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."
Phaedrus: Just simple full-disclosure common sense, nothing more.
Except that what Oller ( ... appearing on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group) means by "mistakes" probably aren't mistakes, what he means by "major falsehoods" probably aren't falsehoods, and what he is trying to accomplish in all this is not what he is disclosing.
Not "versatility?" (Stunned silence.)
‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ (Luke 6:31)
"The man who killed Yitszhak Rabin said that, "God told him to do it." Most of us would not think much of that man's religion, or his God. When Jesus speaks, and teaches, he sets forth moral principles that recommend themselves as being universally apt."
"Many despise all religion because they have seen its perversions. Many good things are caricatured, but we ought not dismiss the genuine article for that reason. Take music, as an example. There is a cacophony abroad, that passes for music. Much of it gives music a bad name. But let us not reject all music because some of it is of poor quality. The same can be said of poetry. If the only poetry you have ever read was a piece of unsavory doggerel from the school yard, you might think ill of all poetry. But if you have read Keats, Cowper, or Grey you will know how enriching poetry can be."
"Aristotle said that the true character of something , should be judged by the highest that it can become. There is much bad religion, yet before one dismisses it altogether, he should consider religion as taught and lived by Jesus. 'Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.' There is something utterly right about that principle. It puts high value on every human life. It consecrates humankind; giving to each one of an equal share in guarding its sanctity."
"This is... religion---that we can use and admire."
Another non-scientific principle: so long as the pressure that caused the specialization prominently exists, the species designed for it will thrive better than the generalist.
Your statement may be true, but it shows the seeds of its own destruction. According to evolution, changes in species are due to their fitting themselves to environmental conditions WHICH ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING. Thus the species, if evolutionary theory be true, would indeed be harmed by this overspecialization - just as I am saying because change is inevitable and will occur eventually.
Let me note also that you continue to fail to address the problem of how one can get from a bacteria with some 600 genes and some million DNA base pairs to a man with some 30,000 genes and some 3 billion DNA base pairs by destroying genetic information through 'natural selection'.
Correction - you wrote page after page of ATTEMPTED refutations of my posts. The reason you gave up was that you were unable to back up your claims when I challenged you to do so in Post# 988 where I challenged you to give proof of evolutionary transformations and disprove the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum, you were also unable to respond to my challenge in Post# 989 to show how an egg laying animal would become a live bearing one, and you were unable to respond to my challenge in Post# 991 to show detailed proof contradicting Behe's statement in post #984 that the eye spot could not have evolved as Darwin had claimed.
Seems to me that it is I who should be saying that you are disregarding the strong proofs against evolution which have been presented to you and which you are unable to refute.
That is not a scientific proof that prokaryotes descended from archaea. In fact there is no evidence that prokaryotes arose after archaea other than the wishful thinking of evolutionists. In any case the genetic differences between the two make it impossible for one to have descended from the other.
Oh, you mean like the way we've settled down in physics and have no more significant problems to resolve? Even for you, this is a pretty feeble tack to take.
No it is not feeble. If evolution were a valid scientific theory then new scientific discoveries should be support evolution instead of disproving it. In fact I challenge you to show any biological discovery found worthy of a Nobel Prize which does not disprove evolutionary theory.
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