Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[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."

[Fester Chugabrew]

"Why do you consider it to be an aberration?"

Because it is inconsistent with the history, teachings, and practices of the Catholic Church in general. Just like pedophilia is an aberration the Catholic Church must deal with. A negative. A "mutation" that proves destructive as do most all mutations.

[Tribune7]

But that same reason should be able to tell you that a biggersmarterstronger person would be able to do the same to you.

In which case reason would tell you to be the best slave that you possibly can.

Pride would tell you to fight. That's an emotion.

[Tribune7]

You answer my question I'll answer your question.

[Tribune7]

The king claimed his rights came from god, -- so I'd suppose that the FF's were trying to 'one up' him. -- But its always been politically fashionable to put the creator on your side.

The most reasonable thing to think is that the Founding Fathers believed what they wrote. Why would you think otherwise?

[js1138]

I would say that the right to be free was endowed at creation. So, why did the Constitution allow for slavery?

Part two: Slavery was allowed in the constitution because many of the participants in the constitutional convention were slave owners. It was justified by reference to leviticus -- see the link in my previous post. If Christianity clarified the problem of slavery, making it clearly immoral, why did it take 1860 years for Christians to notice that? (except for Quakers). And speaking of Quakers, why is it that the twig branch of Christianity with the fewest members and the least concern for literalism, the first to notice the evil inherent in slavery?

[js1138]

I've answered your question in post #2625. Your turn.

[Fester Chugabrew]

"Thank you for advocating that Scientologists version of creation deserves equal time with the Christian version. Ditto for the Hindu, Yoruba, Shinto, Shiite, Ossetian, and Parsee versions."

I think these can be lumped together and expressed in general terms as needed. See my previous post where I addressed the manner and degree to which creationism can be introduced in an academic setting without necessitating indulgence in every little aspect of the theory.

Heck, we're only dealing with the universe and how it is observed and interpreted by all of the above. Since when do evolutionists hold the only answers to science? I really don't understand their fears with respect to the issue. Would you please explain to me why creationism poses a legitimate threat to mankind?

[Aric2000]

I must admit my comment was overreaching with respect to the bigger argument, but it was addressed to a specific individual who seems to think creationism is prima facie non-science, non-intellectual, etc. In fact I would venture to say it is a recurring theme around here.

But creationism is Nonscience, non-intellectual.

You read it in a book, a book that claims to have been written by men who were shown what to write by god.

That is the ONLY proof that you have of creationism. it is indeed, Non-scientific/non-intellectual. Anyone can read the book and think they know all the answers. But to look at science and what it has found and to try to understand it, takes work, very intellectual and VERY scientific.

To say the bible is the truth is fine in religion, but not in science.

[donh]

The size of the beak goes up and down according to rainfall.

It is the shape of the beak, not particularly the size, that differentiates finches. Different shapes--different food specializations. Just for fun, you could actually read something before reporting on it once in a while, or would that violate your religeous scruples?

[js1138]

Part three: Another justification for slavery was the claim that Africans were not fully human, or that they were descendents of Ham, and were being punished by God (although my understanding is that the consequenses of sin only visit the children unto the third and fourth generation).

[Aric2000]

Keep trying, it is obvious that you do not understand evolution. You need to study up a bit.

[js1138]

You answer my question I'll answer your question.

I've answered your question fully and completely. I'm waiting for the reason God sanction slavery.

[f.Christian]

Where does science come from---technology/knowledge---philosophy...

pick up the pieces---you need some!

You got your puzzle in layers---rubble!

[VadeRetro]

VadeRetro: "Have a few hundred in the vertebrate realm. While we're at it, have some Phylum-Level Transitions."

webber: How strange. There's verbal discription of these so called missing links, and yet.....................no pictures. I wonder why? Surely there must be millions upon millions of these missing links strewn all over the globe since they lived millions of years during their transition to another species, and yet they only talk about them.......NO PICTURES!!! To me, that says it all.

I gave you two links in post 1369 and you tried to dismiss of both of them with the above hand-wave. But are there really no pictures on this web page? That's what you're saying. "To me, that says it all."

[PatrickHenry]

It means that the ability to reason could not have endowed us with any rights.

Good God, man! Our capacity to reason is the only justification for our rights. A horse can't reason, so we own horses and use them for brute labor. We slaughter and eat cattle. We catch fish and chop them up and can them for food. All this because they can't reason so they have no rights -- unlike humans.

[donh]

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.

Yet again, in your haste to answer, you have failed to submit the proof I'm sure you would have gotten to, had it not slipped your mind, that abiogenesis had to be a single leap from random amino acids to fully functioning prokariotes.

I'll leave room below for you to corrent the omission.

...

[js1138]

You answer my question I'll answer your question.

Possibly because any system of ideas that has as its final authority, a book, rather than a method for testing ideas, will lead to atrocities (see Islam). The difference between science and religion is not in their respective lists of "facts", but in their methods of obtaining and testing facts.

[Tribune7]

If the right not to be a slave was endowed at creation, why is slavery explicitly sanctioned in Leviticus?

For the same reason Leviticus sanctions divorce: because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.

[Fester Chugabrew]

"You read it in a book, a book that claims to have been written by men who were shown what to write by god."

I must admit from the start that I personally accept at face value exactly what the Bible says about creation, and so far I have not found anything revealed by science that directly contradicts the Bible.

At the same time, I do not need a book to tell me the universe around me is filled with things that demonstrate design and purpose. Nor do I need a book to tell me that design necessitates intelligence. A "gut feeling", as it were - and it is one that has led to superstitions, religions, and beliefs of so many types as to outnumber evolutionists 10 to 1 - is that a higher being was/is behind the whole picture.

I have a suspicion that many who claim to be scientists employ a "gut feeling" of their own. One that suggests that just because two fossils are similar, the life forms represented therein must have come from the same "random" process. Why do I have this suspicion? Because I have yet to see them provide evidence of a comprehensive mechanism that can produce evolutionary change simply by "chance."

Sure, man comes up with nutty notions when he contemplates existence without the Bible and is still convinced there is a God. Why don't you kick them all out of public schools and scientific research and see what kind of bonehead science emerges?

[js1138]

We slaughter and eat cattle. We catch fish and chop them up and can them for food. All this because they can't reason so they have no rights -- unlike humans.

I hope you don't mean this literally. There are millions of humans without the innate capacity to reason. Not to mention those who are too young to have developed it.