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."
I have answered this extensively on this thread, addressed to you, and I won't plunge into such detail again. That is not my opinion. My opinion is that morality, like, for example, science, is not driven by unchecked mass democracy. It is driven by the best practices of the most peer-respected and qualified individuals with the strongest academic cross-reference counts. We do not consult the shallow sociopathic butterflies we elect to high office, or the mass of mindless tit-sucking sycophants that voted them in.
Or the spartans?
If we wanted to survive as a cohesive culture, that embraced, on the whole, better values then we see around us, rather than a scattered collection of slaves on a resource-crowded mesozoic western plateau--you bet your ass.
If we saw better or equal values around us, say, like the iriquoi federation, than correct morals would be to embrace a larger sense of loyalty with a larger and more universal return-on-investment (such as not having to turn virtually every newborn into a warrior).
Hey, wait a minute. Is this what you meant to say? The question isn't sensible to your point.
Jesus put a qualification requirement on the stonee's that prevented them from stoning the adulteress. Your question suggests Jesus's will was somehow subverted by the lack of stoning--but, of course, that is not remotely what happened.
Perhaps a little more sleep would result in a little more coherency?
He didn't order the slavery of the virgin children nor is their virginity an implication that they were used as sex slaves.
Yes.
which rather better supports my contention that the urge to morality is an understandably fallible natural inclination?
No. If it were inate the challenge would be keeping people from acting moral.
It most certainly was.
I'll answer in a bit. In the meantime I'll sell you rope. Seriously, think about it. Read Num. 25
You seem to be saying that man is innately moral, yet your basing your morality on Christianity. Under your parameters it would be just as easy to base it on Nazism. Why is slavery/murder etc. wrong other than because you or a "scientist" who agrees with you says so?
Why do you think these people wouldn't have been persecuted anyway? How did the Romans treat Jews, the Greeks apostates, the Jews witches, the Germans/Huns/Scythans anybody?
So, you know support slavery?
So if Jesus is God incarnate as I believe why wasn't the adulteress stoned to death? Hey, wait a minute. Is this what you meant to say?
Yes.
Jesus put a qualification requirement on the stonee's that prevented them from stoning the adulteress.
He put a qualitifcation on all of us. And this gets to the heart of the debate about slavery and Old Testament regulations. What does the New Testatment say about the eating of foods banned in the OT? How about circumcision?
Would this make a good defense for a serial killer in court?:
"Your honor, you should excuse me because there are other serial killers out there far worse then me!"
Than could you please follow suite and get to the heart of it? Possibly before I die of ennui, or a hernia, waiting for you to make your point?
What does the New Testatment say about the eating of foods banned in the OT? How about circumcision?
Enough! You are not Socrates, and I am not Polycrates. If you have a rule I can follow for telling which parts of the OT are gold, and which are dross, spill it.
It would be a perfect defense in a society ruled by those who did not see killing as a crime. It would not work in a society which saw humans as loved by God.
It's all gold.
If you love God first and your neighbor as yourself you can petition God to allow you to use mercy as a criteria for judgement -- and expect mercy in return.
If you don't love you better use the law -- and expect to be judged by the standards of the law.
I see. So, if I am without sin, I should, indeed, stone witches wherever I find them? Provided they are some one else's mother about whom I care nothing?
And I should refrain from eating pork because there are no issues of love's mercy involved?
..and, to get back to the original question: as long as I do it with loving intentions, it's ok to round up heretics and torture them into confession to save their mortal souls?
We have as word for this kind of thinking in felony prosecution circles. A moral blank check. Your basic thesis is that you have no rules. This is amoral chicken fluff that can justify anything in the name of love. No wonder the romans prosecuted christians. This is the philosophical fertilizer anarchy and nihilism grow out of.
This is not a relevant response. The question was, is the church justified in kidnapping jewish children, and helping hitler kill jews and etc? Your simpering, irrelevant defense of the church is that the romans were worse. Try to at least stay in the same universe long enough to finish a thought, ok?
What? How do you derive that thought? And what does it matter? I'm not on trial here, God is, or more precisely, Jesus's scepter of moral-whiteout is.
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