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."
My sebsite?? You need to think just a bit harder here.
I've heard this story in a number of conversations. I mentioned it in an earlier post, Ms. Piltdown asked me to provide a source of some sort, I did a google search on "varves" and "Mount St. Helens" and basically picked one of the hundred or so sites which came up at random.
Yes, your site! Twice that I see, here and here, you have referred the counting of varve layers as a discredited method of estimating ages of sediments. Challenged by Piltdown Woman to support this assertion, you cited ... well, certain kinds of sites that turn up when you Google on varves and Mt. St. Helens. Pressed for more detail, you specifically linked one that makes a very dishonest argument, as both I and Piltdown Woman have now pointed out.
If you don't endorse the dishonest arguments of TrueOrigins on the subject, why did you link them? Or did they fool you--you're probably candy for them--and you're too embarrassed now to admit it?
It implies but does not say that what Mt. St. Helens produced was instinguishable from real annual varves.
Yep. From everything I read (other than you of course), that appears to be the case.
This is the worst sort of head-fake dishonesty, the reason why I have sadly concluded that there simply are no honest creationists. Mt. St. Helens produced some gravitationally sorted ash. Period.
When your wishful thinking version of science doesn't hold up, you should at least consider the possibility of doing a better job of educating yourself rather than just crying over it like that.
More commentary, including descriptions of several different rapid means of creating varves.
The answer is "No, it didn't." In other words, Mt. St. Helens didn't make real varves that would meet the definition you linked or fool a real geologist as to their origin. Neither would either of the creationist fairy stories you just linked come any closer.
Do you endorse this young-earth silliness or not? The 10K-years-and-under crowd seems to be your only source of material.
Geologists say between 4 and 4.5 billion years. That YOU do not know has little relevance for this discussion.
And you ask this because you need ammo for your ad hominems - the only thing you do on these threads? As your supposed 'scientist' friends have shown, honesty is more important than degrees. Which is a very good reason why one should not trust the 'experts' because they clearly your evo friends did not get a degree in honesty.
Evolution is racist and you cannot deny it , that is why you call it an insult. As I pointed out in post# 1238 "Evolution is racist. It denies that all humans are children of God and asserts that some are more 'advanced' than others. In fact it asserts that there is a biological hierarchy of species and that humans are part of that hierarchy. So yes, racism is integral to evolutionary theory." You cannot deny it, so you call it an insult. Here is one of the many racist quotes from your friend Darwin:
In man the frontal bone consists of a single piece, but in the embryo, and in children, and in almost all the lower mammals, it consists of two pieces separated by a distinct suture. ~~This suture occasionally persists more or less distinctly in man after maturity; and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania, especially, as Canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the Drift, and belonging to the brachycephalic type. Here again he comes to the same nclusion as in the analogous case of the malar bones. In this, and other instances presently to be given, the cause of ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more frequently than do the modern races, appears to be, that the latter stand at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their early semi-human progenitors.
Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter 2.
BTW - in addition to the above being racist, it is unscientific and has been disproved by science. Therefore, Darwin did not have the excuse that 'it is true', the statement was totally due to his inherent racism and to the inherrent racism of his theory.
As I have stated DIRECTLY TO YOU numerous times, I will not answer your irrelevant question. Your dishonesty in not even addressing your post to me is self evident. You are a lamer gratuitously attacking me because I have thoroughly disproven your atheistic/materialistic, pseudo-scientific evolutionary nonsense. The proof is all over this thread from the inability of any of the evolutionists here in showing that abiogenesis is even remotely possible within what science knows to be absolutely true, to the inability of any of the evolutionists here to refute the following posts made some 450 posts ago:
Neither you nor any evolutionists has ever given proof that a single species has transformed itself into another more complex species. If I am wrong, let's see the proof. Come up with a real arguement that slams evolution can you do it?
There are many. The bacterial flagellum is one. The program by which a single cell at conception turns into a 100 trillion cells at the time of birth - with every single cell of the exactly proper kind in the exactly proper place is another. There are many more which have been scientifically proven, but these two should keep you busy for a while.
988 posted on 12/23/2002 7:07 AM PST by gore3000
'Gradual loss of egg laying' is more easily said than done. You must remember that the you need to provide nutrition to the developing organism throughout its development - as well as after the birth until it can feed itself. To say that all these changes can occur simultaneously is totally ludicrous and you have disproven nothing. Let's see an article describing how this change occurred in detail. Can you find any? I doubt it because this is one of the things evolutionists never speak of.
989 posted on 12/23/2002 7:14 AM PST by gore3000
And where did you debunk the flagellum besides in your own mind?
As to the eye spot, your article only says that because it happened more than once then therefore the eye spot could have occurred. It is not a refutation of the complex mechanism required for an eye spot.
BTW - a blog from Don Lindsay is proof of absolutely nothing. The guy cannot even give references for his nonsense.
991 posted on 12/23/2002 7:28 AM PST by gore3000
That none of you evolutionists can refute these scientific questions central to the theory of evolution, shows quite well that your adherence to this theory has nothing to do with science but to your arrogant atheistic proclivities.
Of course they are a closed system, they only publish for the Universities and for people in the particular profession. They are just backscratching. They have absolutely no purpose and are read by hardly anyone. People only subscribe to them because they are supposed to, but they do not read them.
Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I had no idea. So, ideally, how should scientific knowledge, information, and discoveries be verified and disseminated?
The word pollen appears in the article but not as part of the definition of "varve". Pollen studies is mentioned merely as a related method of dating. The layers you find at Mt. St. Helens meet the standard definition of "varves" as most of the articles such a search turns up note.
It impressed me.
The universe seems as if it never "end." Present thinking is that it will expand forever.
Present thinking calls for the heat death of the universe.
We agree on one thing. It's not a science book. Not even close.
It's not meant to be a science book. It is not anti-science and the natural observations in the book hold up remarkably well. Much better than Darwin's work which is only 150 years old.
But there is a difference between an observation and an explanation. That things fall to earth is an observation that's going to tend to be true for quite a while. The reason that things fall to earth is still being worked out.
A lot of people starting with Augustine would disagree with you. Most -- I suspect all -- scholars consider him to be a monotheist. It was one of the reasons why Islam holds him in high esteem.
Your desperation has reached such great heights that now you are bashing the forum which kindly gives allows you to express your views. Very ungrateful, if nothing else. However, FR is perhaps the most learned forum on the net. We have of people here with all kinds of specialties participating in it, so if no one on FR can refute my statements which go to the heart of the scientific basis of evolution, then that is fairly strong proof in my favor. However, the proof is stronger yet. Many of those in this thread have been on it for quite a long time and have seen many of these questions before and still are unable to refute them. In addition, I am sure these people do do some research - read books, read articles on the subject, and are able to find answers to questions posed to them. That they cannot refute them is therefore a strong proof that the answers are not out there.
For example take my post# 1279 on abiogenesis. I first posted that on 10/11/02. Here we are some two and a half months later and no one has even been able to find anywhere a possible explanation for abiogenesis which fits the scientifically known facts delineated there. The bacterial flagellum showing irreducible complexity has been widely discussed on these threads yet the evolutionists have only been able to find a secretory system which has only half the genes of the flagellum as possible ancestors of it. That does not refute it because the 40+ genes in the flagellum are all absolutely essential for the system to work, therefore no gradual evolution of it was possible. The development of a human from a single cell to 100 trillion cells in the exact place, of the exact kind is called a program by developmental scientists. It therefore could not have arisen in a random stochastic way and cannot be change in a random stochastic way as we all know. The Universe is so exact that atheist scientists can only respond with the unscientific and unreasonable claim that there have been an infinite amount of Universes, and that this one arose finally by dumb luck. The eye spot, with which Darwin claimed he proved the evolution of the eye is also irreducibly complex as Behe details in the quote on my Post 1983 . The problem of a species changing its mode of reproduction is also totally unexplainable by evolution. To claim that an entire reproductive system arose by random chance in a single generation (else the species could not continue to reproduce with an unfinished reproductive system) and in more than one individual (else who would the new species reproduce with), is totally absurd. This had to have happened numerous times since there are many different reproductive systems in nature. The change from egg laying to live birth as evolutionists claim happened with the mammal's descent from reptiles is totally impossible which is why no evolutionist even dares to discuss it, either here or in the literature.
So as you can see the problems raised by the statements above are absolutely central to the theory of evolution. That evolutionists cannot answer them in spite of some 150 years of claiming that evolution is true shows both the dishonesty of evolutionists and the truth of my statement that evolution is just pseudo-science for the ignorant.
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