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."
I don't think I did. I think that was your long-winded interpolation and/or excuse to avoid the question. I believe I launched a query into what kind of agape love it is that endorses the treatment God alloted to the Mideanites. Could we get back to that question? Possibly without any more meaningless distractions or irrelevant inquiries as to whether I am spiritually attuned enough to understand the answer, or is that too much to ask?
The unpleasent and obvious answer is that there wasn't any. God stopped loving the Mideanites. The more important question is why.
see post #6566, and respond to the argument pointed to there before again repeating this cycle, if you expect any further dialog from me.
ERRATUM: I said #6566, I meant #6556
So...agape love and the moral law against slavery is applicable only to a few select humans? I am free to enslave or murder everyone else, according to God's law's of Love?
What does the Bible say?
What did I just get through explaining? Yes, all neuron cells make choices. Transmission from any point to any point is not guaranteed--a neuron can decide to go on strike anytime it feels like it, and, by the way, not all signals are handled by the brain. Autonomic responses to familiar stimulus are eventually wired in well below the brain stem. This is possible because neurons are not necessarily like wires, they can be like transistors wired together into, um, nand gates, I think it is. There are long-winded papers on this all over the journals going back 25 years and more. Look it up if you won't take my word for it.
If you command your hand to reach over and grab your soda, it is not the cell doing the thinking. And if you find your hand not responding, it is a system breakdown, not the cell making a bad choice.
No, you are uninformed on this subject. Most thinking/choosing is in the brain, but some is not. And the occasional failure is NOT necessarily a breakdown--the system has designed-in fuzzy logic, and, worse, designed-in non-terminating digital feedback loops. If it didn't--if it wasn't powerful enough to make these problems possible, like a algae that seeks light regardless of the algae-eater above it, we'd have all been eaten by tigers who find un-deprogrammable automata a right handy bedtime snack.
Hey, I'm not the representative of the Bible in this discussion.
I don't have the background to give you a strong argument. My gut instinct is to suspect that there those neurons are like Turing emulation software which create the appearance of undirected action but whose decisions are the result of programming of which in the case of neurons we do not have complete knowledge.
You're position seems to be that the Bible mandates cruelty. You have to do a very selective reading to come to that conclusion. I'm not sure what your knowledge of scripture is.
Why were the Mideanites enslaved? Why were the Jews? They were God's chosen people. The slavery in Babylon is clearly blamed on the behavior of Hebrews but what about the slavery in Egypt?
Does God have a hard side? Yes, obviously. But if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God -- and you understand His teaching and the seriousness of his sacrifice -- you will conclude that God is something that is far more than just to be feared. You will see that He is good. He is deserving of total, complete worship and adoration.
If you believe in Jesus you will conclude that God wants us to be merciful, kind, loving, turn-the-other-cheek etc.
If you read the Bible you will see that a consistant thread through the narrative is that cruely is bad even in the OT despite the mandated slaughters. As Exmarine noted, the practices of many neighboring tribes were abominable. Love your neighbor is an OT command.
I am ready for your sarcastic response.
Just another instance of your being to BIASED to admit you are wrong. Any MORON knows that sixties style love does not remotely resemble Christian love, and no honest thinking person who understands Christianity could possibly argue with that (what does that say about you?) You make a fool out of yourself in making the correlation. Your argument is pitiful simplistic rubbish.
This has reached a point where I could not care less what you think or say. Why on earth should I (or any other Christian, for that matter) try to defend the bible to YOU - an anti-Christian BIGOT? You have not yet denied the charge of bias that I have made about 12 times. You KNOW you are BIASED and you don't care.
You don't even know who the midianites were.
Why? If I gave a logically perfect and true answer, you would dispute it - that is your whole reason for being. No answer on any topic of debate ever satisfies you because you are incapable of learning. Your biases have blinded you and talking to you has become a colossal waste of my time, especially since there are few lurkers left on this thread to read the posts; and that is the only reason I debated with you in the first place, it certainly wasn't to turn you. I am now gone from this thread and shall not return. I have bigger fish to fry.
So, what, fifty posts, and not one answer that wasn't an irrelevant insult, to about the world's simplest question regarding the absolute source of morality? You probably do have bigger fish to fry, if you can find the grill--or the fish--or the back yard--or the planet you inhabit.
Just another example of your inability to respond to even the simplest question in a manner even remotely cogent. As I just explained to you, again, I did not equate the two, you did, in order to produce an rude, irrelevant argument. I asked, to repeat myself yet again once more,-- in what manner agape love was brought to bear in the treatment of the Mideanites?
This has reached a point where I could not care less what you think or say.
Oh, it's "reached" that point eh? After about trillion rude, irrelevant responses to the aforesaid question? Kindly recall at what point in this discusion you cared more about what I think or say?
Why on earth should I (or any other Christian, for that matter) try to defend the bible to YOU - an anti-Christian BIGOT?
eh...because you'd like to insist that it be the law of the land or the source of all contemporary moral consideration? As long as you wish to restrain your christian ethics and law to the confines of the church and it's true believers, this is a perfectly fine attitude to take. Otherwise, it's the attitude of a sullen child who wants what he wants when he wants it, or he starts screaming and throwing things.
You have not yet denied the charge of bias that I have made about 12 times. You KNOW you are BIASED and you don't care.
BIASED--apparent definition: not of my particular faith & sect. In what manner does my being "biased" prevent you from explaining how agape love was involved in the treatment of the Mideanites? Am I hogging up all the words so you can't get to them?
huh. So,...if I knew who the midianites were, I'd understand how agape love led to the deflowering of the virgin slaves taken in midianite raids by the priests of their captors?
I don't have the background to give you a strong argument. My gut instinct is to suspect that there those neurons are like Turing emulation software which create the appearance of undirected action but whose decisions are the result of programming of which in the case of neurons we do not have complete knowledge.
Little collections of neurons, including 1 (one) thereof, make little choices, big collections of neurons make big choices. You don't really need a PHD in physiology or computer science to know this. You know grub worms have neurons, and you know we have a lot more neurons, in both cases, so that we can make choices. We're just a lot better at it than grub worms, because we have way more choices to exercise.
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