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."
I think this has to be a misquote...It was probably supposed to be, "I am not going to let anyone keep me from living in the Dark Ages. Truth be damned!"
They said the same thing 20 years ago.
For a long time now I’ve been suggesting that the evolutionists should be malleable on the randomness tenet. I said that because it seemed like a good way to forge peace between that side and intelligent design with regard to teaching children in public schools.
However, after this research on information theory, algorithms and mathematics in genetics – in particular, the symbolization – I’m even more convinced that evolutionists insist on randomness to their own peril.
I realize the evolutionist position is that randomness does not mean the same thing as ‘roll of the dice’ – because random mutations are culled by natural selection. Nevertheless, the initiating event is a random mutation.
The presence of algorithmic information even within junk DNA (Complexity International – Brief Comments on Junk DNA [pdf]) is counter-indicative of randomness per se. The Chaitin papers [ps] explain why:
Even more to the point, the physics of symbols (H.H. Pattee) and the current state of the art (Rocha and Language-like features in junk DNA) strongly suggest that new research will show that mutations were opportunistic.
This would cause no violence to the theory of evolution or metaphysical naturalism were it not for the insistence on randomness in mutations. For one thing, they might have suggested that the mutations were either random or were opportunistic self-mutations - where the genetic language-like processes read an opportunity in the environment and mutated to gain advantage.
The intelligent design response to that could have been two-fold. First, that the capability itself is evidence of a designer. Second, that opportunistic mutations were additionally guided by external design, showing by information theory that symbolism and language could not have evolved sufficiently to account for the evidence, e.g. Cambrian Explosion. In response, the evolutionists and metaphysical naturalists would write both off to the anthropic principle.
In any case, I predict that intelligent design at first cause will be underscored since there is no origin for the minimal necessary information content whether or not opportunistic (Yockey seventh message).
Gee...you're a charitable sort, aren't you. For an absolute despot, I mean.
They said the same thing 20 years ago.
They will still be saying it 100 years from now. This amino acid stuff is totally stupid and the proof that evolution is pseudo-science. You can make all the amino acids you want and mix them any way you like. You can even make all the proteins you like and mix them any way you want. You will still not get DNA. The morons of atheism/evolution have it completely backwards. You do not get DNA from proteins or amino acids. It is DNA and RNA that make amino acids and proteins. DNA has never arisen by random chance anywhere and you need a string of at least a half million DNA bases exactly arranged to begin to have a chance at creating any kind of living thing. No legitimate scientist proposes such a thing as being possible.
Oh yes, the famous unScientific American article which was so thoroughly discredited in 15 ANSWERS TO JOHN RENNIE AND SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN’S NONSENSE that unScientific American threatened to sue them to stop them from publishing. Another great example of 'evo-science' trying to win by silencing opponents.
For the real story on how evolution is a joke, check out Evidence Disproving Evolution . It will answer the question all lurkers have when reading these threads: why do these so called apostles of science turn into slimers anytime they are asked to back up their statements?
And of course you prefer to continue the old BS about the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 odds of earth spawning life randomly.
And LOL -- Who do think you are -- Houdini?? Until you can pull out of your hat one iota of "life" out of "scratch," your happy little fantasy remains...just that.
Actually this does not go far enough. For a start they need to get rid of all books which continue to repeat the lies about the Haeckel's embryos, the moths, the horses, the fruit flies, the finches, and the Miller-Urey experiment - all of them long disproven and still being repeated as scientific fact by evolutionists in textbooks. It's time that all schools stopped subsidizing the publishers of lies.
"The dialectical materialist lumpen-intelligentsia are extremely annoyed that God didn't take their advice when He made the universe."
Evolution is not science. Science is about observations and no one has ever seen a species transform itself into another more complex species. However, every day we see in humans, cows, pigs, chickens and everywhere else we look organisms faithfully reproduce themselves with progeny like themselves.
A scientist who tries to create life from amino acids is not a scientist, he is a crook. Any scientist knows that amino acids do not create DNA but that DNA and RNA creates amino acids and the proteins of living things. They have it backwards and you who have some scientific knowledge should know that very well.
So, you're saying in 20 years, intelligence will design life using amino acids? Which creationist argument is affected by that?
On the other hand, demonstrating random, spontaneous, undirected, self-assembly of amino acids under prehistoric environmental conditions, and from there nucleic acids and finally life... now, THAT may have an impact on the creationist arguments...
No doubt that is the same 70% that believe in the pseudo-science of evolution. They also believe in Martians, and give Art Bell a big audience. What's the scientific proof of evolution? How does a species transform itself into another species? What is exactly the theory of evolution Patrick? Can you ever back up your theory or do you just know how to insult opponents?
I doubt it. I'm taking a break from from about 300 pages of cell notes for a test in the morning. If science is even able to reporduce a single signaling cascade in 20 years I'll be impressed. Life is too complex for it to ever be made in a lab at this time, let alone 20 years. Give humans a 1000 years and maybe . . .
Explain to me how biology supports evolution. Particularly explain how a totally new function is created by random means.
LOL! Yes, that quote is from Yockey, author of Information Theory and Molecular Biology. He is not part of the creationist crowd or the intelligent design crowd and his work is widely accepted. Here are some additional publications by Hubert P. Yockey
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