Creationist efitorial screed in Gazette is shameful

[Panich52]

Charleston Gazette

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

State standards enforce evolution propaganda

Editor:

Glenn Branch, (of the wrongly named “National Center for Science Education”) has given his blessing to the new state science standards. I guarantee that had the standards not met Branch’s approval he would have been howling.

What folks do not know is that the NCSE is an enforcer of evolutionism propaganda. The recent Gazette article said the NCSE “defends the teaching of evolution.” They cry “creationism,” but as the history of the Kanawha County Schools evolution battles and previous state science standards battle proves, the NCSE will not even allow scientific criticism of evolution. My website (www.insectman.us) has the documentation including FOIA facts of how deceitful evolutionists are. Without censorship evolution would not last a week.

There will be responses to this letter calling me names and citing supposed “facts” of evolution like “bacterial resistance.” That and any other argument to support evolution are easily refuted with science. Simply contact me via my website.

As for “Climate Change”, Branch said, “They’re now out of the hands of politicians who want to meddle with them.” The NCSE never hesitates to bring in politicians to support its dogma. Global temperatures have fluctuated for thousands of years. The fear of “Climate Change” fanatics is for students to study data that disputes the slant of the NCSE. Actually it is a tenant of their Mother Earth religion and they will use their version of the data to bring about more of their liberal nonsense that is destroying society.

Karl Priest

Poca

••

My response - sent to paper 5/21

"Creationist 'InsectMan' wants your kids to fail"

The May 20 editorial by Karl Priest attacks the highly respected National Center for Science Education. It was thoroughly insulting to me and anyone who treasures the benefits of a quality education.

Despite Mr Priest's uninformed invective, evolution is a fact. Darwin did not 'invent' it. He, and others of his time, only recognized it. The ONLY debates over evolution concern the mechanisms by which it operates. Absolutely no credible biological scientist denies evolution's existence.

Mr Priest seems unable to understand that churches are for teaching religion, public schools for teaching most else. Learning actual science is vitally important for advancement as children enter a grown up world of competition. Even colleges may pass up on applicants who lack a proper science education in favor of ones with a better chance at succeeding.

Faith has a place. Religion asks "why?," science asks, and answers "how."

Mr Priest's insistance on insults reveals his absence of credibility. Don't make West Virginia, my ancestral home, a laughing stock. I'm proud to be a WV Hillbilly and want its people to be respected, not jeered as willfully ignorant "hillbilly hicks."

Support quality science education. For your childrens' sake.

•

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Way, way, too polite.

I would have added a few stronger terms describing his delusions and stating that teaching kids his brand of bull is tantamount to child abuse.

[Panich52]

4. 1st draft not so polite.

But I chose a more moderate tone, esp since I pointed out the wacko used insults to 'boost' his phony argument. Higher ground, and all...

[StandingInLeftField]

2. I continue to search...

...for a viable means of escape from the madness - without success.

[MisterP]

3. I've been thinking, and honestly the schools might do well with a Wiki-level religious ed course

at the very least with the nuts and bolts of US religious history nobody can say "I'm, like, an ORIGINAL Christian, like in the year 40": no, they're a providentialist premillennialist vaguely-congregational restorationist prosperity-doctrine far-right crank whose history comes from some Victorian neopagans and whose geology is from an excommunicated Adventist heretic who couldn't tell one fossil from another: just being put into a context shakes up the fundies REAL hard

[Panich52]

5. I've no problem w/ comparatice religion classes - just keep it out of sciences

The problem is that many, even most, of the texts & materials dealing w/ the subject tend to be written by RW evanfelicals, therefore biased. Learning about the numerous religions would be beneficial, but how many to include? Would Native Americans be left out? Wicca? Showing the conflicts caused by religious differences would also be good. But, again, it might be difficult to find an instructor who could maintain objectivity. The obvious unbiased choice, an atheist, would be rejected - they're the most hated minority on the planet. It would be irrelevant to those who revile atheists that not believing would mean the most balanced view of conparing religions.

But, again, religion has no place in any science class. Mr Priest, Discovery Inst, et al can call their ideas 'creation science' all they want, but it doesn't alter the wholly religious basis of their claims.

[MisterP]

6. ah, but even focusing only on one religion in one country will show that ol Johnathan Edwards

died bringing vaccination to the Colonies, that the Baptist wave started out pretty pink (and Black), and that the fundamentalist movement was only from the 1900s: that's what I want anyone leaving with

[Panich52]

7. You can add protestants' hate campaign against Catholics, Christians attempts eradicate Native relig