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."
It's really very simple. My life and the lives of my loved ones have value to me and meaning for me. My place in a livable society, and the responsibility to maintain and improve it for them, yields the same valuable result for you and yours. It's an vast series of economic transactions of convenience for the "good" of each of us resulting in the "good life" for all of us.
No overarching morality needed, no beyond-the-grave coercion needed, no gods needed. Don't think so? Then let the oil, electricity, clean water, and food distribution networks break down and see what happens to our wonderful little civilization and all our loving, considerate, god-fearing, moral people.
Well, Elohiem is plural.
If I said anything that sounded Kantian to you, it was entirely accidental.
You cannot arbitrarily decalre God to be immune from the problem of existence simply by declaring Him outside of space and time.
There was nothing arbitrary in my statement. Any intellectual being existing solely within space/time (including physical laws, geometry, etc.) --- cannot be God for the very reason that Physicist gave in explaining why there is no "before" the big bang, i.e. no "south" of the South Pole. If the being only exists "in" space/time, the being cannot be "before" space/time.
The universe can also be seen as outside of space and time.
I am not aware of any Cosmology, Astronomy or Physics which allows this universe to exist except as space/time, e.g. the inflationary model. Space/time is created as the universe expands.
Whatever bakes your cake.
You simply can't see the folly of your position can you? Yes, your loved ones have value "to you," another meaningless rock, but they do not have intrinsic objective value. They can't possibly. They have meaning to you, but the meaning you feel for them is just a meaningless chemical process in your materialistic brain. Next time you grieve for a lost loved one, might I suggest that you remember that the grief you feel is a mere chemical process on your brain....see if that will provide you with any comfort in your time of loss (I mean that respectfully). Under materialism, nothing can have value, yet you assign it value anyway. That is precisely the hopeless dichotomy I was talking about.
Once again, you fail to see or understand any viewpoint but your own. So, why even discuss it?
First, what people is done because people are basically evil. Who said our people were God-fearing? We live in a nation far removed from the God-fearing nation it was in the 1600s. That being said, it is first and foremost Christians who feed the starving, hurting people worldwide today. Who is the first in after an earthquake or hurricane - Christian organizations. See any muslims or hindus doing this worldwide? Not on your life. In fact, it was Christians who opened the first hospitals and orphanages in the West, and it was the Puritans who introduced universal education for children.
On the other hand, what has atheism contributed to the world - Stalin, Mao, hundreds of millions of dead in this century alone. Atheism produces only ugliness becuase it is empty and devoid of any values. Human beings have no worth if they come from rocks.
Stop assigning things to me I didn't say. It was true in his case. Is it true in yours? There are people who claim to believe in God and evolution - they are the saddest case of all.
If you believe that evolution is the best scientific explanation for what we are today, you must believe that god does NOT exist, and that NO one has a soul, that everyone is just a piece of the celestial rock that happens to think.
It seems you are now less dogmatic about evolution. Now, you say you believe in it. Tell me, where do human beings get their value? hmmm? Do they have value? If they do, where does that value come from? Certainly not from evolutionary theory! Where?
Thank God for that. Do you wish to bring back the Cristian Taliban?
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