Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[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."

[gore3000]

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.

Haeckel's embryos and the moths were frauds, period. Evolutionists continue to use these frauds in textbooks. The finches have been shown to interbreed for some 20 years and the evolutionists continue to state they are different species. The fly with extra wings is one of the strongest arguments for ID but the evolutionists continue to say it proves evolution. The Hardy-Weinberg experiment is completely backwards - amino acids do not produce DNA, it is RNA reading the DNA code that produces amino acids. There is no excuse for these LIES to be continued to be promulgated in textbooks except that evolutionists do not care about science, do not care about the truth. They only care about promoting their atheistic agenda.

[B. Rabbit]

What you don't understand is that there is nothing wrong with God's existence as an axiom. It is perfectly fine to presume it in science or anything else. It is rational. There is evidence for it. It's been done before and has worked quite well.

Name it. Define when using God's existence as an axiom has worked quite well. I want you to back this up.

[B. Rabbit]

If you believe in the above then Intelligent Design certainly is science. When we look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling no one would think that it arose by the random fall (upwards yet!) of buckets of paint. We make the logical conclusion that an intelligent designer, a great artist painted it. While the painting itself does not tell us who the designer is, we clearly know that there was an intelligent designer behind it.

Creationists love to make the comparison between human art and the universe. I can name a couple of differences between the Sistine Chapel and the universe, even right off the top of my head and without having a picture of the Sistine Chapel in front of me!

[Sentis]

Gore 3000 give up and quit lying about me. I refuted every ourageous claim you made quit saying "NO YOU DIDN'T" your like a broken record. Those posts you claim are just posts where you refute me by saying "NO YOUR WRONG" No Your Wrong is not an argument. People that have read this thread know I trounced your one hundred year old arguments and I am not going to rewrite everything I said over and over like you do. I mean I can just go cut and paste the same tyhings I said earlier ovber and over again like you do but whats the point. Your point is to get the last word I know that but you are meaninfless. Your a whisper in the wind a dead end alley. Learn some real sscience and come back and actually debate instead of using your half formed ideas. Your sitting on the back of a mental midget Behe and trying to look unto the Giants table give up until you can find a more literate guide.

[Sentis]

Sorry about the errors in that last post it's early in the morning and Blueman calling me a liar (which by the way fits him perfectly) got me angery and I posted without checking to see how many double keys I had hit. I'm probably the worst typist alive.

[B. Rabbit]

As I am not a scientist, nor a religious fanatic, I can see this debate without all of the mumbo-jumbo. Every branch of science has gone through incredible transformation and revolution over the past 2,000 years. Religion used to account for all explanations. Then we became smarter.

Meteorology: The Roman Gods brought down the rain. No wait, the Bible says that doors in the sky open and water pours out. All the way to what we know now about evaporation, cloud formation, and condensation/precipitation.

Biology: Bible says bats are birds, no wait! They're mammals.

Astronomy: Atlas holds us up, no wait, The earth is the center of everything and the sun revolves around us. Now we know that our sun isn't even the center of everything, just a tiny speck in the universe.

Physics: From ignorance to Newton to Einstein to quantum mechanics we've seen physical laws broken, adapted, and altered. But each time we find out more and sometimes the break in between revolutions is longer than the course of our lifetimes.

The list goes on and on. Why would evolution be different? We are constantly learning, even to this day. Simply because we don't understand everything about the past doesn't mean that we fall back upon the mistakes of our ancestors. Science will provide an answer, it has only been 100 years. How long was it between Newton and Einstein? Darwin to B. Rabbit may be just around the corner. Evolution may change, it probably won't be exactly what it is today, but this is science, a proven institution, not faith. You confuse the two.

Sorry for poor "typesmanship", I'm too lazy to edit today.

[whattajoke]

Despite reading over your hundreds of repetive blue posts over the last year or so, I still can't figure out if you are a) truly stupid, b) an unstoppable liar, or c) Behe's lover. Perhaps some other posters can help me out...

Anyway, for what it's worth, you do understand what you're doing, right? I mean, you've been doing it so prolifically, I think you may have lost sight of your aim. In your lone quest to turn 150 years of evolutionary science upside down, all you constantly do is pick out a few anomalies and harp on them OVER and OVER. The platypus, the flagella, "irreducible complexity," etc. Even though these 3 current darlings of Behe and the ID movement have been explained to you numerous times, they are the ID flavor of the month, so we'll continue to hammer away at your thick skull. Remember just a few years ago it was dust on the moon, 2nd Law of Thermo, and the best one: "If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Interesting, is it not, that the Fundy Creationist movement has EVOLVED, in a way, to become a bit more stealth, a bit more organized, and at the more conniving reaches of it, not so completely stupid anymore (see the monkey argument).

By continuously zooming in on these things which you consider problems with evolution, can we assume you accept all the other tenets of the theory? It would seem that way to me. Geeze, imagine if I went through the bible page by page and picked out historical or logical or scientific errors, anomalies, and contradictions. You think 1000+ post crevo threads are long!

And so it goes with Gore3K... He's almost outdone himself with this one: "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"

I won't even waste my time with the myriad scientific and logical ridiculousness of that sentence... it's simply too insulting to my mind to do so.

[VadeRetro]

He's been on these threads since about the summer of 2000, IIRC. It's b) in your list, at pathological levels. But it's probably not a sin for him because it's a Holy War, you see, and in war you're allowed to deceive the enemy. The enemy is everyone who isn't already singing in the blue choir.

[VadeRetro]

Actually, I think it was summer of 2001 he moved into the crevo threads.

[PatrickHenry]

... there is nothing wrong with God's existence as an axiom. It is perfectly fine to presume it in science or anything else. It is rational. There is evidence for it. It's been done before and has worked quite well.

I think we're having a bit of semantic confusion here over the meaning of "axiom." God's existence as an axiom is essential -- in the field of theology. According to Occham's Razor, it is not rational to insert God as an hypothesis into a scientific problem, when the problem can be resolved by natural explanations without the God hypothesis. And even in those numerous areas where science doesn't yet have a satisfying natural explanation, the God hypothesis isn't really an explanation -- it's just a technique for waving the problem away -- "No need to do any research here; God did it.".

[Tribune7]

Name it. Define when using God's existence as an axiom has worked quite well. I want you to back this up.

But in the true course of experience, and in carrying it on to the effecting of new works, the divine wisdom and order must be our pattern. Now God on the first day of creation created light only, giving to that work an entire day, in which no material substance was created. So must we likewise from experience of every kind first endeavor to discover true causes and axioms; and seek for experiments of Light, not for experiments of Fruit. For axioms rightly discovered and established supply practice with its instruments, not one by one, but in clusters, and draw after them trains and troops of works.
--Novum Organum

This will of his maker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws.
--William Blackstone

These links by themselves answer your question providing you understand the significance of the documents?

I have to go back to work or I would have found links to Descartes, Pasteur, Newton, Roger Bacon, the founding of the western University system, the founding and evolution of our hospital system, the Declaration of Independence,and Adam Smith, Columbus -- all of which or whom treated God's existence as axiomatic in their deeds, discoveries or theories.

[Tribune7]

God's existence as an axiom is essential -- in the field of theology.

It's essential in the field of the reality. The problem came when the material was declared to be the sum of everything.

Science cannot address the spiritual. If the spiritual is denied the most important part of existence is missing.

I agree with the posters who say invoking God's existence in a scientific theory is cheating. But to deny God's existence or imply that it is irrelevant makes science -- and everything else one would do -- ultimately pointless.

[Phaedrus]

Some physicists are beginning to get it:

The Physics of Consciousness

A beautiful but serious book with serious implications -- highly recommended.

[whattajoke]

If the spiritual is denied the most important part of existence is missing.

While I respect it, this is merely your opinion, and my happy existence flies in the face of it.

But to deny God's existence or imply that it is irrelevant makes science -- and everything else one would do -- ultimately pointless.

While I respect it, this is merely your opinion, and my happy existence flies in the face of it.

[PatrickHenry]

... all of which or whom treated God's existence as axiomatic in their deeds, discoveries or theories.

Your references are interesting, but not one of them is a logical demonstration of the necessity of the theistic axiom. They are personal opinions only. Work in all the fields you mention can and does progress in the absence of that axiom, so I still say that outside of the field of theology, the axiom is not a logical necessity.

To be certain that I'm being clear here, nothing I'm saying is intended to disprove the existence of God. Indeed, nothing can disprove God's existence. But to assume God's existence as an axiom adds nothing which is essential to the work of science.

[donh]

It's essential in the field of the reality. The problem came when the material was declared to be the sum of everything.

And when did that occur? Science operates on available evidence. Nowhere does science claim that available evidence is all there is. It implicitly claims otherwise, in fact, in holding to the principle of fallability, and requiring critical experiments, rather than experiments designed to confirm.

[donh]

but this is science, a proven institution, not faith.

Science is no more "proven" an institution than faith. Our faith in science has generally got more intense technical refinement than our faith in transcendental truths, but is nonetheless faith, at bottom.

[donh]

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.

Then why are the micro-biology journals still active?

[donh]

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.

So? The whole point of this discussion is that there wasn't a single common ancestor. Have you lost track of the argument?

[Aric2000]

But to assume God's existence as an axiom adds nothing which is essential to the work of science.


Placemarker for me!!