Evolution Disclaimer Supported

The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

[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."

[donh]

Your suggestion of random selection from a poplation with a central tendency could be one, but wouldn't there be others?

Um--this is a pillar of the present argument of evolution by variation and natural selection. The point being that--contrary to creationist's largely unstated assumptions that selection occurs over a uniform continuous distribution of evolved entities--selection occurs over a distribution with a central tendency. It is this central tendency that is the sculptor's knife, taken unwarrantedly by creationists as evidence of divine intervention, design, or irreducible complexity.

[donh]

My claim is explicit enough. There is no necessity to the order of DNA just as there is no necessity to the order of letters in a book. This is a scientifically proven fact. To say that a string of DNA at least 250,000 bases long arose by chance is utterly impossible

Right. That's why no one with any scientific credibility has been saying this, for some time now. Perhaps after another decade or so, you'll get the message and stop trying to refute a scientific notion science does not hold. No one with any sense thinks such a chain could occur at random, with high enough probability to care. However, it is a far cry from that to the claim that, therefore, God, or little green men, did it. If you don't know the details of how something was done, then, at the risk of being repetitive, you cannot concoct a meaningful calculation of the odds against it.

[donh]

DNA makes RNA which makes amino acids which when strung together properly make proteins.

You want to revise this, right?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

I do not dispute your assertion of random selection from a population with a central tendency. My assertion really has little to do with selection at all. What I suspect will undo randomness is information theory – particularly the discovery of algorithms and symbols. This is described better in the links on my post 103.

IOW, I suspect these researchers will conclude that the mutations presumed to fuel natural selection actually were more likely to result from information content - algorithms, including the use of symbols (self/non self – friend/foe – etc.) The process (and the result) could not be called random.

[donh]

Oh. You mean the communism thing? Like, somehow associating evolutionism with communism has no bearing on the validity of the former?

My, my, I have to admire the density of silly assumptions here.

1) yes indeed, any association of a scientific theory with a political movement matters to the truth of the scientific theory about as much as a fart does to a hurricane. You have moths working on your cranium if you think otherwise. Scientific truth is not decided by referendum or political expediency, except at gunpoint, as in the adoption of LYSENKOISM in Soviet Russia.

2) Associating Darwinism with Russian Communism is an assumption fairly unique to you, and certain extreme creationists teetering on the very edge of rational thought. Stalin hanged avowed Darwinists.

I've further researched your specious disclaimer WRT to Stalin and evoltionism. Nice, hair-splitting try.

Just about any attentive high school junior who's taking history can tell you that Lysenkoism, not Darwinism, was the foundational belief of communist russia's working biological scientists.

[donh]

"Where do you think stellar evolutionary theory comes from?"

It is but a preconceived notion, with preconceived experiments and preconcieved results to bear it out while maintaining a smugness bereft of all emotion.

I see--and since universal gravity can only be demonstrated by looking at light that's millions of years old--I assume you have the same thing to say about the universal law of gravitation?

"That is to say, theories that can be tested using material evidence?"

With that kind of wishful thinking I have good reason to believe Santa Claus will visit you this year. Let me know when you have the eight-million-year old scene set up.

Old data can provide for new experiments for the following reason: you haven't yet dug up, or received all the old data that might be available. Therefore, you can test hypotheses by seeing how well they do in predicting the nature of evidence you subsequently recover. This is sometimes called post-diction in the literature. This is all that, for example, astronomy, paleo-meteorology and galactic astro-physics has to work with. Just how much of the scientific work of the last three centuries are you willing to throw away?

[Aracelis]

My friend, you are as always, eloquent and poised even when provoked beyond the human capacity for restraint.

You are arguably the single most obnoxious poster I have seen on FR since the demise of the previous title-holder, "Medved the Magnificent"

Nah...he couldn't be...could he????

[PatrickHenry]

Nah ... he couldn't be [arguably the single most obnoxious poster I have seen on FR since the demise of the previous title-holder, "Medved the Magnificent"] ... could he????

I could name 2 or 3 other contenders for that title who are posting right here on this thread. But longshadow's choice is certainly worthy of consideration.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Just about any attentive high school junior who's taking history can tell you that Lysenkoism, not Darwinism, was the foundational belief of communist russia's working biological scientists.

By the accounts I've read, Lysenkoism was a manifestation of antiscience that grew out of evolutionist thinking. Stalin became an atheist through reading Darwin. His interest was power, and he put Dawinism into practice throuhg his slaughter of weaker folk.

But what's your point? These political and emotional subjects have no bearing on the reliability of theories. I don't have a problem with your stating the obvious.

Interesting to note, however, that many scientists who adhere to creationist theories do so secretly for fear of losing their jobs. Is it the part of real science to keep the door of other possibilities shut?

[gore3000]

happened'. The succession of totally ridiculous probabilites being necessary for evolution to be true makes the theory itself totally ridiculous.-me-

You have once again proved yourself an able desciple of the principle of retrospective astonishment.

It's not retrospective astonishment, it's science. Science says that the Universe had to be intelligently designed. The only excuse of materialists is the ridiculous theory of multiple universes. Science says that abiogenesis is impossible. The only excuses of materialists is that maybe, perhaps, possibly, someday, somehow, someone may figure out how life could have arisen by chance. The development of a human organism from conception to birth is called by science a program. All the above are not the result of ignorance, they are the result of scientific discoveries. They are the result of our increased knowledge of physics and biology. They are not the result of ignorance. In other words as the veil of ignorance dissappears, the more design we see in the universe.

[Fester Chugabrew]

"I assume you have the same thing to say about the universal law of gravitation?"

Sure. These are your assumptions, not mine. It is you who assume "universal gravity can only be demonstrated by looking at light," all the time not knowing for certain whether there may be more involved.

In the scheme of things we know less about the universal law of gravitation than appears. Ask ten scientists "What is light?" and see if they all agree. See if they have an absolute answer.

Strange how - in your opinion - the amount of accepted data is somehow more indicative of reliability than any other factor. Why is this so? Why should the pure volume of so-called knowledge plus the three centuries of scientific study carry any more water than pure emotion? Do these things indeed affect reliability? How do you know for certain? Do you assume, just because so many have have said it and claimed to have seen it, that is must be true?

The ostrich ought to be the world mascot for evolutionists, as they refuse to even consider the possibility that other unknown forces may be involved in all they observe. Shame on their silly asses.

[gore3000]

There must be information content from first cause - but there are no natural origins for such information. Further, the process requires symbols (self/non-self, friend/foe) - i.e. significant information content.

The problem of the symbolism in DNA is something which materialists like to ignore, but it cannot be. Symbolism is particular to intelligence and it is not so obvious. The abstractness of our alphabet, which DNA resembles, took many centuries to develop. It takes even intelligent individuals, children, a lot of learning to grasp.

[gore3000]

Here we go, now you expect me to repeat myself, so that you can ignore that post as well.

You made an unsubstantiated charge. I have asked you to substantiate it. You can give a post# or just cut and paste the post you claim refutes my posts which I supposedly have ignored.

Let me just say this though, that the number of my posts which have been totally ignored and left unrefuted (and we can include in the list those in which the conclusion of the discussion was an insult) is quite long.

[gore3000]

However, the original claim that Darwin's finches were separate species was made way back in the 1930's -me-

Unless my memory is failing me, the observers who wrote "Darwin's Finches" made quite an extensive study of all the breeding going on in the Galapagos, including of crossbreeds, and their conclusions were not that the crossbreeds were more highly successful than the purebreeds, contrary to what you've suggested.

The so called 'scientist' who originally made the claim that these finches proved evolution was made by Percy Lowe in 1936. Evolutionists blindly followed him without bothering to verify the claims because of course it backed up their theory. The refutation came from Peter Grant and his colleagues who observed in 1982 that the various finch breeds produced hybrids. This throws down all the nonsense mentioned by evolutionists about the finches and shows quite well the dishonesty of evolutionists who continue to use this as an example of evolution even after it has been comletely disproven.

[VadeRetro]

What's with the pictures in these supposed children's science books showing at one end a monkey and at the other a man? And in the sequence one can clearly see a neanderthal, supposedly already shewn to not be related to homo sapiens.

"Not related to homo sapiens?" If Neanderthals were still around as a separate group (but their DNA may still be around in us), they'd be our closest relatives on the planet, far, far more related than those 98-percent similar chimpanzees touted as our closest relatives now. Not related? Spouting such misinformation in Goebellian propaganda blast terms does not help your credibility. I don't want you writing materials for science class. You shouldn't be allowed near the place.

Above is a series something along the lines you're crying about. (Source.) I can feel your discomfort. This kind of presentation kills you. These are the dots creationists will not will not connect. Connecting dots, you see, is inductive logic, which is exactly what Dr. Frank and others intend to deny by stamping every microscopic interpolation or induction "only a theory."

The skull on the upper left is a modern chimpanzee. The rest are australopithecines and hominids including Neanderthals (basically your great-uncle) in chronological/sedimentary order left to right and top to bottom.

It means something to most scientists that you can make a fossil series like that for apes-to-humans or birds-to-dinosaurs or fish-to-amphibians but not birds-to-mammals (there being no bird-mammal intermediates other than basal reptiles far older than either birds or mammals). You can pretend (and I've seen every manner of silly strawman argument already) that whales and porpoises are some kind of mammal-fish intermediates. You probably will anyway but I'm trying to anticipate you here and save thread space.

My answer is that we have a clear picture from several sources (fossil record, molecular studies, comparative anatomy ...) that basal mammals came from reptiles (which came from amphibians which came from fish) and fully mammalian cetaceans later rediscovered marine adaptation. There's this tree of life, and some things obviously sprout from others on the tree and some (despite some superficial similarities) obviously do not. There's some noise and ambiguity out in the finer detailed branches but the arguments are not about whether evolution is happening at all, only about what exactly evolved from what.

And let's not mention the pictures of "missing links" never ever unearthed. Fact or fiction?

Can't tell if you're referring to fact or fiction until you make your mention more clear, but there really aren't that many links missing for people who have less problem connecting dots than does the typical creationist. You're trying to tell science that no matter how many dots they get and no matter how obvious a pattern the dots may make, science is not allowed to notice. That's the very opposite of what science actually does.

[Doctor Stochastic]

..that many scientists who adhere to creationist theories do so secretly for fear of losing their jobs...

Evidence for this claim?

[Tribune7]

Evidence? I bet there is LOTS of evidence, we just haven't discovered it yet.

I was going to answer this. But I think I'll let it hang there.

[Tribune7]

Perhaps the White Eyes will be defeated and the grass will grow belly high to the buffalo again.

When it happens you can cite it.

Of course that would be evidence of the supernatural. :-)

[anguish]

Galileo was not treated fairly but you mustn't forget that he was a Christian, was supported by a lot of Christians

It's true that he had a lot of christian friends, among them, before he published "Dialogue", the pope. But it's worth noting that even though the pope even had had written poems to Galileo and enjoyed long conversations with him, their friendship ended after "Dialogue". After publication they never talked again, perhaps mainly because the pope thought (more or less correctly) that one of the fictional characters in the book was a caricature of him.

[Tribune7]

Which one? There are so many.

Any of which would be supernatural. Finding the right one is a different subject.