Evolution Disclaimer Supported

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 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.

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."

And here I thought you were awake the last time we discussed this.

It is you who is not awake. The molecular clock is garbage as I have already shown and you have not refuted a single point I made about it. There are several reasons for this the most essential one is that we do not have any examples of half billion year old DNA, 100 million year old DNA or even million year old DNA to make comparisons to. Therefore all the samples we have (with a few exceptions that can be counted on the fingers of one hand) are of current DNA. So how can one tell how far current DNA is from millions of year old DNA if one does not have something to compare it to? The answer is one cannot. The second problem is that SUPPOSEDLY all organisms now living are equally far apart from the first life as all others, so to take one as an example of 'what is older' is totally fallacious. It is using the theory of evolution (how species supposedly descended from each other) to prove how species supposedly descended from each other. This is circular reasoning and utter nonsense. There are more problems with the molecular clock also. Since some creatures have much shorter generations than others, and mutations supposedly occur at each reproduction (how else could they happen!) the 'mutational clock' (for that is what is really being talked about here) should be going at a completely different speed for elephanst than for flys, yet evolutionists moronically claim that it goes at the same speed.

Thank you so much for your post!

Asserts, not proves.

I disagree. Descartes is a mathematician and a proof is the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning. As the article said:

Returning to the Dedication, Descartes discusses the importance that the Sorbonne faculty themselves place on rational proofs. He also notes that he intends to follow the method of investigation proposed in his Discourse on the Method. According to Descartes, geometricians rarely show the falsehood of accepted truths and demonstrations. By contrast, philosophers typically show the falsehood of contentions without venturing to explore truth. Descartes closes the dedication pleading with the faculty of the Sorbonne that their support and influence is necessary for the Meditations to be seen as a successful refutation of scepticism. The refutation of scepticism being another instance of the common ground he was trying to emphasise between himself and the Catholic theologians. As an example, here is how the article describes Descartes’ proof of God’s existence:

This, then, is his proof for God's existence: 1. We have an idea of that which has infinite perfection.
2. The idea we have of ourselves entails finitude and imperfection.
3. According to the principle of sufficient reason, there must be as much reality (formally or eminently) in the cause of any idea as (objectively) in the idea itself.
4. Therefore, the idea we have of infinite perfection originated from a being with infinite formal perfection.
5. It follows that the idea could not have originated in ourselves or our ideas of ourselves.
6. The origin of the idea could only be the real existence of the infinite being that we call God.

Descartes addresses three possible criticisms of his argument. Each of these possible criticisms suggests that our idea of infinite perfection need not be caused by God himself. A first possible criticism is based on Descartes' assumption that we initially possess an idea of the infinite, and that our idea of the finite consists of the negation of our idea of the infinite. A critic might argue that the opposite is the case: we have an initial idea of the finite and our idea of the infinite is its negation. (Just as we assumed in the example of the perfect cook above.) In this case, we could be the cause of infinite perfection by (a) taking the idea of finite imperfection from ourselves, and (b) negating this idea. However, both the idea of a cook, and the idea of a perfect cook, are finite ideas (involving only finite complexity, for instance). To arrive at the latter by the negation of the limits of the former is a possible operation for a finite mind. (There is a relation here to Anselm's reply to Guanilo's objection concerning the perfect island, in their debate on the ontological argument.) But the idea of God is not a finite idea in this sense, and cannot be arrived at by a finite mind through negation of finite ideas any more than by way of the positive imagining of ideas. (See also the Fifth Objections and Replies (II, 252).)

A second possible criticism is that the idea of infinite perfection is 'materially false and can therefore be from nothing.' More simply, the suggestion is that the idea of infinite perfection is an incoherent concept, and thus needs no explanation beyond itself. However, Descartes argues that the notion of infinite perfection is clear and distinct in the highest degree, and thus requires an explanation. (Descartes and Arnauld continue the discussion of this problem in the Fourth Objections and Replies.)

A third possible criticism is that perhaps we are potentially infinitely perfect, and thus produced the idea of infinite perfection from our hidden potential. Descartes gives three replies to this third criticism. First, if his potential perfection can be actualized only gradually (through a gradual increase in knowledge), this implies that he is finite. And, if he is a finite being, he could not produce the idea of infinite perfection. Second, he argues that even if his knowledge would increase gradually over an infinite amount of time, at no point would he have infinite knowledge. Third, he argues that the objective being of an idea cannot be produced by a merely potential being.

Another criticism raised in the Fifth Objections (II, 205ff) is that it is impossible for a finite mind to comprehend an infinite idea of God, just as (in Descartes' account) it is impossible for a finite mind to generate an infinite idea. In other words, human beings do not have an idea of God in the sense needed by Descartes' argument. Descartes replies by distinguishing between a fully adequate idea of something (which he claims a finite mind cannot have even of the most simple entity) and an 'understanding suited to the scale' of our finite intellect. In other words, of course our positive idea of God's infinity is not an adequate comprehension of God, but it is sufficient for us to know (a) that the idea could not have originated with us; and (b) that it is the idea of an infinitely perfect being. In the 'Preface' to the Meditations, Descartes discusses a criticism of this argument as it appeared in the Discourses (II, 7). There, he implicitly makes a similar distinction between the finitude of the ideas of our minds, and the possibility of finite ideas representing infinite entities (and thus having non-finite objective reality).

Following a similar line of reasoning, Descartes concludes at the end of Meditation 5 that this idea of God must be innate in him, as 'the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work' (II,35). It is from this unfalsifiable mark, then, that God's existence can be known. Recall our discussion of Descartes' views on the representational nature of mental contents, at the end of the section on Meditation 1 above: the idea of God is the only idea the mere inner characterisitics of which allow us to deduce with certainty the origin of the idea.

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