{"id":306,"date":"2007-10-29T07:18:01","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T11:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=306"},"modified":"2008-08-05T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T23:35:00","slug":"dueling-letters-on-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Dueling letters on evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two letters to the Orlando Sentinel cover opposing viewpoints concerning evolution education. The first letter<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0takes some previous letter writers to task for their misconceptions and convoluted reasoning:<\/p>\n

Please remember that gravity is “just a theory,” too, but I have not heard of any Christians protesting its place in science classes, this despite the fact that the Bible describes numerous incidents of human flight. I also don’t understand how believing that man came from clay is all that much different from suggesting we emerged from “primordial slime,” as a recent letter writer suggested in your paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second letter<\/a> is standard “it’s just a theory” garbage, and the writer has some conspiracy “theory” issues as well:<\/p>\n

Call it what you will to make it more palatable to the public, evolution is still just a theory. It is only a scientific fact in the minds of those who are unwilling to consider the possibility of a divine creator or that much of the scientific “proofs” of evolution are flawed. The idea that increasing the standards by which evolution is taught in the public schools will somehow improve a students understanding of the broad spectrum of science seems pretty far-fetched, and serves only to promote a humanist agenda in the education system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two letters to the Orlando Sentinel cover opposing viewpoints concerning evolution education. The first letter\u00c2\u00a0takes some previous letter writers to task for their misconceptions and convoluted reasoning: Please remember that gravity is “just a theory,” too, but I have not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[4,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-4W","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=68","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":0},"title":"Our response to the letters to the editor","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been waiting to post here on our blog our answers to the previous letters to the editor talked about here. However, we learned that the newspaper chose not to publish our letter. On the positive side, they did publish Dr. Scott's letter. I realize our letter is long, but\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":296,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=296","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":1},"title":"The debate is rolling onward","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"FloridaToday.com fired a round on behalf of good science in an editorial today supporting evolution in the draft science standards. Florida schools may soon enter the 21st century by embracing evolution as a core scientific principle. ... The draft standards require in-depth instruction on the subject and clearly state \"evolution\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":939,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=939","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":2},"title":"One mangled letter prompts flood of response","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in Febraury in the Palm Beach Post a professor of sociology wrote a letter to the editor: \"Darwin's theory, though valid, takes faith, too.\" It was a mangled mess of a letter that demonstrated just how ignorant the writer was concerning biology and evolution. Several other folks thought the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":728,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=728","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":3},"title":"Textbooks changed under pressure","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science was under a time crunch to get a letter out to the Brevard County school board about science textbook selections. The letter could have benefitted from another round or two of rewrites, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get the letter out in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":57,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=57","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":4},"title":"I think I found the missing link","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Another letter to the editor. Another missing link exposed. The letter is in response to this stuff here. Has anyone seen the \"missing link\" lately? Here are my thoughts on \"Intelligent Design Creationism a \u00c3\u201dCon,' \" a letter published on Sept. 23. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is exactly what\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":53,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=53","url_meta":{"origin":306,"position":5},"title":"Darwin or Design letters","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"FlCfS board member Jonathan Smith got our news release published in Winter Haven's News Chief newspaper. (I think free registration is required to read the online paper.) Of course, a response popped up a few days later. See the letter below the fold ... A recent letter to the editor\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"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=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}