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."
You have to see Post 1042 to see the point I'm making.
??????
How old is the Earth?
I don't know. How old is the Earth?
I responded to that point in post 1050.
For the record, I pretty much assume the Earth is 4 billion years old. On the other hand I've always assumed fossil fuel came from the decayed remains of creatures long dead.
Post 1192 was not directed at you.
I figured that. For a creationist, you're a remarkably reasonable guy. And well-behaved too. I can't recall ever seeing an insult from you. You must cringe, sometimes, when you see what goes on here.
On the other hand I've always assumed fossil fuel came from the decayed remains of creatures long dead.
Yeah. That one is an open question. Or so I'm told.
Reagan is a creationist. :-) Yeah. That one is an open question. Or so I'm told.
It's more fun to keep an open mind. Gold (and ICR for that matter) may very well may be wrong but it doesn't hurt to challenge the conventional wisdom.
That's how Nobel Prizes are won. But it helps to know the field and to have good data on your side. If all the challenger has to offer is some outworn, disproven arguments that can be blown away in 30 seconds, he won't impress the people he's challenging. (But he may have some success with various school boards ... )
Ah, "newguy" ... I strongly suggest you go to "Physicist's" Freeper Home page to see who you are defaming, and what his credentials really are.
You owe him a retraction AND an apology.
It has nothing to do with the discussion of whether evolution is possible. As I have already demonstrated the transformation of man from primates in a mere 10 million years is totally disproven by the fact that you would need some 150 million favorable mutations to accomplish it. It is because you cannot answer this and numerous other questions posed to you that you are trying to turn the discussion into an attack on religion, which is all you lame, lying evolutionists can do. You say "without an old earth evolution will not happen." well, no one is arguing about against the claims of age of the earth or the claims made by evolutionists for the ages of certain species, I am arguing with the facts evolutionists themselves are using, so my statement that the age of the earth is irrlelevant is correct. You are trying to divert the discussion to irrelevancies and to attack religion, the only thing (besides attacking posters) that you and your dishonest friends do when faced with scientific facts and the contradictions of your dishonest atheistic religion. So I therefore again ask you to disprove my statements below which prove evolution to be totally false. I know you cannot do that because you have been avoiding it with your silly nonsense about the age of the earth for some 300 posts already:
1. How can man have descended from primates when it would have taken at least some 150 million mutations within the ten million years evolutionists claim it took and not a single favorable mutation has ever been found by science?
2. The bacterial flagellum is proof that evolution could have never occurred.
3. That the development of a human from a single cell to 100 trillion cells at birth is a program and therefore totally disproves evolution.
4. There is no way in which any creature can change its mode of reproduction without becoming extinct. The change from egg laying to live birth in the supposed descent of mammals from reptiles is totally impossible.
5. The eye spot itself is irreducibly complex as Behe has shown and therefore also totally disproves evolution.
6. The platypus, the bat, euglena, the Hymenopimesis Wasp, the Butterfly, and at least 90% of the over 40 absolutely new Cambrian phyla could have never descended from any other species.
Each time you try to change the subject, you will get the above from now on. You guys wish to spam the thread, I can play that game too.
Wrong again. As I have shown in post# 1172, science now says the difference is 5% or 150 million DNA base pair difference. Also note that the differences between humans are so small and so inconsequential such as eye color, hair color, skin color, etc. that they have no relevance to anything meaningful (except to racists which evolutionists certainly are).
You're making yourself very suspect in my eyes. Backtracking to your original argument about the universe being like a work of art and melding it to the above response, you are saying that the universe is designed to convey a thought or feeling and to impress those looking at it? This is what you're saying? Absurd.
Yes it is totally absurd to say that the purpose of the Universe or the Grand Canyon is just for us to look at it and be awed. You certainly need a course in reading comprehension and no honest person that reads my statement above would think I said that. Seems that not being able to disprove my statements you try to twist them around. A very dishonest form of argument.
As I have stated numerous times, the Miller-Urey experiment is total garbage and only morons which do not have an iota of scientific knowledge would claim it as any sort of proof of evolution. It is RNA, reading the DNA code that makes amino acids. Amino acids are only the constituent parts of proteins. Neither amino acids nor proteins make either DNA or RNA. So you are totally mistating the argument against abiogenesis - on purpose - because you have seen me make it many times:
There is a tremendous amount of proof against abiogenesis. First of all is Pasteur's proof that life does not come from inert matter (and this was of course at one time the prediction of materialists). Then came the discovery of DNA and the chemical basis of organisms. This poses a totally insurmountable problem to abiogenesis. The smallest living cells has a DNA string of some one million base pairs long and some 600 genes, even cutting this number by a quarter as the smallest possible living cell would give us a string of some 250,000 base pairs of DNA. It is important to note here that DNA can be arranged in any of the four basic codes equally well, there is no chemical or other necessity to the sequence. The chances of such an arrangement arising are therefore 4^250,000. Now the number of atoms in the universe is said to be about 4^250. I would therefore call 4^250,000 an almost infinitely impossible chance (note that the supposition advanced that perhaps it was RNA that produced the first life has this same problem).
The problem though is even worse than that. Not only do you need two (2) strings of DNA perfectly matched to have life, but you also need a cell so that the DNA code can get the material to sustain that life. It is therefore a chicken and egg problem, you cannot have life without DNA (or RNA if one wants to be generous) but one also has to have the cell itself to provide the nutrients for the sustenance of the first life. Add to this problem that for the first life to have been the progenitor of all life on earth, it necessarily needs to have been pretty much the same as all life now on earth is, otherwise it could not have been the source of the life we know. Given all these considerations, yes, abiogenesis is impossible.
As far as I know Behe has not dealt directly with the impossibility of abiogenesis (but then I have not read every word he has written). The scientific proof agains abiogenesis is in the post above and neither you nor any evolutionist can contradict it. There is absolutely no explanation for abiogenesis out there which fits the scientific facts.
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