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."
Actually, I think it was bugging him that nobody cared that he was back. Then he resorted to the same old Ted-tactics so that someone would finally get tired of him again. He should just give it up and try out for the latest Three Stooges Revival.
That may be it. I even told him, in post 1879, that his current persona wasn't objectionable. So I guess he had to push the pedal to the floor.
You're the one who "made the point" that our forefathers left "god" out of the picture, right?
Wrong, you made that point in an effort to dodge mine. [see below]
Why do you accuse me of avoiding the point when I state that our forefathers made many references to God in their writings?
Because that point is obvious, and not at issue, which you well know. You're playing debate games.
Here was my first comment to you, at 2114, which 'controverted' your "common sense" wisecrack.
You still haven't recovered face:
When it comes to existence and how things came to be the way they are right now, however, there are only TWO possibilities I know of. One of them has been - for reasons unknown to common sense - utterly squelched from the public school system for nearly a century. 2106 -FC-
'Unknown' Fester? We have a tradition, -- separarion of church & state. If we must have state supported schools, they must avoid teaching religious theory, as per the 1st. #2114
Evolution...Atheism-dehumanism---TYRANNY(pc/liberal/govt-religion/rhetoric)...
Then came the SPLIT SCHIZOPHRENIA/ZOMBIE/BRAVE-NWO1984 LIBERAL NEO-Soviet Darwin/ACLU America---the post-modern age of switch-flip-spin-DEFORMITY-cancer...
Atheist secular materialists through ATHEISM/evolution CHANGED-REMOVED the foundations...demolished the wall(separation of state/religion)--trampled the TRUTH-GOD...built a satanic temple/SWAMP-MALARIA/RELIGION(cult of darwin-marx-satan) over them---REDACTED and made these absolutes subordinate--relative and calling/CHANGING all the... residuals---technology/science === TO evolution
...via...
schlock/sMUCK IDEOLOGY/lies/bias...to substantiate/justify their efforts--claims...social engineering--PC--atheism...anti-God/Truth RELIGION(USSC monopoly)--and declared a crusade/WAR--JIHAD--INTOLERANCE/TYRANNY(breaking the establishment clause)...against God--man--society/FREEDOM/LIBERTY/SCIENCE!!
So far the score for grasping the relevance of that link (post 2275) to the evolution/creationism debate is:
Would-be sharpshooters = 0
Broad side of the barn = 1
and I listened to so much of this demagoguery(ideology/bias)* that now---
with my democratic(God/Truth/science)* views---
I can... no longer(link)---stand it,''
*...my additions!
More blue science in action. 3000 is mis-representing "The Beak of the Finch", which field report's primary point was that the finches varied because their diets had specialized, with the beaks matching against the various food source specializations.That the beaks varied in size with availability is no more relevant to this central point than the fact that humans average size increases with dietary improvement.
You attack me for saying this is not evolution, yet if overeating (or undereating) makes a man a different species, you would be the first person to say it. The size of the beak goes up and down according to rainfall. Evolution would require this to be a uni-directional change (always growing larger or smaller). Instead beak size swings back and forth like a pendulum and hence is not evolution but adaptation. The facts however, do not matter to evolutionists so they continue to tell this lie.
True, it is a place for science, real science to be taught. Evolution is not science for numerous reasons which have been explained here at length. There is absolutely no reason to teach evolution. All it has done is to promote atheism and waste scientific resources on wild goose chases for bones which have never been a source of any scientific discoveries that benefit mankind. Evolution has also never been a source of ideas for scientific inquiry but instead has held back scientific inquiry. Best example of this is junk DNA. Only evolutionists would be so arrogant (or so dishonest) as to claim that 95% of the human genome - whihc is replicated in almost all the 100 trillion cells in the body - is junk and is just there so we can look for traces of evolutionary descent. Such arrogance, or such dishonest, was of course discredited shortly after that ridiculous claim was made. Instead, what science soon found was that it is not the genes that are the active managers of living things, genes are just factories which need management, but the DNA that evolutionists called junk. Luckily real scientists do not pay attention to the idiot evolutionists.
Not true at all. Scientifically speaking for example, the chances of abiogenesis being true are far, far less by an unimaginable order of magnitude greater than the 1 in a billion chance of the DNA found in the OJ case was someone elses.
Well, I cannot stand that either. Science is about observed facts, evolution has never been observed. There also is not the least bit of evidence that any species is undergoing any kind of evolutionary transformation into another species.
To deny that gravity has not been scientifically observed is totally ludicrous. If you wish to see it for yourself though, just go on top of a 20 story building and jump. You will observe it very clearly.
Nope. You will observe the effects of gravity. You will not observe gravity itself. What if I go to the top of a 20 story building and drop a helium balloon? Would this also result in an observation of gravity? How come gravity affects people but not helium balloons?
You know, you can very easily put this debate to rest and prove everyone else wrong just by describing gravity. That you cannot can only be construed as a flaw in your position.
That stupid remark doesn't even deserve a response except the one I'm writing right now.
Evolutionists. Will they ever get back to reality?
No of course not. It will make them accountable for their actions, and the way most live, it would be totally unbeartable on Judgement Day!!!
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