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."
Does this mean you believe in an absolute morality after all? :-)
No. ;->
So you feel that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with slavery?
No more so than other other sort of punishment. I do think there is something intrinsically wrong with racism or breeding people to be slaves.
So...you'd see no moral problem with returning to, say, debtor's prison, indentured servitude, variations on the notion of galley slaves? Vast farms of convicted drug users employed by the state as plantation slaves? Remind me not to vote for you early and often.
No Don, they are not my direct words.
So, I guess you are just going to continue to treat my question like ass wipe instead of answering it.
You've asked several questions and I did provide answers. I'm going to assume you're referring to the one in which you want to know if Jesus would approve of you impregnating another man's wife at his and hers request. The Bible says don't commit adultery. If you ask my advice I'd tell you not to do it. If you go ahead and do it anyway, I'm not the final judge. I'm not even going to be an intermediate judge.
There is plenty of evidence around the people can hate god and still have moral fiber . . .
People who hate God end up spreading bitterness if they lack power and spreading death if they don't. If you hate God, you don't know God.
Nonsense. You are jealous because I am one of those who can bend destiny to my will.
As I pointed out, so do people who love god.
I didn't ask for just any old advice, I asked you to try to judge a moral dilemma.
The Bible also says, "love thy neighbor as thyself" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Therefore, whether you abdicate your duty to judge moral questions or not, my friend is quite clearly commanded by God to commit adultery with his neighbor's wife, and encourage the neighbor to do the same with his.
If you cannot bring yourself to countermand this reasoning, then I have to assume that you concede that the bible does not provide an absolute set of moral guidelines--perhaps you are holding onto an ordered priority list of God's commandments which you haven't revealed, as yet? Or perhaps you've decided that diametrically conflicting absolute moral laws are just ducky?
A child ask you to shoplift a toy. Doing so will make him happy. Are you loving him if you do?
Love is not the same as permissiveness. Saying no does not mean you have failed to love.
The implication here is that there is something out of compliance with God's rule of love regarding my neighbor's request other than that it is a source of conflict between two of God's laws. You have not demonstrated that in any manner whatsoever. Outside of this conflict (which is, I point out, the question at hand), it seems like a grownup enough request to me, for anyone who understands the nature of sterility.
Love is not the same as permissiveness. Saying no does not mean you have failed to love.
My neighbor is not an erring child, he is a responsible adult with a responsible adult concern to see his wife happy with child.
Or you can trust the wisdom of the Bible.
You get your neighbor's wife pregnant. Despite your best intentions you start seeing the child as your's and begin showing an undesired interest in his upbringing. Meanwhile, the husband starts seeing the child as more your's also. Resentments bubble to the surface, domestic turmoil ensues and the marriage breaks up.
Unfortunately, you don't want to marry the wife -- it wasn't part of the arragnement -- and she ends up raising your son in poverty.
The future I describe is much more likely based on the record of the human experience than the happy-ever-after scene you imply will occur.
My scenario has a long and proud history. And according to my informal survey, otherwise sound marriages are at least as likely to break up for lack of deperately desired issue, as for other reasons. If you have actual statistics to offer me, rather than highly unlikely bs scenarios that ascribe female emotions to males, by all means offer them up. Until then, I'll assume that you are still trying to wriggle off the hook by insisting that the posed dilemma isn't about adult humans with adult forsight about adult problems, when, in fact, it is.
Well, actually, I did trust in the bible, which says, "love thy neighbor as thyself", and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". No where do I see the commandment "assume your neighbors are like erring children whose concerns we can therefore discount in a loving relationship."
Is this sort of like the flavor of agape love we discussed earlier with exmarine? Which permits enslavement and slaughter provided it it done out of love?
Adultery, prostitution and the forcing of women to bear children have a long history.
You would have another man sleep with your wife so she could bear a child? Your wife would sleep with another man so she could bear his -- not your -- child?
Would you try to talk her into adopting?
There's also another verse that we are overlooking -- the one about "love God with all your heart, soul and mind."
If God tells you to do something and you with premeditation and purpose do specifically the opposite that is not loving God.
On the other hand, if you really are doing it out of love and not trying to get some easy sex or make a legalistic anti-Bible point, scripture says the love will cover the sin.
But you have to know love to know how that works, Don.
Let us suppose that a bear has removed my reproductive aparatus in the last bear hunt. Let us suppose that the neighbor in question is, in fact, my brother, who shares half my genes and will produce therefore, a biological equivalent of a nephew for me to raise. Adopt, eh? You don't think blood matters? Think again. In the event of my absence, for whatever reason, my relatives will look after my kin far better than they will look after a ragamuffin from another land.
Stop trying to invent roadblocks to the dilemma. No matter what you propose, I will add another codicil to restore the participants to responsible adulthood and preserve the essential dilemma--that God's commandments can conflict with each other.
On the other hand, if you really are doing it out of love and not trying to get some easy sex or make a legalistic anti-Bible point, scripture says the love will cover the sin
"Cover" the sin? Now what could that mean? Are you forwarding a claim that the Golden Rule takes precident over the Commandment against Adultery? Does that make the adultery not a sin under God's laws under the circumstances I've specified? Does this claim extend to those who would slaughter and enslave out of love? If, in fact, adultery remains a sin, are you suggesting that there is a precident list for God's commandments?
So, basically, I may take it that God has set up a universe, and set of laws for good behavior therein, wherein I can find myself in situations where, despite a desire to be good, I've no choice but to sin.
Let me just complement God for such a subtle practical joke.
"love God with all your heart, soul and mind".
This does nothing whatsoever to help. This does not resolve the dilemma, it worsens it. It makes it all the more urgent that my neighbor resolve his dilemma so that he knows which word of God to obey, and which to ignore.
But you have to know love to know how that works, Don.
I uninvite you to make snide remarks about my capacity for love.
So does sterility and bitterly appreciated resultant barrenness.
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