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."
I agree that their actions up to October 25, 2002 did not comport with my assertion that they want more, not less, research. In fact, they appeared to be floundering.
But on that date, Dembski gave the keynote address to a conference for "Research and Progress in Intelligent Design" at Biola University. The object of the conference was to assess status and direction of the Intelligent Design movement, and his keynote address laid out what would be necessary to become a Disciplined Science.
I have taken that as a turning point, and the movement is changing focus from legal argument to finding its place in scientific research, i.e. more research.
Sadly, I haven't yet seen them make the specific hypotheses I'd like to see - the ones I've discussed on this thread. Nevertheless, related research continues, and I'm confident that the integrity of the scientists involved will offset any prejudice they may have.
IMHO, it would have been better for the I.D. scientists to have proposed these very projects. As it is, the best they could say at a favorable conclusion is "we told you so" - and that would not sit well with many, because it was never made a formal hypothesis.
There may be more than a few who carry on this way, but I find it a real challenge to deal with the rest. If at all possible, I think those of us on the creationist side of the issue should treat the other side with respect, even though I've done my share of violating my own advice in this regard.
Frankly, I did not realize when I began conversing in this thread that the challenges would be engaging as they are. In fact, I have good reason to believe we are conversing with a few folks on "the other side" who have a tremendous grasp of scientific inquiry and knowledge.
FWIW
Okay. Then what DOES this fact depend on? If it depends on chance, then how do you know we even have inalienable rights? Is it because our forefathers paid LIP SERVICE to those, too?
Obviousy, - because the point was being made that it was necessary to have a creator 'endow' us with rights.
The fact that we have inalienable rights does not depend upon the existence of a 'creator'. - Believe in a god if you will, and leave me to my own beliefs.
2844 -tpaine-
Okay. Then what DOES this fact depend on?
Our ability to protect & defend those rights, using our constitution, of course. What else?
If it depends on chance, then how do you know we even have inalienable rights?
I use my reason to 'know'. Apparently you use faith. - You do acknowledge we have rights, don't you?
Is it because our forefathers paid LIP SERVICE to those, too?
Nope, they were smart enough to protect political/religious freedoms with our constitution, -- the latter of which you seem to be having troubles with. Why is that, fester?
Sheesh, if it weren't for the fallacy of the excluded middle, would creationists be able to speak?
"Certain elements" of the catholic church have been convicted of dallying with little boys--does that make the Pope a child-molester?
Pius XII excommunicated every communist in Italy. He couldn't have felt too cozy toward them, since he never quite got around to excommunicating any nazis.
Only if you are absolutely sure you know what the state-space and the selection criteria were, so that you could produce honest statistics. Otherwise, this is a notion brought to you by the fine offices of the American Guessing Association. This is a particularly silly example, in that the "design" of atoms seems likely to be predicated on the very fact here viewed as an astonishing coincidence.
You contention has been aptly dubbed by PH the principle of retroactive astonishment. It appears (galavanting particle physicists aside) that the universe, out of all the myrid futures that could unfold, can only unfold one. Whichever one it unfolds will seem astonishingly unlikely, but that is because all the futures that didn't happen don't get to vote.
If not, what kind of mechanism might an evolutionist propose as a cause for this kind of consistency throughout the known world?
Conservation laws arising from symmetries born of the balancing act of particles and forces in the beginning? Electrons and positrons arise from nothing, and return to nothing when they collide. Net charge is conserved--the books stay balanced. Any accountant could explain how apparently organized magic can arise from adhering like iron to a few simple accounting equations.
Do you believe it is preposterous to infer that some kind of design may be at the bottom of this?
No, not in the least, I so choose, in fact. This, however, has no bearing on science, which wants to explain things about the material world using material evidence. To the extent that ID wants to point to an immaterial cause, what ID, in my opinion, wants to ask, is for science to try to have some compentence outside this venue. It is too much to ask.
It may have an immaterial cause, but who can know? Who can know which immaterial cause? If you are talking about things immaterial, than evidence is irrelevant, and evidence is the only crank science knows how to turn.
Too fast for my blood. Unless you show me the state-space and the selection criteria, you have no notion wheather ANY starting conditions for the universe were likely or unlikely to any degree. It is a question--Chaiken and Kolmogorof notwithstanding--in my opinion, standing outside of space and time, which are what science, at minimum, need by way of evidence to think scientific thoughts about, including the construction of statistical calculations.
mmm? Still doesn't make God-shouts the obvious first guess; as the article sez: magnified quantum fluctuations. It is amusing to note that this line of reasoning holds that our supercluster's millions of galaxies is the result of something equivalent to an electron-positron annihilation during the pre-inflationary era. Talk about your compound interest, eh?
Excuse me!~~what am I, a plotted pant? I've been at great lengths--on recent threads in which you've participated--to "find anything wrong" with Christ and the 10 commandments.
Putting me aside, however, it is only in the fevered brains of creationists that there is a pitched battle between evolutionary theory and christian belief. Most western scientists have been christians, and most christians have no qualms about evolutionary theory--roman catholics, officially so.
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?.
Later you debunk ID insofar as it presents an "immaterial cause." May I ask how your suggestion qualifies as a "material cause?"
Moral judgements from within a universe that has "chance" as its only guiding principle have no weight to carry with them. If we're all just a bunch of organized gasses anyway why should your comments have any more weight than a single quark?
Please leave the moral judgments to those who understand the universe is predicated on principles of design and purpose.
Let me get this straight. You are saying that our inalienable rights derive from our ability to protect and defend them? Ummm, I think you'll have a little trouble finding reasonable people to agree with that. I'm sure there's a public school for you somewhere.
I would rather not treat the debate as a game to be won at all costs. Sheesh. The "game" was over before it started anyway. To attribute value to the work of scientists who believe in evolution (yes, they are walking oxymorons) is only based on observation.
Think of them as under the employment of One whom they do not know while their jobs result in benefits for us all, even without their knowing it. Not only so, but I think some of the arguments propsed by the other side are mind bending challenges. Real tests. And those are appreciated, too.
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