properly call morality at all. You might just as well talk about the morals of your car's engine.
Morality is a word which speaks of principles or rules of conduct, and conformity to ideals of right human conduct. It involves knowing what is right and wrong, and choosing whether to do right or do wrong. These are not hardware concepts in the slightest. These concepts require intellect, emotions, and will. The hardware - your brain and nervous system - is built and wired to SUPPORT these things from a physical standpoint, but it does not follow that the brain itself IS those things. Your car does not know to make a left or right turn or go straight or backwards at an intersection, but it is designed so that when you, the driver, choose which of those actions you want to take and turn the wheel or hit the gas or brake or throw the car into reverse, it does the action, based on your input.
The awareness of basic right and wrong (morality) is indeed innate and inborn. In saying that, you have spoken correctly. But since morality is not the brain itself...then where did this awareness of Morality come from? It is obvious that none of us could have installed it ourselves. Therefore, an Outside Agency must have installed it into us. C.S. Lewis makes this argument quite convincingly in his book "Mere Christianity". The same Creator who made your hardware made your software also.
It started out as a stereotypical "crevo" thread with the usual arguments, posturing and flaming. That was followed by a frank discussion of philosophy which was then followed by mutual respect and an open exchange of ideas.
That was followed by a discussion of the different ways to look at the facts and the issues involved. The aspects throughout range from highly technical to political to philosophical to theological.
And your evidence for the separate hardware and software is...
And startling exhibitions of intellect, wisdom and discernment displayed by all!
;^)
And startling exhibitions of intellect, wisdom and discernment displayed by all!
I fully agree! This has been the most enriching thread I've ever had the privilege of reading.
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