Today's Letters: Science standards can't be set by a popularity contest

Darwin critics arrive in force Feb. 12, story

While the coverage of the hearing held by the Florida Department of Education Feb. 11 in Orlando counts the noses of those speaking pro and con, we must remember that the adoption of the proposed scientifically credible standards is not a popularity contest. It doesn't matter how many religious extremists want to have their unverifiable beliefs introduced as science.

The decision to be made by the Board of Education is an important public policy decision for the future of Florida's economy and standard of living.

The fact that the board is appointed rather than elected should work to buffer its members from political influence. Unfortunately, it appears that some of them are pandering to the masses in anticipation of running for political office in the future.

Hopefully the majority of the board will adopt the standards as written and not condemn Florida to a stunted economic future as well as ridicule from the rest of the industrialized world.

Phyllis Saarinen, Gainesville

Compatible ideas

I am a practicing, active Christian. I am also a retired electronics engineer. I believe in God and I trust science. To me this evolution/intelligent design/creationism controversy is a nonissue.

As I understand it, the primary issue with the intelligent design group is that the Earth is roughly 6,000 years old as determined by their interpretation of the Bible, while the evolution group believes the scientific evidence that the Earth is significantly older than 6,000 years. Mostly because of these differing time lines, the theories of development of humans is vastly different.

About a year and a half ago, my pastor preached a very well-researched sermon showing how these seemingly disparate theories are not mutually exclusive. My pastor is a recognized Bible scholar. According to him, if you go back to the original, ancient languages from which the modern Bible was translated, the word "day" in the modern Bible, which defines the creation sequence in Genesis, was used in place of terminology in the original language that actually means "period." This "period" is obviously a time period and could be eons long. The "day" or "period" is not a span of 24 hours. God's time is not the same as our time.

The intelligent design advocates point to complex human development that they feel must have been guided by a higher power. I don't dispute that. But I believe that this higher power, God, directed this intricate development over many millennia in an evolutionary way, guided by God.

Evolution and intelligent design are not mutually exclusive!

Bill Balmer, Seminole

Darwin critics arrive in force Feb. 12, story

Flawed academics

Science is not infallible. Remember they once thought the world was flat when all they had to do was read Isaiah 40:22 which says: He sits above the circle of the earth.

No amount of evolution has been able to make a monkey speak or reason. Once again the academics and the intelligentsia are the idiots of the planet. You have to question the IQ of anyone who thinks that a body as magnificently engineered as ours with brains, eyes, kidneys, heart, lungs and nerves could have evolved from a single-cell amoeba in some pond scum.

Lynn O'Keefe, Largo

Darwin critics arrive in force Feb. 12, story

Stuck in the past

It's truly amazing that we don't seem to have progressed much at all since 1925 when John Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school. Creationists are still trying to corrupt the minds of our young children with their "intelligent design" fairly tale rather than having them taught the scientifically correct theory of evolution. Richard Dawkins (famed evolutionary biologist) has stated that teaching creationism to children is akin to child abuse!

Furthermore, the story quotes Curtis Dalton of Graceville, Fla., as saying, "The Board of Education (in Florida) will be known as the first to buy the lie that evolution is fact." He thus proved that he is as ignorant of current events as he is of evolution. He should know that on Dec. 20, 2005, a federal judge in Pennsylvania barred the Dover school district from teaching intelligent design, saying it is "creationism in disguise." And on Feb. 13, 2007, the Kansas State Board of Education approved a new curriculum that removed any reference to intelligent design in its science courses.

Let's hope that the Board of Education makes the right decision next week by voting overwhelmingly in favor of teaching evolution and relegating intelligent design to the confines of our churches.

Bob Lindskog, Palm Harbor

Ignore the blather

I am a Christian who believes God used evolution to create human life, although like most Americans, my knowledge of science is limited.

I don't need to be scientist, however, to take a position on Monday's hearing in Orlando. On one side, we have the National Academy of Sciences and other science professionals armed with "multiple forms of scientific evidence." On the other side we have the creationists coming to podium with gimmicks involving oranges, crackpot theories linking Darwin to dictators, and other nonsense.

I hope the state Board of Education will see this blather for what it is and vote unanimously to approve the new science standards.

Peter Tuite, Weeki Wachee

I turn page on my history Feb. 9, commentary

Shared feelings

This article by Melissa O'Brien resonated with me profoundly. Daddy, a U.S. Army soldier, met Mama in the early 1950s in her hometown of Heidelberg, where I was also born. Like Melissa, I grew up with red cabbage and sauerkraut (along with Southern fried chicken and collard greens), and we looked forward to Oma and Opa's Christmas packages filled with delicious German sweets and treats.

But late 1930s and early 1940s Germany was so horrific. Here I am, two generations removed and only part German, and still feeling some guilt the way Melissa does. I lost it when she wrote that her grandfather was not in the German army. My Opa was drafted into the Luftwaffe, the German air force. Thankfully, Mama recalls he absolutely hated it, and my grandparents defied the law and listened to forbidden pro-American radio, which has always been a consolation to me.

Thank you, Ms. O'Brien, for sharing your story. You are not alone.

Karin Klaassen, Brandon

[Last modified February 13, 2008, 23:25:32]