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."
Guess that quoting your posts is lying now? Is that the Clintonian definition of lying or the dictionary one?
If you think that gravity has been observed, what color is it?
1254 posted on 12/28/2002 9:22 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic
The question isn't if gravity is true on Earth (by the way, how old do you believe the Earth is?) but if gravity also applies on Sirius. Justify your answer. Compare and contrast with the O.J.Simpson Case.
1262 posted on 12/28/2002 10:18 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic
All the above were posted in reply to newguys's statement that gravity is an observed fact and evolution is not. Newguy was absolutely correct as you finally admit. Your dishonesty (and that of other evolutionists) in attacking him for making that statement shows the dishonest mode of discourse of yourself and your friends. It places all of you in the halls of shame.
1627 posted on 12/31/2002 6:06 AM PST by gore3000
It can't be very difficult for someone who has surveyed all Nobel Prize winning work and has declared that it all disproves evolution. An intellect of such sweeping power should be able to give us his answer. HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?.
What's a platypus?
A platypus is a living, breathing animal, it is not a fossil. Are you displaying your ignorance or your dishonesty?
It's an egg-laying mammal. Reptiles didn't invent live birth. Mammals did.
Actually you are wrong on that, fish invented live bearing - which sort of disproves evolution some more. Anyways, as I have shown you (and you seem to remember) there is absolutely no species from which all the features found in the platypus could have descended. It has features from many tremendously diverse species. In addition, you still cannot show the change in the reproductive system from eggs to live bearing.
Who would? Why do you think owning one is wrong?
This is a sentiment found in nearly every culture.
So was slavery until 150 years or so ago.
IMHO, in virtually all communist (atheistic) countries and many dictatorships, the living conditions are roughly the same as slavery for all but the ruling elite.
That is, in all countries whose political philosophy is based on the theory of evolution...
Yup. As for the reasons to oppose slavery, aside from "I wouldn't want to be a slave," which is essentially the Golden Rule, there's a very good economic reason. I posted this almost a year ago:
In Toqueville's splendid "Democracy in America," near the end of the book he is taking a slow boat-ride down the Ohio River. He described what he saw along the Kentucky bank and on the Ohio bank. This is in the 1830s (and obviously before the Civil War).
Ohio was hustling and bustling. Kentucky was languid and pastoral. Toqueville observed that on each bank of the river there existed the same climate, same soil, same people, same language, same religion, same everyting -- the only difference was that Kentucky had slavery. He brilliantly concluded that in Ohio, work was honorable, and men were out there, building and hauling and getting things done; while in Kentucky, work was that "they" did, and gentlemen were supposed to follow leisure persuits (hunting, gambling, wenching, etc.), so Ohio prospered while Kentucky stagnated.
Reading Toqueville was the first time I realized that not only was slavery bad for "them", but it was bad for "us" too.
Does not help you.
Are you displaying your ignorance or your dishonesty?
I'm displaying yours.
Actually you are wrong on that, fish invented live bearing - which sort of disproves evolution some more.
Unless mammals and some snake species inherited the fish version--Is that what you're claiming, Mr. I-don't-believe-in-evolution?--then I'm still not wrong. Mammalian live birth was not a feature of the earliest mammals but was invented after mammals split from reptiles.
In addition, you still cannot show the change in the reproductive system from eggs to live bearing.
Holes in the evidence trail are not holes in the process.
Are you aware that God's own Son, Jesus Christ, had the flesh flayed from His body in repeated floggings? Are you aware that He was sinless, and was nonetheless tortured thus? By wicked, foul men who deserved not to kiss His feet?
Did you know that He was then butchered with nails driven through His wrists and feet, and hung by these wounds to die in agony?
God allowed this to be done to His one perfect Son, but in "your world", you feel that God should prevent such things from happening to those who spit on His Word, and on His Son?
I return to your plea that we be "reasonable" here. You come across like a bag of self-centered opinions which are not worth the foul breath that bleats them.
Please cite the Biblical chapter and verses which give slave-beating permission, so that we can study and discuss them in context. That's reasonable, isn't it?
To the extent that you mean "yes," then null turns into the question of "the time before the big bang." Same old flasher, new raincoat. As Physicist says, time exists within the universe; the reverse does not apply.
One minor clarification - a field which is null is not simply omitted. The field always exists, and thus the possibility of a value - but in the null instance, a value for the field (including zero) it does not exist.
This looks more like you really meant "no" above. I don't see where this null applies to the universe.
‘But I say to all of you: In the future, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty One.’ (Matthew 26:64)
"If the universe is moral, (and the fact that such a person as Christ existed, is strong evidence that it is), then what Jesus said about himself and the future, must come true. If morality has an infinite source, and backing, then the moral excellence of Christ will ultimately... triumph---over evil."
"I know some very agreeable people. I know some that I would call gentle giants. But their easygoing spirit is never a threat to greed and corruption. Kindness, patience, understanding, and love are not better than envy and bitterness, if they only ever exist as counterweights to their opposites. A good man who is content to coexist forever with badness, and wrong, cannot be a good man in any absolute sense."
"The goodness of Jesus is surpassing because he not only sorrowed over sin, and was outraged by it, he set himself against it, and warned his enemies that by suffering for it, he would rise above it, and eliminate it."
"If our universe is a moral one, then Jesus' values can never be viewed in any offhand way. Rather, he must be seen as a hazard to every act, motive, system, institution, or law, that is not in sympathy with him. A question that governments and their constituents ought to ask is: Are we making laws; invoking policies that clash with Christ and the direction of his Spirit? If so we are building badly. The universe itself will not back us. The future belongs to Christ-and to all who follow him."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.