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."
Same here. I must have misunderstood your earlier post. I just wanted it clear that the term "unalienable" applies specifically to the rights. It's not an adjective -- in the text of the Declaration -- that describes God.
Saying you don't wish to be murdered is quite different from saying it is wrong to murder. What you want and what is right are two different things. You have already said absolute rights exist, so your statement above is more consistent with saying rights are personal not universal. Either rights exist universally or they don't - which is it?
I can derive morality without resorting to mysticism. Beyond a certain point, you are left with "because I say so."
Why don't you just admit it - you can't account for where morals come from. "Because I say so" is moral relativism as the morals are then relative to YOU - because YOU say so. Jews were murdered as subhumans because "Hitler said so."
You can't win this argument because logic and truth are on my side. We just go around in circles and as I blow up each one of your arguments, you come back to morals "just are."
In that case, I can't possibly tell if your statement here is rational. If you want to question rationality, then you are not allowed to draw the line at your arguments. B-O-O-M-E-R-A-N-G
Sigh. I'm so tired of this pitiful head-in-shell argument. The fact that you can't easily prove ideas about the natural world to be absolutely true is not an invitation to check your brains in at the door. One may quite sensibly exercise one's rational facilities, even in face of uncertainty about the nature of the issue being addressed.
Well, sure it does, but that doesn't make it axiomatically true. We don't legislate for God, even when it appears that we want to. Rights demonstratably come from guns, and the Second Amendment backs that up. If rights came from God, why would God need backup deputies?
Even if one generally accepted macro-evolution why the insistance on common descent? (Rhetorical question. I know the answer.)
Point taken. Even if the common descent pillar were lost along with the randomness pillar, there would be plenty important reasons remaining to continue research in genetics and natural selection. And whatever dealt the blow to the pillars would be a new area of inquiry as well.
IMHO, the attraction of biology to the epistemologically zealous mathematicians, physicists and information theorists need not be fatal – except perhaps to some 150 year old thinking.
Really? When was the last time you were knocked down by the continental drift? When did you last see a case of a stellar evolutionary lifetime? When was the last time you put a bandage on a neutrino-induced wound?
More importantly though to create life you need to have organisms that function like those that exist otherwise they could not have been the precursors of the life we know.
You mean like prokariotes so closely resemble social ants?
It also must be said Don that in all the experiments conducted we have never seen a living thing that behaves differently in all the essential elements of life than all the others.
Which proves what? Have we exhausted all possible such experiments now? Does that mean the continents never drifted until about 1950?
This is very strong evidence against your wishful thinking about the possibility of abiogenesis.
In what manner is my thesis's evidence different from, or inferior to, that supporting Behe's and Dembski's basic implied assumption that the ONLY possible explanation for life involves stray amino junk suddenly leaping together into a prokariote? The only significant difference is that my thesis does not involve trying to convince everyone that a camel can pass through a needle's eye--with or without God shoving on the Camel's rear.
No, it isn't. Nowhere, at any time, including in post#6016 of this thread, have I rejected God as a possible explanation of "anything". Naturally, I don't expect the same courtesy from your side of the table.
I am not interested in what is axiomatic, just what is true. Axiomatic is not synomymous with "universal" or "absolute." Axioms occur when people cannot find any other reason why something is true; so they just say, it must be true "by definition."
We don't legislate for God, even when it appears that we want to. Rights demonstratably come from guns, and the Second Amendment backs that up. If rights came from God, why would God need backup deputies?
It is not a matter of legislating for God, it is a matter of bringing human law into harmony with the universal moral absolutes of God. When people do that, good things happen. Notice the United States flourished and thrived under that principle...until now that is, when god-hating darwinian gods in black robes play god and decide what is right and wrong and who lives and dies (e.g. Roe v. Wade). Rights come from guns? - you mean "might makes right." That is a pitiful philosophy becuase it makes no distinction at all between power and goodness. If that is true, then Hitler was right. Was Hitler right donh?
If rights came from God, why would God need backup deputies?
He doesn't. Men take it upon themselves to defy God - they certainly are not his deputies. God-fearing men will obey God for the most part. God-defying men will do whatever they want, and they have that freedom, but they will answer for their actions after this life.
The more likely conclusion is that you can't read for comprehension without a great deal of effort. Human talents are both a useful resource, and have dangerous and disfunctional manifestations. This is not a contradictory set of conditions.
So? Everyone had confidence in Newton's laws and the fixed continent theory, and the earth-centric universe, once upon a time.
The burden of proof isn't on me - it's on you. You are the one that is suggesting a reality that is inconsistent with science, all known observation and the human senses, so you are the one who needs to provide proof that your system is even possible. In addition, your suggestion that God could have imagined it up is not consistent with who MY GOD says He is in the bible! This God who would dream it up must be a god of your or Popper's imagination!
One may quite sensibly exercise one's rational facilities, even in face of uncertainty about the nature of the issue being addressed.
How can anything that is contrary to science, human life experience and all known evidence be rational? If the universe is an illusion, you can easily prove it - just start living like it is an illusion (see how far you get).
You can't on one hand question whether rationality really exists and then expect your argument to that effect to remain rational. Your argument is self-stultifying and becomes meaningless. Simple logic. A similar argument would be "my sister is an only child."
Ok, you got me there. I should have said "disembodied pre-organism". The argument remains the same, and Yockey is still, it appears to me ,firing from the same camp as Behe & Dembski, & I am still quite skeptical that it is even worth considering that prokariotes could ONLY have arisen--fully formed, all at once, BANGO!--from an amino acid junk pile. Obviously there must be an infinite number of viable explanations, given the scant nature of the available evidence that could be employed to eliminate options at our present level of knowledge.
Hitler was smart to take over all the guns in sight. If you want rights you had better have guns, or something equivalent. Cows got no guns and cows got no rights. This is another head-in-the-sand philosophy that's been all too popular for all too long. It results in the wholesale slaughter by their own governments of those who take it seriously, from time to time.
Was Hitler right donh?
No. But unlike jews, he was armed. Is rights thereby rendered an imperfect and potential unjust concept if not carefully and publicly nursed&guarded? Yup. That's why we have a Bill of Rights. And it can't be helped. I can demonstrate that rights come from guns, because there are some fairly simple experiments that you can perform over and over to see the principle working. Like the American revolution, for example. You can only claim that rights come from God, because there is no direct, highly pursuasive--even for skeptics--experiment that you can run to settle the matter.
Now, it could be that both are true at once. But I have no material evidence I can't easily question regarding your thesis. And my take on rights seems to me to be a persistently urgent agenda.
At what point did I question whether rationality really exists and how did I do so?
Your argument is self-stultifying and becomes meaningless. Simple logic.
I'd advise you to stop using this phrase, you obviously don't know what it means. Show me your argument recast as a sorite or a proper set of syllogisms. "Reason" and "logic" are not synonyms.
A similar argument would be "my sister is an only child."
No. A similar argument would be "this person may or may not be my sister, so I may or may not be an only child, the evidence is uncertain".
The burden of proof isn't on me - it's on you. You are the one that is suggesting a reality that is inconsistent with science, all known observation and the human senses, so you are the one who needs to provide proof that your system is even possible.
I have not in any manner suggested that reality is inconsistent with science, and it is no more requisite on me to demonstrate that God (or Someone) didn't whop it all up 5 minutes ago, any more than it is requisite on you to demonstrate that he did it 20 billion years ago.
In addition, your suggestion that God could have imagined it up is not consistent with who MY GOD says He is in the bible! This God who would dream it up must be a god of your or Popper's imagination!
I have asked and asked, so I guess you have no answer: You have no notion, apparently, as to what the essential difference is between God imagining, or God creating, the universe. Did he create it without imagining it? I'd fire an architect who operated on that principle.
One may quite sensibly exercise one's rational facilities, even in face of uncertainty about the nature of the issue being addressed.
How can anything that is contrary to science, human life experience and all known evidence be rational? If the universe is an illusion, you can easily prove it - just start living like it is an illusion (see how far you get).
How many times are we going to repeat this before your tape reel breaks? There is no way you can demonstrate that an imagined up universe is any less sound, deep, or consistent than a non-imagined universe. You know nothing of the imagineer's capacities.
On what basis is Hitler wrong?
I can demonstrate that rights come from guns, because there are some fairly simple experiments that you can perform over and over to see the principle working. Like the American revolution, for example.
Logically, please tell me how you go from, "rights are successfully enforced with guns" to "therefore, rights come from guns"? The conclusion does not flow from the premise...once again. Just because you OBSERVE a behavior works, that doesn't mean it is morally right. In fact, you just said Hitler was wrong - how??? Pragmatic is not synonymous with correct. If I rob a liquor store and get away with it, it works for me!
You can only claim that rights come from God, because there is no direct, highly pursuasive--even for skeptics--experiment that you can run to settle the matter.
Only logic and and your life experience. What more is there? Rights come from moral principles and moral principles come from God. How do I know? Two ways. First, the ONLY alternative to moral absolutes is moral relativism (by default), and I can show that relativism is illogical and that no one (except the psychotic or mentally ill) can live like a relativist. Second, moral absolutes are logical and fit right in with human experience and behavior. I CAN and DO live as if moral absolutes exist, and SO DO YOU.
And so will God fearing men, if history is any judge, and with even less reason to react with any natural humane compunction they may still possess, since they are righteously doing God's work.
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