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."
Point to one medical or technological achievement or product that does not have its underpinning in a discovery published in a peer-reviewed journal.
If you think science is closed-minded, explain how quantum theory became accepted so quickly. Explain how you would be using the internet without technology based on quantum theory.
Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is just ignorance. Willful ignorance is a sin.
It discredits several bad arguments that get made over and over and over on threads like these nevertheless. So you have an array of tests that point to a specific, very tight age bracket.
The oldest rocks on earth are about 3.9 billion. The earth is tectonically active and tends to remelt the old stuff sooner or later, so you can only get a lower bound from that. However, the moon rocks and a variety of meteorites tested by a variety of methods tightly enclose the 4.5 billion year value for the formation of the solar system.
You can't just say it's a problem with argon-argon, because rubidium-strontium does the same thing. You can't just say it's some kind of contamination of the Mundrabilla meteorite, because the Allende meteorite does the same thing. Large numbers of hard-evidence arrows point to a value of 4.5 billion. There is nothing at all comparable happening with any other value.
Right or wrong, that does tell me there are some differing opinions out there.
This is breathtaking illogic. Can you even see that? The mere existence of a group of religiously-motivated people ignoring the hard science is not evidence that they are right to do so.
What about the claim that the sun once stood still in the sky for a significant period of time? Is that a historical fact?
I've done that. :-)
A public school with liberal teachers. There is a lot of ignorance about the Bible.
Good recovery. Well done.
Okay. On the one hand you have geologists with their radiometric dating technology, and they say 4.5 billion years. On the other hand you have some religious folk who say 12 days, or 6K years, or whatever. All are shouting their answers at you. By what method do you decide whom to believe? Do you just average out all the various claims? Do you toss a coin? Seriously, what is your method for making such a decision? Do you have a method?
IOW, you're waiting for some evidence, any evidence, for what you'd rather believe. You're also waiting for a preponderance of hard evidence against what you wish were true to go away. But the preponderance is multi-source, large, and longstanding. You're also ignoring that science--for all its fits, starts, and corrections--doesn't just flop around randomly but rather converges upon an increasingly accurate representation of reality.
The evidence we have now isn't going to go away. You pretend it's perfectly reasonable, scientific even, to do what you're doing when it's nothing of the sort.
The fact that things fall down is not particularly illuminating. Things fell down for thousands of recorded human history, but only a few people attempted to quantify the motion, and only a handful have added significant insight into the phenomenon. But even after Galileo, Newton and Einstein, we still do not understand gravity, nor do we have a coherent set of equations to describe it.
The heart of your argument against evolution is that it is a "soft" science, full of speculation and theorizing.
You make a false dichotomy between soft and hard science. There is no such thing as a science that is free of speculation. There is no such thing as a science that has established, definitive laws. All scientific laws are just the current best fit to data. None of them yet show the signiture of the creator, regardless of how cool they might seem. They are all flawed constructs, constantly being tinkered with and modified.
We know.
Others before you have tried to enlighten him, to no avail .... suffice to say you are casting pearls before swine, and belabor the obvious.
But your efforts are appreciated.
But the Bible explicitly supports slavery and God explicitly orders the killing of women and children (when He isn't doing it himself). Let's face it God has, in the flood, killed a higher percentage of living things than any deranged scientist of polititian could ever dream of doing. Now perhaps the people were wicked, but what about the bunnies?
A better point would be the Resurrection. Should we base our inheritence laws on the possibility of resurrection? Should biology assume ressurection? Of course not. The Resurrection is a miracle. A purposeful suspension of the laws of nature.
The Sun/Earth/time suspended for Joshua would also be a miracle.
If God can create the Earth he can suspend time, raise the dead or break His own laws of nature when He sees fit.
And He does these things at times so people will believe in Him. But as the Bible says most people will discount the probable and choose not to believe in God.
Science, of course, should not assume miriacles. People should, however.
I think you misunderstood me. Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear in my earlier post. What I intended to convey to you was that one group (geologists) has evidence, which you can verify for yourself if you care to do so. The other group has no evidence, other than some ancient and venerable writings, the sources of which are not available for verification.
So, now that I've explained the two alternatives -- verifiable evidence versus no verifiable evidence -- how do you decide which group to go with? Or is a coin toss still your favored technique?
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