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."
See posts 475, and 495, to longshadow. Then you should probably also look at 540.
Sigh, I've been arrested by the self-anointed semantical police again....
Listen: I reject your statement. The mean value theorem is true, and its proof is also true.
If you're still confused, keep in mind that here, I am using the word "true" as would an ordinary English speaker. That is because I am participating on an American political discussion board. I don't know where you think you are.
The words of Darwin you've quoted me are not in contradiction with the statement I made about the "common descent" hypothesis.
By Darwin's own terms, evolution has been disproven with Behe's bacterial flagellum.
Interestingly, "Darwin's own terms" are not necessarily the standard by which one would "disprove" "evolution". Darwin may have been wrong about "evolution", and (as far as I know) was wrong in some respects.
Of course, partially this is because there is no solid "theory of evolution" to speak of, there is just "philosophy of materialism". "Evolution" is materialism applied to biological history; whatever is learned about biological history now and in the future will still be lumped under "evolution".
This is in a way fine, because all that's going on is that scientists are taking a materialistic approach to the study of things, which is what they do. The only thing that bothers me about it is that, in the particular case of evolution for some reason, they resist (and quite irrationally so, often resorting to semantics and trying to borrow definitions of "truth" from other fields!) calling it a "theory".
It's really enough to make one wonder what the evolutionists are so damn scared of, if their "theory" is so solid.
I said this with different words and I've gotten piled on.
But I think you'll be ok because you've made it clear you're not lined up on the Crazy Fundamentalists Creationist side, as I am, apparently.
You're absolutely right!
So why not put a statement saying EXACTLY THIS in science books?
The mind boggles.
Indeed. At least, it makes me wonder, What are they so damned afraid of?
It's been a fascinating spectacle, to see all the brave defenders of "science" on this thread essentially say that a plain-as-day truth should be suppressed (or at least toned-down) for weird sociological, and perhaps political, considerations. I think it was VadeRetro who brought up "unfairness", and even Physicist made allusions to the "intentions" of the pro-disclaimer side.
Yup, "unfairness" and "intentions", truly SCIENTIFIC concepts indeed! When writing a science book, it's not TRUTH that's important, it's "fairness" and making sure that your "intentions" are correct.
That's SCIENCE!
The story of Mad man Muntz:
What's All This Muntzing Stuff, Anyhow?Recently, a young engineer wanted to show me a circuit he had been optimizing. We reviewed the schematic and the breadboard, and we studied the waveforms on the 'scope. We realized that one of the resistors was probably doing more harm than good, so he reached over for a soldering iron. When he turned back to the circuit, the offending resistor was gone! How did it disappear so fast? Ah, I said, I always keep a pair of small diagonal nippers in my shirt pocket. And when I want to disconnect something, it only takes a second to snip it out or disconnect it on one end - just like Earl "Madman" Muntz. The kid looked at me. "Earl WHO?" And I explained.
Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, television sets were big and expensive and complicated -a whole armful of vacuum tubes, lots of transformers and rheostats and adjustments that had to be trimmed, and many complicated circuits for signal processing. And all to drive a crummy little green-and-white 5-in. or 7-in. picture tube, where the whole family could crowd around to watch.
Earl Muntz was a smart, flamboyant businessman. Anybody who could make a success of selling used cars in 1939 or 1946 had to know something about salesmanship, and Muntz had built up a $72 million business in Glendale, Calif.
For example, Muntz would advertise a particular car with a special price as the "special of the day" - a car that had to sell that day. If the car was not sold by the end of the day, Muntz vowed to smash it to bits with a sledge-hammer, personally, on camera. Needless to say, with tricks like that he was able to generate a lot of publicity and interest, and sell a lot of old cars, too.
So when Muntz started his plans to sell TV receivers in 1946, it was obvious that he would be looking for a competitive advantage - in other words, he had to have an angle. He wanted to get the circuits simple - the manufacturing costs low - and he knew he needed a lot of promotion.
He realized that a receiver designed for "far-fringe reception" (40 or 50 miles out) had to have at least 3 or preferably 4 Intermediate Frequency (IF) stages (with a pentode for each stage, plus a transformer, 5 capacitors, and 3 resistors), and loops to hold the frequencies stable even when the signals were very weak.
Muntz decided to relinquish that "fringe" business to RCA and Zenith and other established manufacturers. Instead, HE would design for Manhattan and other urban areas, where you could look out your window and see the doggone transmitting antenna on top of the Empire State Building, or equivalent.
HE knew he could get engineers to design television receivers that would be very inexpensive, very simple, and would still work quite satisfactorily in these strong-signal areas. Then he could get away with two IF stages, and they would not need fancy loops, and the tubes could all be biased up with cheap-and-dirty biases.
As the circuits shrank, the power supply shrank. And as the price shrank, his sales volume began to grow, leading to still further economy of scale in manufacturing. Muntz dropped his prices so fast, so low, that his competitors again accused him of being a madman, cutting prices and competing unfairly.
When people watched Ed Sullivan or other pioneering programs of the era on their tiny 7-in. screens, who came on at the end of the hour to promote his new, low-priced 14-in. (diagonal measurement) TV sets? Why, Earl "Madman" Muntz himself!
"You can have TV in your home tonight," he would say. "Your living room is our showroom." And, wearing red long johns and a Napoleon hat, he would vow, "I wanna give 'em away, but Mrs. Muntz won't let me. She's crazy."
Muntz was a smart merchandiser, and he knew that his competitors' jibes could be turned to work to his advantage. He knew that his TVs were not built of cut-rate parts - in fact, his receivers were carefully engineered to be at least as reliable as the competitors' sets that cost twice as much - and they would perform just as well, so long as you stayed in a strong-signal area.
And how did Muntz get his circuits designed to be so inexpensive? He had several smart design engineers. The story around the industry was that he would wander around to an engineer's workbench and ask, "How's your new circuit coming?"
After a short discussion, Earl would say, "But, you seem to be over-engineering this - I don't think you need this capacitor." He would reach out with his handy nippers (insulated) that he always carried in his shirt-pocket, and snip out the capacitor in question.
Well, doggone, the picture was still there! Then he would study the schematic some more, and SNIP... SNIP... SNIP. Muntz had made a good guess of how to simplify and cheapen the circuit. Then, usually, he would make one SNIP too many, and the picture or the sound would stop working. He would concede to the designer, "Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in," and he would walk away. THAT was "Muntzing" - the ability to delete all parts not strictly essential for basic operation. And Muntz took advantage of this story, to whatever extent it may have been true, and he publicized his "uncanny" ability to cut his costs - in yet more televised advertisements.
For several years, Earl Muntz kept impressing his engineers to build in only the circuits that were essential, and for those years, his TV receivers were competitive and cost-effective. All because of his "Muntzing," he would say in his ads. But really, that was just one aspect of good sharp engineering. And of course, he had to know where to start snipping. Although he was not a degreed electrical engineer, he was a pretty smart self-taught engineer, and his marketing and advertising campaigns capitalized on the story: He knew how to engineer what people needed - right down to a price.
What the hell is your problem? I wasn't talking about Cantor's continuum hypothesis in the first place, as should be damn clear by now. I didn't bring it up at all.
You're the one who misunderstood what I said, try to keep that in mind. I provided you with a gentle way to correct your misunderstanding, and now you try to divert the discussion a second time.
I don't "wish to ignore mathematical terminology", and I don't wish to do the opposite. It just happens to be the case that That's Not What I Was Talking About, capisce? To accuse me of "wishing to ignore" Cantor's hypothesis is just flat-out bizarre.
Some terms are used in more than one field. You should get used to it.
Suppose we'd been on a thread about nature and the environment. In a trivial example I mention something about "fields". longshadow gets confused, assuming (because presumably he's a mathematician) I was talking about mathematical fields. I explain that I was not.
Now you chime in, "accusing" me of wishing to "ignore" the mathematical terminology.
It WASN'T WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT in my example. You would force me to talk about something I never brought up and which has no relevance to this discussion?
What's your problem?
The answer to your question is "I have no idea". I have no idea whether Cantor's continuum hypothesis is true. I hope this helps.
As for "ignoring mathematical terminology" (the "mathematical terminology" in question, I can now see, being the word "true"), I'd just like to point out that if you asked a mathematician "Is the mean value theorem true?" or "Is 2+2=4 true?", more likely than not, he'd say yes. For what it's worth. (Of course, there's always those few who just love to endlessly quibble about the semantics, whether or not it advances the discussion at hand, which in this case had something to do with a disclaimer in science textbooks, as I recall......)
Anyway. Again, sorry about my misunderstanding.
No I haven't.
The above is terribly worded, and gives the wrong impression
It's from the Oxford University Press.
Whether he proved it or not, it is considered axiomatic.
Obviously, life at some point came from non-life. And energy was added into the universe. But the laws of nature establishing these paradoxes were conceived with the idea that a supernatural creator was axiomatic.
In fact, I doubt these discoveries could have been if they were not based on the assumption of God.
There is nothing wrong with assuming God's existence. Even if you have doubts, it is best to assume God's existence and live one's life accordingly. The odds are strongly stacked in favor of God's existence.
Yes, and you are mis-reading it. Please go to this site: HERE (click on "About Louis Pasteur," then click on "The Work of Louis Pasteur". It's the official Pasteur Institute in France, which just might be a wee bit more authoritative than a poorly-worded blurb in a dictionary.
During this period [From 1862 to 1877], Pasteur becomes a biologist. He builds up the germ theory and annihilates the spontaneous generation theory.I'm going to drop this now, because if you don't get it at this point, further dialogue will be fruitless. Please look beyond a convenient dictionary entry and see for yourself what Pasteur did. It's not all that complicated. Then you will understand that you have been mis-informed. He did not -- in his day and in our own day -- he could not prove that there is no natural origin for the original appearance of life on earth. No one has made such a proof.1. Following his first discoveries [showing that all fermentation is due to the presence of a microorganism], he asks questions about the origin of the microorganisms that are the agents of fermentation. Do they originate from germs similar to themselves or do they appear spontaneously in germ-favourable media? This was the spontaneous generation controversy. After some unforgettable struggles against his opponents (Pouchet), Pasteur could claim in his 1862 paper, on the basis of various experiments, that:
* airborne dust contains germs of primitive/lower organisms, always ready to develop and spread;
* even the most putrescible liquids remain unadulterated if care is taken to keep them away from these germs.
Scientific theories, by contrast, deduce and collate general statements about the behavior of (perhaps only certain aspects or regimes of) the real world from repeated empirical observations (well, scientists either deduce their statements or they make flat-out guesses). Often, indeed usually, using mathematical topics and theorems along the way, in a manner something like I've outlined above. Then those predictions (call them "hypotheses" I guess) are tested by further empirical observations, and discarded or at least refined if the resulting evidence appears to contradict them. The ultimate result is a scientific theory (i.e. the theory of General Relavity...).
So to construct a scientific theory is a much different procedure than to investigate mathematical theories (topics). A scientific theory can be refined and improved upon, and indeed can stand the test of time and be generally accepted as very very very accurate, but never can honestly be considered "truth". By contrast, if you've proven some aspect of a mathematical topic (i.e. a theorem), then it's a done deal and can never be refuted. (If it could be, you didn't really prove it.)…
Scientific "theories", OTOH, are accepted (not proven) based upon observational results and experimental evidence (especially repeated failed attempts to falsify it), which are always incomplete, leaving open the door for future falsification.
While there are some differences between Mathematical and scientific "theories," it bears repeating that they still share a great many common attributes. In particular, both are conceptual frameworks that have broad explanatory power over the phenomona (or topics) within their respective scopes, and both must be conceptually falsifiable, the difference being that while a scientific theory is always at risk of being falsified, a properly deduced Mathematical theory (one with sound axioms and valid logical deductions), though capable of falsification, will never be, because our "proof tools" allow us to exclude the existence of any counter example.
What this layperson gathers from both of the posts, the intervening posts and the research - is that math is much more formal than science and that scientific theories are falsifiable per se. Is that a fair conclusion for a layperson?
Before Woehler produced urea, Vitalism was accepted "axiomatically" as Tribune7 would have said and many scientists were convinced that the fact that so many experiments could not produce organic compounds proved Vitalism to be true.
Indeed, that's what I told longshadow in 545. longshadow and I don't actually disagree. He might still think that we do, however.
What this layperson gathers from both of the posts, the intervening posts and the research - is that math is much more formal than science and that scientific theories are falsifiable per se. Is that a fair conclusion for a layperson?
I'd say so. It's worth adding donh's (I think that's who it was) important caveat that mathematical proofs, like any other human endeavors, are still subject to error, so (in rare cases) a mathematical theory may indeed be "falsified" (meaning, proven not to have actually been legitimately proven in the first place) as well. The formality of math, and the fair assumption that the majority of people verifying mathematical arguments are not insane in the sense of having brains with faulty logic, insulates its arguments much better from being "wrong". The process can still fail, though; donh cited a couple of cases.
It seems that what Doctor Stochastic, Physicist et al have been working so hard to show is that it is possible (and I've agreed about this from the get-go) to use the words "theory" and "right/wrong" and "experiments" abstractly enough (for example, one could consider the "experiments" of mathematics to take place as logical thought processes in mathematicians' brains as they try to verify arguments....) so that "mathematical theories" and "scientific theories" look like exactly the same type of animal, although I'm not sure why one would feel the need to launch upon such an exercise. (And whether or not one does this has virtually no ramifications for the whole "disclaimer" issue, which is how this had come up in the first place....)
Truthfully, I believe that the main difference between my and longshadow's explanation is that (in other posts) I had committed the sin of appearing to be on the creationist side of the argument, while he hasn't; and thus, while my statement (however messy it may be) is basically equivalent, certain other posters felt it to be much more urgent to quibble about my semantics, terminology, phrasing, etc., than about longshadow's. It really will be interesting to see if the likes of Doctor Stochastic, Physicist, balrog666, and the other brave defenders of "science", choose to labor so diligently to dot the i's and cross the t's and second-guess (and disallow) the definitions of words used in longshadow's paragraphs.
Surely you're not so intellectually primitive as to argue from consequences or to attempt guilt by association? Some atheists champion the Theory of Evolution. Likewise some belivers. Both of the previous statements are also irrelevant.
If causation is attributed to nature alone, then a fundamental assumption has already been made: God has little or nothing to do with creation as we know it.
If you have evidence of God, then by all means subject it to the same rigorous investigation as the Theory of Evolution. In the meantime, the supernatural is outside the realm of science, and science will continue to restrict itself to phenomenon the physical world.
The results are in plain view by virtue of your own dishonest words.
You can, of course, cite examples of this dishonesty.
We're not dealing with a particular theory here. It's a belief system. A mindset. A worldview more stupid than a simple fool like me.
False. We are dealing with a theory. The general structure of life on this planet outlined by the principles of common descent with modification has been independently confirmed by several independent sources. You have yet to put forth a convincing argument. Notwithstanding the elegant language and false modesty bordering on obscene, your sole contribution to the discussion is "The Theory of Evolution addresses the origin and purpose of life, but I won't say how and I can't say where."
There are several Theories of Evolution, and once can trace the development of the theory through history as new information and evidence became available and was incorporated into the burgeoning science of biology. Not one that I am familiar with attempted to assign a purpose to life. The origin of life falls under the umbrella of biology but is a separate investigation altogether.
I can state the Theory of Evolution in a single sentence. The general statement of Einstein's Field Equation requires only 5 terms. Three times I have asked and three times you have dodged, preferring instead to hurl schoolyard insults meticulously dressed in ballroom words. You are arguing against the word while flat out refusing to define its meaning.
A simple fool can still be taught. The deliberately stupid are beyond hope. May your victory bring you great joy.
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