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."
RVKQLEKKVSELLKKVACLEXEVARLKKLVGE... which I read as 12 amino acids. So while I'm out doing some Lightbulb Day shopping, could you please restate your calculations assuming a 12 amino acid universe?
Or not. Your calculations have two more problems right out of the gate, IMO:
Absolutely. This is why explanatory frameworks which no conceivable observation or experimental result can ever falsify are deemed to not be scientific theories.
In anticipation of the obvious (and perfectly legitimate) follow-up question, I will point out that there are probably an enormous number of observations that would falsify the Theory of Evolution; I'll just mention the most well-known one: irrefuteable evidence of Human existence in the Precambrian. That would upset Darwin's apple-cart.
I believe my third paragraph sets mine apart.... in the end, a Mathematical theory is in every essential sense the same animal as a scientific theory, even though they are constructed differently.
Both provide conceptual frameworks having broad explanatory power over the topics within their respective scopes. Both are subject to potential falsification, at least in principle. These are essential attributes of theories in the scientific sense of the word.
Sad, but painfully appropriate in most cases.
OK, then what are they worth? People claim to have nonempirical evidence of all kind of gods, demons, faires, goblins, ghosts, etc. Why should we believe them?
Billions testify to the existence of God.
Which one? There are so many. And the adherents of these religions are convinced that it is not one and the same deity. Of course there are also billions who testify to the existence of more gods wich makes the whole issue even more complicated. Now if everyone testified to the existence of the same god and the insight that this deity is the one true god developed independently in each civilization (and not as it happend in the past by force, bribery, missionaries, etc.) the idea that this god might exist would be more convincing.
Reports of the supernatural exists in every culture from every period.
Yepp, like lightnings, vulcanoes, earthquakes.... Of course there are also gods, demons, ghosts and the like but it seems these entities are rather an attempt of primitive people who lived a long time ago to explain the phenomena occurring in their environment. Considering the human tendency to anthropomorphize things they see and experience this scenario isn't that implausible.
Then you have the testimony in the Bible. You have prophecies coming true.
Oy vey! The testimonies and prophecies of the Bible. I mean what did you expect from a religious book? To contradict that particular religion? Almost every religion can point to testimonies and prophecies (esp. if they are not to specific or if they occurred that far in the past so we cannot find out whether they really occurred or if they were made up - either the prophecy or that particular incident or both).
Think of the return of the Jews to Israel.
Oh, and of course they didn't know of this "prophecy" and the "prophecy" also said when this was going to happen, eh?
And then there is the inductive reasoning involving the laws of conservation of energy and biogenesis -- which I noted earlier. While some dispute this as an indication of a supernatural creator, these paradoxical things exists.
Oh please, how does the 1stLoT proves a supernatural origin of the universe? Or do you know a universe with no natural origin where the 1stLoT is not valid.
There is no evidence for a naturalistic origin.
Nope, there simply is no evidence for the way the universe originated.
It takes greater faith -- far, far greater faith -- to disbelieve in God than to believe.
Is this a general statement or is this only the case for you? Well, then I can tell you that for me this is absolutely not the case.
Oh, and since when do religious folks claim that faith is a vice? I always thought the more faith the better ;-D
Nothing, really but you chimed in on the issue of biogenesis, remember.
Yeah, and it had nothing to do with the origin of the universe.
My statement:
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.
was in no way "overly confident," nor "haughty." It is a simple statement of fact that the Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis does not apply to fluid dynamics. I knew this for a fact; hence your characterization that it was "carelessly" tossed out is in error. From the context of your remark, it seemed as though you were referring to Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis, which made no sense.
and even when the confusion is exposed and cleared up in a sincere and polite way which should put the damn thing to rest, boring chauvinistic sentiments about My Field vs. Their Field are hid behind.
I responded with a neutral, humorous comment about the confusion of two different fields using the same nomenclature for different things; it didn't blame you, it didn't critisize you, and it didn't belittle you, but you nonetheless go off on a friggin' tizzy like somebody killed your poodle. I didn't know what "your field" was when I made it, and quite frankly, "Frank" I could care less at this point what "field" you are in.
You are arguably the single most obnoxious poster I have seen on FR since the demise of the previous title-holder, "Medved the Magnificent", who was summarilly booted off of this forum due to illness: the management got sick of his obnoxious behavior. You appear to be bound and determined to pick a fight with or insult everyone who doesn't bow and scrape at your feet, in awe of your amazing intellectual prowess. So be it... after all, who am I to suggest a touch of humility might do wonders for your rapidly evaporating credibility.
That is indeed what happens when some piece of terminology is used in two different fields of study. Which is too bad.
And THIS is indeed what happens when you act like some sort of Narcissistic nitwit. Which is too bad.
P.S. This concludes my interaction with you, as it is painfully apparent it is impossible to interact with you, unless one is either a yes-man or a masochist. Though I have no intention of responding, I trust you'll savage me with some vindictive, vitriolic, and vacuous Histrionic, ego-boosting attack, as seems to be your wont.
Okay, jumping to the fudge factor already. There are 20 (maybe 21 but who is counting) naturally occurring amino acids. If you wish to exclude the 9 (I count 11 in the peptide) amino acids not in the chain, that is alright by me, but it makes the just-so story even more just so.
The Twenty Amino AcidsThe twenty amino acids (that make up proteins)each have assigned to them both three-letter (can be upper or lower case) and one-letter codes (upper case). This makes it quicker and easier for notation purposes and are worth learning. The following list gives these notations along with hypertext references to download amino acid gif images and also interactive molecules.The format of the list is: amino acid name - 3 letter code - 1 letter code (reference to gif image, reference to interactive molecule)
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So "POOF!" nine amino acids are no more. Whoops! There are ten amino acids crossed out! What happened? Oh, there is even a more just-so occurrence. We have the mysterious amino acid "X" in the stew. I guess someone was counting and that amino acid is most likely the selenocysteine ploy.
Jenny, you need to recalculate. If you exclude the 10 amino acids from the earth then you can use 21^16 otherwise you are stuck with my numbers and I will not insist that the calculations be changed to 41^16. The numbers are bad enough.
Oh, I entirely agree. I think it's been clear the mutations, particularly in the more complex beasties, are far from random. However, I don't think that makes a particularly outstanding case for ID.
When a theory (or a pillar of a theory) is falsified, is it necessary to have a substitute in hand? In other words, if the randomness pillar were falsified tomorrow, I suspect there would not be a quick agreement on a replacement.
Your suggestion of random selection from a poplation with a central tendency could be one, but wouldn't there be others?
We’ve been discussing falsification off-and-on throughout this thread. At post 103 I give the reasons I suspect randomness is the most likely target for falsification of the theory of evolution, or at least a major pillar of it. From what I can see, the randomness blow would not be dealt by I.D. but rather by scientists working on the algorithmic nature of the genetics.
If that pillar were to be falsified, does it “upset Darwin’s apple-cart” or just put a nasty dent in it?
Evolutinists always make the claim that Darwin did not know about this or that, however, if he was such a great scientist, so insightful as evolutionists claim, he should not have made so many silly statements that were disproven later by science.
They tries and they FAILED, because DNA and Mendel Genetics ACTUALLY HELPED PROVE the Theory of evolution.
No it did not. The joker in the deck of evolution which the evolutionists carefully hide with verbiage is that a mutation does not spread according to Mendelian Genetics. The mutation will continue to represent the same portion of the population as it originally had which is in essence 1/2 of the alleles of a single individual of a particular gene in whatever size of population the mutation arose. Thus in a population of 1 million the mutation would continue to be 1/2 millionths of the alleles for that gene. Further, because of the small portion of the population a new mutation represents, the allele would tend to dissappear due to the laws of chance (a bad run of luck) coming up eventually. If one starts flipping coins against the house with even odds and comes in with a single quarter and keeps playing the individual with the quarter will eventually lose it all. These facts are admitted to by the evolutionists who looked into this problem and made up the rules - Hardy and Weinberg and Fisher.
Evolutionists try to get around these facts by proposing that a high selective value for these mutations will solve the problem. However, this goes against the theory of Darwinian evolution which proposes that changes are small and gradual. If changes are small and gradual then each change must have to have a low selective value and cannot spread easily and will be easily lost. This problem also gets rid of the theory of neutral mutations. So clearly genetics disproves Darwinian evolution.
Then came DNA which showed essentially that all mutational changes would necessarily have to be small. A completely new gene would constitute a miracle and evolution to be true would need miriads of such miracle to have created all the species on earth from measly bacteria. Now the interrelatedness of functions (which essentially is an argument as old Aristotle) was proven when it was shown that genes are just factories, they are just the printers of an organism's system, all the directions come from the 95% of DNA which is not in the genes. What this means for evolution is that essentially every single function is a system in itself which cannot arise stochastically by a single mutation (even a tremendously favorable one) because there is code needed in many different parts of an organism to make it work. In other words, every function of an organism is in a sense 'irreducibly complex'.
One little problem with Darwin's finches is also not mentioned in textbooks - they are not separate species. They can interbreed and do interbreed. The progeny of the 'mixed' breeds are even more viable and produce more progeny than those of unmixed breeds.
It should be noted what this shows about evolutionist 'science'. Whether due to incompetence, or willful fraud, evolutionists have been saying for decades that these were separate species. No one bothered to check whether they did indeed breed or covered it up purposely. Evolution is not science, it is garbage. The respect for the truth and for careful examination of the facts is not there at all.
Exactly! The reason evolutionists decline to state what the theory of evolution is is because there really is no such theory. It is just a materialistic explanation for biology. Problem with materialism (if one bothers to read the literature) is that it is a theory of nothing. It is anti-science in principle. This is why the evolutionists, when pushed to the wall on these threads deny that anything in science is true. If science were untrue, the great technological marvels produced by science would not exist. Just about everything in modern societies (except the people) is a result of science, you can feel and touch the products of science, so by the terms of materialists themselves, science has given plenty of proof of itself.
Indeed it is, which is why the scientific community abandoned it many years ago. Creationists, of course, would prefer to assume that the only possible explanation for the existence of DNA is that it whopped itself up out of junkyard amino acid in an instant, however, actual physical proof of this fairy tail contention is exactly zippo.
This is a big part of the evolutionist argument against ID and any sort of caveats on evolution in schools. Intentions are the last resort of ideologues when they are trying to suppress the truth. It is essentially an ad hominem attack on opponents since no one can read anyone's mind.
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