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."
What's a platypus? Aren't you the guy who sooner or later dumb-dumbs on the platypus on every crevo thread?
It's an egg-laying mammal. Reptiles didn't invent live birth. Mammals did.
Happy New Year, numb-nutz!
You seem to be rejection the kinetic theory of gasses, quantum mechanics, lasers, radioactive decay, industrial quality control, telephone trunk line scheduling, military operations planning, convoying ships to avoid submarines, cryptography, inter alia. Perhaps you have some substitute for the currently used methods?
Is this a quote from you, or from someone else posting here under the rubric of "Fester Chugabrew"?:
Yeah continental drift alright, like your drift away from the subject.
If you don't want lectures about staying on point, then return the complement.
Only tell me how evolution, with all its guesses as to how so many species have come about, holds more water than the simple explanations contained in the Bible.
By making guesses in such a manner, and regarding detailed material evidence, such that their likelihood can be assessed by technical means, so that the potential to refute them exists.
Science may not be your cup of tea, but practically the whole point of it is to be accessible for critical examination by anyone who can draw breath. Since God operates behind the curtains whenever he pleases, there's not a lot you can examine critically with any great hope of learning anything anyone of any religeous pursuasion can cash at the bank.
Everything in the bible might be true, at least aligorically, but so what? Science is interested in things involving material evidence it can dig into.
Please at least tell me you understand why you can't go south of the south pole. If you can grasp that, you're halfway there.
You are trying to explain a phenomenal that You, I, or anyone has no concept to think out of that box. I can no more comprehend that reasoning, than you can explain it. In other words, the very idea that you are human disqualifies you from being able to explain the concept.
Sorry, that doesn't fly. Don't sit there and call me wrong if you can't show exactly how and where I'm wrong. Science is strictly put-up-or-shut-up.
Moreover, few things are more pointless than adopting the (manifestly anti-intellectual) position, "the universe cannot be understood by humans" to a physicist. If I had the smallest particle of sympathy for such an abdication, I'd have a different job.
It's like the educated penguin trying to explain to one of its peon peers why its impossible for birds to fly.
No, it's not like that at all. It's more like someone saying, "there's no such thing as an irrational number, because all numbers can be expressed as a rational fraction. I don't know how and I can't prove it to you, but there it is. Don't bother showing me the trivial proof that the square root of 2 is irrational, because it's just not clever enough."
Ultimately, what you're saying is that anything goes, nothing is knowable, nothing can be proven, and words don't mean things.
This is no different than the processes engaged by scientists who hold creationist assumptions. By ruling out even the remote possibility that a single divine being may be involved in all that is observed, those who hold an entirely materialists view of the universe set up an unncessary dichotomy.
On the surface, maintaining a strict line between materialist and ID theories sounds fine. But what if a certain divine being has a greater hand in existence than we have yet to comprehend?
The scientists upon whose shoulders all scientists stand did not at all think it wrong, strange, bad, or unscientific to include God in the general picture. Only recently have certain scientists decided to climb off those shoulders and trapse about half cocked with their narrow, pre-conceived notions.
In my view, there is plenty of weight in creationist thought to be considered alongside a purely materialistic view. As for a disclaimer in school books, I don't think that's enough.
A good teacher of the sciences today understands that any textbook may easily be outdated by the time it goes to print. See if the textbooks in Louisiana and Alabama are up to date WRT the new Tree of Life theory.
A good teacher does not stifle the inquiring mind with his/her own preconceived notions. That's not education. That's indoctrination.
I know there is concern about the introduction of religion in public schools once creationism is given some thought. Frankly I'd rather have the camel's nose of religion under the tent of education than the horse's ass of evoultion sitting on education's face.
Evidence for this claim?
Took some time to look into this. Unfortunately I made the claim before I had evidence and must now suffer a continued reputation as a bad scientist.
What I did discover, however, is that those who have this information prefer (for obvious reasons) not to divulge it. So . . . I will happily discard the claim altogether. It was not germane to the subject at hand anyway.
FWIW, there are public examples and publications indicating that certain academia are no more enlightened today than they were in Galieo's day, i.e. they're more interested in keeping a job than in pursuing the truth.
You can do your own google search on the two words 'dinosaurs' and 'gravity' and you'll get a very large number of hits. Ten years ago Holden was the only person on the internet talking about anything like that but the idea appears to have attained critical mass as of late.
It is the standard tactic of people like "PatrickHenry" to attempt to demonize others or cast others as crackpots, but you only have to read a few of PH's own posts to grasp the fact that he doesn't really know anything about science and that he isn't really contributing anything to any sort of a discussion. It's really all just about character assasination.
The people in Ohio and other states are now grasping the fact that this is a legitimate political issue, and that the American people ultimately have a right to determine how their own tax dollars are to be spent educating their children. Evolutionists claiming that the dictates of science override democratic practices are on no better ground than those who would claim that environmental issues such as the preservation of the snail darter in some lagoon should override democracy. I suspect that a majority of educated Americans now believe that evolution is an ideology and not a legitimate branch of science; these battles against an entrenched and militant group of people such as we observe in internet crevo debates could not be being won otherwise.
But they ARE being won. The evolutionists are going to lose in America and they may end up having to find some other place to peddle their wares. Perhaps Haiti...
Ah yes, the good old days. Back when you were posting as "medved" we always knew what we had, because you posted your entire multi-page inventory of nonsense into every thread that came along. By comparison, your current technique isn't really objectionable at all. Goofy, certainly, but that's no big deal.
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