{"id":1258,"date":"2011-03-03T21:45:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T01:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2011-03-03T21:45:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T01:45:13","slug":"palm-beach-posts-evolutioncreationism-back-n-forth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1258","title":{"rendered":"Palm Beach Post’s evolution\/creationism back-n-forth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sigh. I wish I had time to spare. My teacher internship is dominating my life and not allowing me to partake in some of my personal pleasures, such as diving deep into any evolution\/creationism debate that pops up in the Sunshine State. There is a little war of words on the subject brewing in the Palm Beach Post lately. I commented on the first salvo in my post “Evolution targeted in newspaper commentary<\/a>“. A response made it into print recently: “Evolution is a fact, no matter how the universe was created<\/a>“. The author, Gary Hurd, picks up on a few of the same points I did and does a fine job.<\/p>\n

Sadly, such research success is shifting away from the United States toward nations not infected with politically powerful opponents to science motivated by religious ideology. The anti-science book by Lee Strobel, which Paul James promoted as “interviews with top scientists,” is a case in point. Not one of Mr. Strobel’s interviews was with a significant scientist. A good example is Mr. Strobel’s interview with Jonathan Wells. Following his doctorate in theology, Mr. Wells was ordained by self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon, ordered to earn a doctoral degree in biology and dedicate his life to “destroying Darwinism.” With no significant scientific publications, he is still following orders.<\/p>\n

Mr. James concludes that American teenagers should find contentment and meaning in religion, and not science. But, it is scientists who are healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked (see Matthew 25).<\/p>\n

Perhaps we scientists are living meaningful lives after all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The original writer, Paul James, wasted no time in punching back with “Creationism debate: Let curricula evolve<\/a>“. He took issue with Hurd’s characterization of his first column, and he goes digging around on Hurd’s blog to find more fodder. And like any “good” creationist, James used what he found to add to the fog of war, mixing and matching unrelated bits of information while hoping no one would notice.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, while the federal courts have mandated for the past 40 years that creationism be kept out of public school curricula, Dr. Hurd wrote on his blog that, “Militant, atheist evolutionary biologists are every bit as religious as a sweating, hollering young Earth creationist preacher from south Alabama.” Why, then, doesn’t he also see teaching evolution as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will there be another shot fired in this little battle? We’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, check out the reader comments on both columns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sigh. I wish I had time to spare. My teacher internship is dominating my life and not allowing me to partake in some of my personal pleasures, such as diving deep into any evolution\/creationism debate that pops up in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-ki","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":369,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=369","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":0},"title":"8-0","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"So far, eight Florida daily newspapers have written editorials in support of evolution. None have supported \"alternatives.\" Either the reality of the situation is that obvious, or it's just a liberal media conspiracy. I'll take reality. Here's the eighth editorial, which appeared today in the Palm Beach Post. Evolution is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Analysis\/Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Analysis\/Commentary","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1262,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1262","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":1},"title":"Newspapers not kind to antievolution bill so far","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The early news reports and blog posts about Senator Stephen Wise's antievolution bill (SB 1854) (and see my previous post) are not too kind to his repeated attempts to undermine science education. Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas has a blog post \"Groan ... evolution back on trial in the Legislature.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=400","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":2},"title":"A letter to the editor worth noting","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been staying away from posting letters to the editor on this blog, because there are so many of them. But this one I thought was worth taking note of due in part to what it says and in part to who wrote it. This was in the Palm Beach\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=378","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":3},"title":"Miramar: the morning after","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, so we got one nasty shocker out of the way last night when the Associated Press clued us in to Taylor County's anti-evolution resolution. Let's move on to see what's in store for us the day after the final public meeting about the new draft of the state science\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1254,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1254","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":4},"title":"Evolution targeted in newspaper commentary","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know who Paul James is, but he wrote a newspaper commentary for the Palm Beach Post about evolution. Judging from the title \"Evolution doesn't answer all of science's questions\", it is already evident that the writer isn't the most knowledgeable person in matters of science. Of course, James\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1254#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2023,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2023","url_meta":{"origin":1258,"position":5},"title":"Folks worried about Tuck","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Two letters to the editor were printed in today's Daytona Beach News Journal about the appointment of Andy Tuck to the Florida Board of Education. First one: Religion, not science Should Gov. Rick Scott\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s appointment of Andy Tuck, who so virulently opposes the teaching of evolution in our state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s schools,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}