To the Editor,
Sweet tears of Teabilly Butthurt! Did you see the Ayatollah steam coming from James McCoole's ears? Then Steve Earle asks whether believing in creationism makes a person bad. What does that have to do with anything? This may be a little over Mr Earle's head but politicians and science teachers should be up to date on the latest scientific consensus and discoveries. Creationism goes up against mountains of scientific evidence and do not belong in schools or government. Its not about being good or bad, its about competency. It is of paramount importance that policy makers make their decisions based upon the latest knowledge.
Creationists are today's Geocentrists. They refuse to accept the mountains of evidence that support evolution from common descent. Mr McCoole certainly does not belong on a school board where providing up to date education is of primary importance. By the way, those three right wing school board members in Jefferson County, Colorado, who made a stink about the Advanced Placement American History curriculum were recalled last week and kicked off the school board. Let that be a lesson to conservatives who want to push their history and science from an alternative universe in public schools.
Mr McCoole, forgetting it is 2015, not 1015, claims that there is no evidence for evolution by common descent. Maybe he should read some science instead of books and sites which advance religious apologetics in the guise of science. Below I have included some links. One is about Ring Species which demonstrate speciation in the here and now. The second presents 29 examples of macroevolution. This will not be easy but one has to start somewhere. As I wrote a while back, one can ditch literal readings of ancient religious texts, redefine what creator could mean, and still maintain some sort of faith. As Thomas Paine said, the Bible is an insult to the Almighty. Its the dogmatic doctrines that have to go. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are full of tales that require gullibility on steroids for acceptance. Supernatural nonsense like revelations, visions and dreams, virgin births, original sin, hellfire, salvation and a need for a savior, resurrections, angels, demons, Satan, prophecies, and much more have to be tossed in the trash bin of mankind's worn out ideas. Deism is compatible with today's science because it doesn't make ludicrous claims like claiming to know what God is or what IT thinks. Evolution by common descent is a big problem for ideas such as original sin and salvation because with evolution there was no "fall of mankind" so there is no need for a savior. If humanity is actually ascending by means of natural selection, the tribal superstitions of the middle east which became the 3 great religions have it completely backwards.
The problem with learning about evolution is that it is a study which brings together many fields of science. Evolution is supported by so many lines of evidence that a young Earth creationist has to ignore genetics, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, immunology, physics, astrophysics, geology, archaeology, paleontology, paleo-climatology, botany, bacteriology, virology, and more in order to maintain belief. One can't learn this subject overnight. With Intelligent Design believers, its not as bad because they have faced the facts of the geological record and the distant galaxies that are billions of light years away. But they still cling to myths like Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity" which claims that there is an irreducible level of biological complexity that could not have evolved from any previous state. This has been widely refuted and rejected because its demonstrably wrong. There are no examples of irreducible complexity.
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