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."
The interesting thing is that he equates it with 1 x 10 followed by 39,999 zeroes. Even if you grant that he perhaps meant to say 1 x 1040, it's still staggeringly, stupefyingly wrong, wrong, wrong!
Please watch your notation. The expression, as given to us, was 1 x 10 followed by 39,999 zeros. I think that's written
1040(10 x 3) -1
The Theory of Evolution does not attempt to answer those questions. It has also never pretended to. That is not a flaw in the theory, that it outside the scope of the theory.
You also do not attempt to answer them. Yet they are crucial to a calculation of probability. Please share your assumptions about the pond. Otherwise your numbers are (even more) meaningless.
Oh, and in reply to your straw-grasping query: "Do you have probabilities for the other planets?" Note that the statistics I quoted include the estimated number of atoms in the entire universe... which included all planets the last time I checked.
Which has nothing to do with calculating probabilities for the spontaneous generation of life in the universe. For example, if you added all the probabilities for all of the possible ways in which life arose in the universe, the sum would equal 1 to the 8 billionth power. This is nowhere NEAR the estimated number of atoms in the universe.
But to the topic at hand, does your calculation include 1 pond, all ponds on Earth, or all ponds in the universe? It's important, don't you think?
Just goes to show this site is addictive, even for the perennially banned.
Apparently whatever you're talking about involved somebody using his or her real identity on FR, which would obviously be insane with you and five or six others like you on the forum.
http://pages.prodigy.net/jhonig/bignum/qauniver.html
Finding all of these calculations to be based upon optimistic upper threshholds, I use the more conservative 1 to the 73rd power in informed discussions.
I have a high degree of confidence in a particular conclusion. If I encounter new evidence that contradicts that conclusion, I will re-evaluate that conclusion.
I will not pretend that creation has been proven.
I didn't ask you to.
It has not, nor do I expect it to be in the near future.
Nor I. It cannot be proven. Theories can also not be proven. All, however, are theoretically falsifiable.
As for "Designer Theory," that's not mine to present and support. It speaks for itself, and very logically so.
"Not yours to present"? I've played this game with you before, haven't I? If it is logical, as you claim, it should be no trouble at all to present a chain of evidence that leads to the designer conclusion. This is your big chance to emerge from irrelevancy.
As soon as you provide your description of light, electricity, and time.
Tit for tat. Jump through your own damn hoops. Please describe gravity. Or, failing that, what evidence leads you to believe that the same force that causes apples to fall from trees also governs the orbit of the moon.
Ok the according to Dr. Stochastic The total energy being zero, it didn't have to come from anywhere”
Doesn’t that contradict the statement made by many that “energy can not be created (at least in our limited minds) nor destroyed, only changes form”
”…, it didn't have to come from anywhere”
Then what propelled the matter that became the universe, in fact, where did the matter itself come from?
Ya see, I have a small and limited theory about where the matter came from (for our universe) but, it still doesn’t explain where it originally came from. Its beginning if you will. What started the whole process of existence, whether it be inanimate or animate?
You mean "conclusion" as in "proof"? What do you mean by conclusion? Or have we played this game before, too?
Please describe gravity.
I am perfectly content with the dictionary definition for now. Beyond that gravity is something of a mystery to me, but I'm sure you evolutionists have it all figured out. I do conclude however, based on the mere presence of gravity and it's consistency, that it testifies more clearly of order and a maker than it does of randomness and chance.
I don't understand that question...or questions, perhaps?
What started the whole process of existence, whether it be inanimate or animate?
You mean, "why is there something and not just nothing?" Not even religion can answer that one. The only thing to do is take "Existence exists" as an axiom.
Maybe we should go back to the basics for a bit.
What do you think the statement of theory of evolution actually is?
The argument that sufficient time makes anything possible or even probable sounds plausible only if it is not analyzed carefully. It starts with the admission that, since even the simplest living organisms are exceedingly complicated, the beginning of life by accidental chemical reactions is very improbable.
The probability is very, very low that just the right molecules would form, come together, and spontaneously fit together to start life. But if a very unlikely thing is tried many times, the probability increases that success will finally be achieved. If there is enough time to make a large enough number of tries, the mathematical probability that it will finally occur becomes almost certainty.
Mathematically, this argument is correct. But to see if the mathematical theory really proves that life could have started accidentally, it is necessary to apply the theory to a reasonable model of the real world.
Begin with very generous assumptions about the beginning of life. Then, we assume that for a billion years the surface of the earth was covered each year with a fresh layer one foot deep of protein molecules. This would be 260 trillion tons each year, a fantastic number of molecules.
Yet, at the end of the billion years, the probability that just one protein molecule required to start life had been formed is only one chance in about 100 billion. This means that it is really mathematically impossible for life to start by accident, even if the beginning would require only a single suitable enzyme molecule.
Dr. H.P. Yockey made a similar but much more thorough calculation based on the information content of the cytochrome c molecule and obtained a probability 100,000 times smaller than ours.11
Some workers have claimed evidence that certain origin-of-life experiments have produced chains of amino acids which were non-random in order. Supposedly certain sequences of amino acids tend to form, and reportedly these sequences are similar to those found in true proteins.12 On the other hand, Miller and Orgel challenge such claims and say, "There is no evidence to show whether the amino acids within a chain are highly ordered or not."13
In any event it is quite certain that life could not start with a single protein molecule. It has been estimated by Harold Morowitz that the simplest possible living cell would require not just one, but at least 124 different proteins to carry out necessary life functions.14
Writing in his book, Energy Flow in Biology, Prof. Morowitz also estimates the probability for the chance formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known today.15 He comes up with the unimaginably small probability of one chance in 1,340,000,000.
This means one chance in the number one followed by 340 million zeros. This is about the same as the probability of tossing a coin 1,129,000,000 times and getting all heads.
Sure, that could happen, couldn't it Phizzy?
Among other things, I was an order of magnitude off. Thanks for the help.
While we're at it, maybe we should get some clarification. Since my answers were apparently not satisfactory, perhaps you can clarify both the definition of evolution, and the statement of the theory.
It could be that I'm not current, but I don't recall seeing "origin of matter" in the original scope...
I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's pure bullsh*t.
It's man's feeble stab at pretending that he is knowledgable about that which he knows absolutely nothing. It is an attempt to justify his existence while leaving God and his miracles out of the equation.
It is a one way ticket to Hell for those who believe they can't afford Heaven.
"That puts your answer off by about 46 orders of magnitude," he intoned, "making it perhaps one of the largest errors in the history of the universe."
Maybe up to that time in the history of the universe, but I have to bow to Gargantua's truly gargantuan equation of 1^40 (= 1) to 1 x 10 followed by 39,999 zeroes. Wrong by forty thousand orders of magnitude!
He did. Someone just didn't follow them. By the way, how has science historically been used concerning the issue of slavery?
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