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."
Permit me to respond to your question. The answer is no, no one has mentioned that. It would be rather startling news to me, and to several others here. Do you have a reference that you could post for us to review?
It's under control. Sit back and enjoy.
I did a quick search looking for the assertion you mentioned and came up empty. As I recall, Gore3000 has posted it on other threads, so I'm pinging him here so that he can give you the summary - hopefully along with the rebuttals, so you can have all the information at one time.
"The rest of us should, of course, practice a certain . . . suspension (( earplugs // helmet // goggles ))* - - - of judgement .
. . . * my additions ! ! !
To which you replied: And your evidence for the separate hardware and software is...
To which I answer, are we really having this discussion? That there is more to man than merely his physical apparatus is made manifest by our own human experience. When I laugh and talk and do things with my family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., I am not interacting with mere chunks of matter, and neither are you. Get serious. Beyond that, this is explicitly declared in the Bible. I know that counts for nothing in your book, but my book trumps yours.
With all due respect, this argument is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of what you are talking about. There is no fundamental distinction between hardware and software; they are interchangeable and identical. Just because we choose to make that distinction based on how our hardware and software is typically designed does not make it meaningful in any type of theoretical sense. In other words, based on your argument the brain IS the soul, which while not what you intended, it is in fact the correct interpretation.
I don't fault you for your limited experience with this domain though; it is a very common and pedestrian misunderstanding. There are classes of universal computing machines in which the data, the program, and the machinery itself are all the exact same thing. This theoretical mathematical machinery looks and behaves a lot like the human brain in virtually every measurable aspect, so there are many people in the field who would state that the brain is a biological approximation of this class of machinery. It is ironic that so-called "neural networks" in computer science are essentially a failed model of universal computation, but a class of mathematically-derived machinery which claims no heritage from biology appears to be the correct analog.
Please don't forget that we're waiting for you to provide a reference or a link to some information on this point.
I'm really trying to follow this, but it appears that something is missing from the sentence structure. Are neural networks the correct analog, and if so, how are they "failed".
Sorry about that, I agree that the sentence structure was ambiguous.
There is a well-known set of constructs in computer science called "neural networks" because they supposedly were based on the way neurons work in the brain. Neuron models aside, they are pretty poor models of how computation is accomplished in the brain. Neural networks have been with us for 40 years, but are slowing reaching their end in computer science. Meanwhile, in another field of mathematics a new class of models for universal computation have been discovered, some of which look suspiciously like the general structure of the brain and exhibit virtually all the computational qualities that the brain is generally known to exhibit even though they are not derived from any neural or biological models. By many estimates these new computational models are the correct ones for "brain-like" computation, and that neural networks (so named because people mistakenly thought that their biologically inspired model might be used to emulate brain-like computation) are becoming increasingly unimportant since it has long been clear that the biological model they were premised on has serious fundamental flaws.
So there is a small nomenclature wreck where computing models named after the biological brain because that is what they were supposedly modeled after have turned out to advertise more than they deliver. Recent mathematically derived models which have no relation to biology whatsoever map very close to brain-like computers, and far closer than anything else to date (including neural networks).
I do not think I posted anything where Darwin himself refuted the theory of evolution. However I have posted quite a few on lots of things that disprove it. The fullest is Evidence Disproving Evolution .
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