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."
The first reason is that attempts are made to rule out God using the authority of science -- think of Singer and Sagan. I think the debate would be far less contentious if biologists were to say God caused life to somehow start and this is how we think He did it because etc. This sort of qualification was once rather common.
The second reason is that science considers the generation of life from non-life to be impossible. So when someone declares as a certainty that this happened via a natural process, others reasonably become suspicious and behave accordingly.
I certainly do not have to do that. The odds are calculated on combinations irrespective of the actual chemical process and are descriptive of a truly random, undirected chemical reaction. Those numbers then eliminate that particular environment and practically all those similar. What it does not eliminate are the just-so stories produced to attempt to "overcome" the odds. I have no illusion of convincing the Darwininians of anything, they are beyond that, but sensible people will recognize that the numbers presented give us an indication of something. Living things produce chemical compounds that cannot be formed by random, undirected chemical processes. The test for you, if you have a chemical reaction synthesizing the compounds inferred that is plausibly achievable without intelligent interference, is to produce it.
I don't think that explaining how something happened naturally is "ruling out God." All science is an attempt to understand the natural functioning of the world. It's horrifying to me that there are theologians who would try to supress science. It's Galileo all over again. We've got to move beyond those nightmare times.
I think the debate would be far less contentious if biologists were to say God caused life to somehow start and this is how we think He did it because etc. This sort of qualification was once rather common.
Because biologists can't -- as scientists -- declare a fact that they can't demonstrate. It's a theological proposition, and it's not the business of biologists to be making proclamations about that sort of thing.
The second reason is that science considers the generation of life from non-life to be impossible. So when someone declares as a certainty that this happened via a natural process, others reasonably become suspicious and behave accordingly.
Since when does "science consider the generation of life from non-life to be impossible"? It's certainly news to me. By the way, as has been mentioned several times in these threads, the ultimate origin of life isn't part of the theory of evolution. Evolution can't begin until after life exists. The origin of life is a side-issue, and one which no one is yet able to discuss authoritatively. All that I said earlier was that it's conceivably a natural chemical process.
...you don't understand English...
...(Duh.)...
It's like you don't understand this...
This is a superficially clever type of comment, but only for a moment, and in particular only from seven-year-olds.
I think the only thing left to decide is whether you do this out of denseness or just to be a nuisance.
So why all that disingenuous crap...
...and you know it...I won't apologize for this.
I don't think you have an actual point to make anyway.
Jeez, you sure hate to be wrong, don't you?
You don't. But some prominent people have for some unfathomable reason an emotional desire to deny God's existence and they attempt to use science to do so. When this happens religious people get their backs up.
Because biologists can't -- as scientists -- declare a fact that they can't demonstrate.
Right. But but they can as human beings, and we should put being human ahead of being a scientist, policeman, CEO etc. It doesn't mean we don't do our jobs it just means we keep a perspective as to what's important.
Since when does "science consider the generation of life from non-life to be impossible"?
Patrick, I've been posting this for the last three months.
I can assure you that the Continuum Hypothesis, first proposed by Cantor, and subsequently elevated to the first of the 23 most important unsolved Mathematical question for the 20th century by Hilbert in 1900, is NOT related to fluid dynamics.
The Continuum Hypothesis (CH) can be stated as asserting that there exists no transfinite cardinal number between Aleph sub naught and Aleph sub 1, meaning that there exists no infinite set whose cardinality is larger than that of the Natural numbers but smaller than that of the Reals.
It is still a Hypothesis, as no one has either proved it, or disproved it, though it is known that BOTH the CH and it's negation are both consistent with set theory as it is usually axiomatize (ZFC, for those who care). This implies that the CH is independent of the axioms of set theory (which is why it can neither be proven nor disproven using the axioms of set theory). It is not taken as an axiom of set theory because it is not "intuitively obvious" in any sense of the word.
I'll not comment on the balance of your remarks, as they weren't germane to my question.
Oh, you mean this:
biogenesis: The principle that a living organism can only arise from other living organisms similar to itself (i.e. that like gives rise to like) and can never originate from nonliving material. Compare spontaneous generation.That's Pasteur's work. He demonstrated that mold and stuff doesn't spring from nothing (he sealed jars of food and it didn't get moldy). He disproved the previously held belief of "spontaneous generation," by showing that food had to be exposed to air, and thus spores, in order to get moldy. This is entirely unrelated to the ultimate origin of life. There's an obvious similarity of words, which is unfortunate, as it sometimes causes confusion. The ultimate origin of life is, as yet, an unsolved problem. Pasteur didn't in any way prove that it's impossible to have happened by natural means.
Yes.
He demonstrated that mold and stuff doesn't spring from nothing
No, he didn't. He demonstrated that mold and every other living thing must come from another living thing.
This is entirely unrelated to the ultimate origin of life.
If living things must come from living things then from whence did the first living thing come?
Pasteur didn't in any way prove that it's impossible to have happened by natural means.
Well, I wouldn't throw a fit if someone tried (or succeeded) in proving him wrong, but right now it is considered axiomatic that all life comes from life. (And Pasteur, a devout Catholic, considered it axiomatic that the first life came from God.)
Pasteur's Catholicism is not the issue. It most definitely is not "axiomatic that all life comes from life." At least not in the sense that you mean it. Pasteur showed that mold comes from spores. There's no way he could have ruled out a natural origin for the first life on earth, and it wasn't even something he worked on. How could he have proven that a natural process is impossible? Where is that work written up? Really, Trib, you're reading far more into Pasteur's work than is truly there.
What he is considered to have proved was the spontaneous generation of life is impossible. Now, life obviously came from somewhere and there are people who are investigating this hoping to be the Einstein to his Newton and show that his law wouldn't apply in a special set of conditions.
Which is fine.
But right now, the assumption is that life can't come from non-life and this circumstance works strongly in the favor of the creationists. :-)
Think about this: why should there be an assumption that life has a natural origin?
So I was correct, you have no actual point.
But you're right, I dislike being wrong (dunno about "hate"). If there's something I am "wrong" about I trust you'll kindly let me know, so I can correct my error. (For example, this already happened in an earlier exchange when I did one of those "when did I say....?" things, and you answered "In Post #X", at which point I admitted my error. Sound like the behavior of one who "hates to be wrong"? :-) Like I said, and as I've demonstrated, if I'm wrong I would like to know so I can admit it and correct my errors.
(However.... N.B., about my "wrong"ness: telling me that my statements were based on a definition of the word "right" which you wish I hadn't used, because you'd prefer it if I used a definition of the word "right" which varies from context to context, does not constitute a demonstration that I was "wrong" about something. Other than semantics. If that.)
Heh...oh yeah, that Continuum Hypothesis. Well, we're both right, as it turns out :) The term is used in both contexts. For just one example, here's the result of a quick Google search:
Navier-Stokes Equations: Continuum Hypothesis
But thanks for keeping me honest. Best,
Nonsense, you are just making the fundamental assumption that reproducing discrete life forms flang into existence from piles of raw material unaided by any intermediate steps, and hoping no one notices. I could make the exact same argument about homo sapiens arising from homo erectus.
No, Trib. You're really wrong on this. He proved that mold doesn't spring up from nothing. A very different proposition than what you take it to be. I'm not spinning. Check it out for yourself. You're good with search engines. The ultimate origin of all life was not the problem he was working on. It was food spoilation.
Think about this: why should there be an assumption that life has a natural origin?
Ah! The ulitmate epistemological issue is raised. When presented with a problem, what's you're first reaction -- natural cause or super-natural cause? Apparently, your very first (and to you, the most proper) reaction to an unknown phenomenon is that it's a miracle. To me, miracle is the very last resort, after all possible natural explanations have been exhausted. So I guess we approach problems in a very different way.
That's what happens when Engineering appropriates terminology from the Math department.....
OK, I took your challenge (a fast search, I'm going to hit it early tonight.)
I searched for "law of biogenesis" (actually sans quotes.) There were about 4,580 hits. The first two pages consisted mostly of links to religious/creationist sites such as creationscience.com and apologeticspress.org which support my view.
On the third page is the first pro-evo site to address it, vuletic.com which supports your view but admits the jury is still out.
Probably the best site is the one I first linked to at Oxford University Press xrefer.com which says biogenisis "is the principle that a living organism . . .can never originate from nonliving material."
Which is what I've been saying all along.
Apparently, your very first (and to you, the most proper) reaction to an unknown phenomenon is that it's a miracle.
You misunderstand my position. I think it is very wrong to consider unknown phenomenon as miraculous. On the other hand it is a great evil not to give ultimate credit to God for his creation. Check this Blackstone link. The relevant stuff is in the third, fourth and fifth paragraphs. He's a smarter guy than me and sums up this position better. Besides, I'm going to crash.
'night.
Nonsense. Balderdash! One can compute the odds of formation of one polymer and show that a specific one of length 100 has practically no chance of formation. Other factors go into the total computation but it is fairly obvious that the odds of something useful for the formation of life is practically nil.
The fundamental assumption is precisely the formation of a discrete life form from piles of raw material. Your challenge is to produce one that has plausible raw materials and an environment which will lead to a living organism.
And you cannot make the argument from H. erectus to H. sapiens as they are both living organisms. That is what the Darwininians always argue. Abiogenesis and evolution are distinct.
It is not incumbent upon me to do the impossible by following your fool's errand ---Unless you can specify the exact chemical and morphological mechanisms by which life came to be. It is your responsibility to show the mechanism that would plausibly produce the chemicals we seek. That is to be done without the mechanisms of evolution, since it is a distinct process not involved in abiogenesis per the Darwininians, and is to be done in "Indian country". When this has been constructed the calculations can be redone to demonstrate the strength or weakness of the proposed scenario. The best scientists in the world have not been able to construct such a scenario. At this point, abiogenesis is wishful thinking, that is why even the just-so story Darwininians steer clear of the subject.
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