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."
Okay, okay. Look, I did not deliberately lie. Your post DOES highlight a fairly significant lapse in reading comprehension, but my statement was not an intentional falsehood. Fair enough?
I appreciate your concern, but I am neither insulted nor hurt by the posts in question. The poster appears to have no capacity to formulate any malicious intent. He is an embarrassment to his side of the debate, but you will eventually learn to ignore him, as most of us already do.
It would have been just as easy to forbid slavery. And, of course, a slave is not a servant. A slave is property. Do you consider beating another human being to the point where he takes two days to get up "proper treatment". Never mind that this may have been an improvement over previous standards. The discussion began with the assertion that the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament, did not contain obsolete or incorrect information. So are these rules for the treatment of other human beings correct for all time?
I'm not sure that's true. Greek science was, of course, developed in a culture which is outside of our theology, and I don't think the Greeks used their logic, geometry, etc. to build a case for their Olympian gods either. Science in the modern world pretty much started with Galileo, and you know the story of his problems with religious authorities. Before Galileo, there was Aquinas, who tried to use logic (not what we'd call "science") to prove the existence of God. His proofs, although ingenious, never really succeeded (otherwise, faith wouldn't be necessary). The Five Ways of Proving that God Exists. So I really don't know of any attempts to use science to prove God's existence. I don't see how science -- which is limited to working with testable phenomena like matter and energy -- could deal with such an issue.
Yes, for lack of evidence. As long as a natural explanation is available, and testable, and it fits the evidence, I see no need to leap to supernatural causes, which cannot be tested. Admittedly, it's a mindset, but that's the mindset that has created our technological civilization.
Three years! I can't even imagine! I was frustrated and exhausted with this thread alone! This does shed some light on your attitude and thank you for telling me.
That's only the beginning of it. When you've been around a while, you'll see the same old arguments being refuted again and again, only to be brought up yet again in a new thread -- by the same people! It does get tiresome, and it can shape one's attitude toward those who play by such rules.
Anti-Darwinist, perhaps, but certainly not anti-evolutionist. It was Darwin who "won" Stalin over to atheism. The following quote referencing Henry Morris sheds some light on evolution and communism:
Another interesting facet of history is the connection between evolution and communism. With communism the struggle of "race" is replaced by the struggle of "class" as history is viewed as an evolutionary struggle.
Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were evolutionists before they encountered Darwin's "The Origin of Species" - (Dec 12, 1859) Engels wrote to Marx: "Darwin who I am now reading, is splendid" (Morris 1989, 83 quoting Zirkle). Like Darwin, "Marx thought he had discovered the law of development. He saw history in stages, as the Darwinists saw geological strata and successive forms of life... In keeping with the feelings of the age, both Marx and Darwin made struggle the means of development" (Morris 1989, 83 quoting Borzin). "There was truth in Engel's eulogy on Marx: 'Just as Darwin had discovered the law of evolution in organic nature so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history'" (Morris 1989, 83 quoting Himmelfarb).
"It is commonplace that Marx felt his own work to be the exact parallel of Darwin's. He even wished to dedicate a portion of Das Kapital to the author of The Origin of Species" (Morris 1989, 83 quoting Barzum). Indeed, Marx wished to dedicate parts of his famous book to Darwin but "Darwin 'declined the honor' because, he wrote to Marx, he did not know the work, he did not believe that direct attacks on religion advanced the cause of free thought, and finally because he did not want to upset 'some members of my family'" (Morris 1989, 83 quoting Jorafsky).
Other Soviet Communist leaders are evolutionists as well. Lenin, Trostsky, and Stalin were all atheistic evolutionists. A soviet think tank founded in 1963 developed a one-semester course in "Scientific Atheism" which was introduced in 1964. Also, a case can be made that Darwinism was influential in propagating communism in China.
Interestingly, according to Morris, Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University, the co-founder of the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution is a Marxist in philosophy, along with other distinguished Harvard evolutionary scientists and university professors across the country. One has to ask - could a person espouse the Marxist view and tolerate creationism?
Evolutionism has proven itself to be blight not only upon intellectualism but also general morality, your disingenuous claim ("one must assume that it's other countries that are based on evolution, not communist . . . ones") notwithstanding. No wonder folks are beginning to clamour for disclaimers!
Hey. If you want to keep company with the likes of Lenin, Trotsky, and Marx, be my guest. I prefer Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, and others who are not so stupid as to omit God from the bigger picture.
Shirley, you cannot have forgotten the last time this was pointed out to you.
And Cardinals Ximenez and Richelieu. And Leopold of Belgium. And Ian Paisley. And the Taliban. It's a package deal - you also get all those who have perpetrated evil in the name of God, as well.
Creationists have an advantage, too. They can claim divine intervention for any and every kind of inexplicable phenomenon. This may not sit well with those who depend upon senses and experience alone as a determinent of truth, but it does not have to.
The fact that scientists of both stripes conclude the universe entails substances dating in the billions of years bears not the slightest impediment toward what the Bible teaches in all its simplicity, considering they attest to a Creator with no beginning or end. A curved universe (as scientist are beginning to learn exists!) is fine testimony to a single creator eternal in nature, for a circle has no beginning or end.
But I'm with you entirely in viewing as rather comical the scurrying and obfuscation evidenced by these die hard atheist/evolutionist types. Nonsensical, really. Oh well. It is unbecoming of us to relish in their self-delusions. Such are we ourselves by nature, right?
If, with respect to the sciences they believe the same thing, then I suppose so. But insofar as their religious beliefs depart from Scripture, I must part their company and I have.
No, no! They weren't real Christians! But Stalin, now there's a true evolutionist!
</idiotic double standard>
Very clever, but it's still an invalid and illegitimate argument. The truth of a theory or belief does not depend on the niceness or nobility of its believers, luckily for Christians.
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