Responses to last Sunday’s letters on intelligent design, creationism and the theory of evolution
Re: “Debating intelligent design, creationism and the theory of evolution,” Aug. 14 Open Forum.
Reading the letters by Sandy Daniel, Mike Brown and Lawrence Bell, one would be left with the impression that there is real debate within the scientific community over the relative merits of evolutionary theory and intelligent design and that evolutionary theory is a threat to good Christians everywhere.
First, there is simply no significant support for intelligent design in the scientific community, and to say otherwise is simply dishonest. Yes, you can find a few people with Ph.D.s in science or engineering fields who support intelligent design, which is true for just about any idea out there. The fact is that the vast majority of scientists back the theory of evolution by natural selection, as this theory is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.
Nonetheless, it is pointless to engage in debate over the merits of an idea based on faith, since as pointed out in the column by Nicholas DiGiacomo (“Intelligent design is not a theory,” Aug. 14), intelligent design is not set up to be falsifiable. The debate should really not be about which idea you should believe, but which should be taught in public schools.
Faith can be wonderful, but science education must adhere to the principles of science, which intelligent design does not. Watering down the teaching of evolution in our schools risks the education of a generation of Americans that lacks the understanding of a theory that is a critical foundation of modern biology and medicine.
James DeGregori, Denver
The writer is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Science at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.
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Letter-writers Sandy Daniel, Mike Brown and Lawrence Bell collectively assert that we evolutionists are a closed-minded lot motivated by fear of alternative theories, antagonism to religion, and a conspiratorial interest in concealing the truth from children. Their letters contain numerous misconceptions about the subject of evolution, its methods, and the state of scientific agreement about the empirical validity and practical utility of evolutionary theory.
My colleagues in biological sciences and religious studies and I invite all interested citizens and high school classes to come to the University of Denver to see for themselves the evidence for evolution and discuss with us the scientific and theological implications of this evidence. You have a world-class university with world-class resources in your midst, and we’re here to serve the public good. Use us.
Dean J. Saitta, Denver
The writer is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Denver.
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Lawrence Bell’s letter regarding evolution is largely erroneous. He asserts that after 10 years of research, he was incapable of finding any evidence to support evolution while somehow finding great quantities of evidence to dispute evolutionary theory. Whether this reflects that Bell is a poor researcher or simply closed-minded is unclear, but here is a little evidence supporting evolution that I discovered after about 10 minutes of research on the Internet.
A strong piece of evidence is the existence of many different breeds of domestic plants and animals. These different breeds were produced by human beings who were artificially selecting for various traits, thus demonstrating that selective pressures can produce novel physical traits. Selective pressures also explain why there are now drug-resistant strains of many diseases.
If the arguments expressed in Bell’s letter are the result of 10 years of “research,” I am frightened to learn that somewhere there is a college that gave him a master’s degree in science.
Geoff Gifford, Evergreen
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Letter-writer Lawrence Bell chose to forgo informed debate in his anti-evolutionary polemic. He brusquely concludes a previous writer must lack a science degree for stating evolution is one of the sturdiest scientific theories. As a science teacher, I would hope Bell knows his position is contrary to that of the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association, and far too many other national and international science associations to list. Position papers and detailed comparisons of science and religion from these various institutions are readily available to those interested in facts.
Bell also does a disservice to reasonable discourse when he states that “the theory of evolution was designed and perpetuated by atheists.” This statement is a clear reflection of Bell’s beliefs, not the convictions of those he attempts to smear, who actually hold a variety of religious beliefs, including evolution being God’s means of creation. I suppose we can only be impressed that all of these “atheists” wound up with the intellectual capacity to become leading researchers and theorists in their fields, numbering in the tens of thousands, and that advances in genetics, biochemistry and cosmology, among other fields, have been so consistently cooperative in supporting their nefarious goals.
John Stroud, Denver
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I don’t know what all the fuss is about over how life formed. Personally, I think God used infinite intelligence to design and create the world in six days and then let it evolve all these millions of years.
Honestly, I don’t have a clue how it all happened. And I don’t much care. I’ll just take it on faith as God’s great mystery. Blind trust relieves me of trying to figure it all out and wasting energy defending it to others.
A recent sermon on Peter sinking while walking on the water toward Jesus suggested from the moment he saw the Lord walking toward the boat, he doubted Jesus was who he said he was. It wasn’t enough that Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, take heart it is me.” Peter lacked faith and needed solid proof.
The story is illustrative, for if we need proof about how life began, or for other wonders and mysteries, then what good is faith?
Gerry T. Himes, Aurora
How to reform Colorado schools
Re: “Get serious about school reform,” Aug. 14 Chuck Reyman column.
As an experienced teacher, I would like to add a few examples to Chuck Reyman’s excellent Colorado Voices column about state testing. Student achievement has become synonymous with the Colorado Student Assessment Program; however, the most erroneous assumption that critics make is these tests are valid indicators of student achievement. In fact, CSAP is riddled with inconsistencies and bias.
Without giving away particular items, let me give you some examples. For the first few years, the eighth-grade “long constructed response” – the term used to describe multiple-paragraph writing without using the word “paragraph” – was focused on the essay. In 2002, the “prompt,” or writing question, used the word “essay” to describe the task. In the last few years, that term was revised to read “piece of writing.” This year, the question asked for a “memoir,” a completely different form of writing. Certain writing skills, such as sentence fluency and mechanics, can be assessed regardless of genre; however, such elements as organization and development of ideas are closely related to types of writing. CSAP claims to be able to measure growth in achievement, but its inconsistencies invalidate these claims.
Other examples illustrate the adversarial stance of this test. In middle school, students learn that one can usually recognize an adverb by its “-ly” ending; however, CSAP asks them to identify such words as “portly” – an adjective but one which ends in “-ly.”
As a teacher for 16 years, I have seen how CSAP has changed the landscape of learning in our state. Elective courses and the arts, valued by the parent community, have been eliminated. CSAP was born of expediency and nurtured by politics. The problems in education are profound and systemic. When confronted with these problems, instead of giving educators the tools they need to help students, such as smaller classes and programs targeting specific needs, politicians have mandated tests. Our state’s children do not need posturing and finger-pointing. They need support.
Don Batt, Denver
The writer is an eighth-grade teacher at Laredo Middle School in Aurora.
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Wow! I am really taken by the brilliantly creative ideas Chuck Reyman came up with for the public schools. His three-step plan is pure genius. I’m shocked – shocked! – that no one before him has come up with some of these ideas.
Smaller class sizes? Revolutionary! Of course, my kids, who attend a private Christian school and have always been about two years ahead of their public- school peers, have also always been in classes of 30 to 35 students. I guess my middle-schoolers would be graduating Harvard this year if the bumblers at their school had know about this smaller class size thing, huh?
Attracting the best teachers? Another stunning idea. I suggest the schools institute this new hiring policy: stop hiring people you know are lazy, incompetent dopes and hire the good ones instead!
Finally, is Reyman’s purely inspired recognition of how the rest of us labor under the “fiction that devoting hour upon hour of valuable class time to mastering … test-taking” for the CSAPs. He’s right! Stupid as I am, I’ve always felt that rather than the schools actually teaching kids stuff, kids should spend their days learning to take these tests so that the school won’t lose any of its funding.
Reyman missed an idea that’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind for a while. I call it “school choice.” It’s a way to make a portion of the exorbitant per-pupil funding the public schools get every year to educate kids portable so that parents, dissatisfied with the football field or lack of a on-site Starbucks at their present school can move their kid to another school, such as a private one that will actually educate them.
J.M. Schell, Arvada
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Thanks for substantive attention to K-12 education by Chuck Reyman, DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet (“DPS should be one of nation’s best”), and staff writer Dan Haley (“Defeat of fiscal fix would pose surprise threat to K-12”). Between them, they mark some fundamental requirements for a strong K-12 system: decent infrastructure, recruitment and reward of good teachers, funding, small class size, and trained principals. Except for the last one, however, these all are things we have long known and failed to implement. As a longtime educator, I would add three things important to actually achieving success.
1. Thorough teacher involvement. Consult teachers about what works and what doesn’t; they are the key constituency and, from what I can tell, they are rarely treated as such. Of course there will be 600 different views, and of course you have to prepare locally, and of course not everyone will be on board. But that consultation is key to success; without it, even the best plan will be hard to implement. Careful and thorough consultation and involvement works; it allowed Colorado College long ago to move an entire faculty from a conventional curriculum to its completely different “block” program.
2. Institutional support for innovative agendas on some limited basis. Creative innovation begins at the ground, and if teachers have to add value on overtime, it won’t flourish.
3. Some input to and from higher education. Secondary schools have geared their curricula to success in higher education. If higher education insists on knowledge silos and on standardized testing to the point of coma, then K-12 will have a much harder time justifying building those crucial inter-silo pathways and modifying the grip of standardization.
Elizabeth Ermarth, Lakewood
Organ donor shortage
Re: “Father’s gift of kidney brings him crisis but no regrets,” news story.
The generosity of live organ donors like Charlie Richardson – who donated a kidney 20 years ago to his ailing daughter but now needs a kidney himself – is remarkable. But we wouldn’t need live organ donors if Americans weren’t burying or cremating 20,000 transplantable organs every year.
There is a better solution to the organ shortage: If you don’t agree to donate your organs when you die, then you go to the back of the waiting list if you ever need an organ to live.
Giving organs first to organ donors will persuade more people to register as organ donors. It will also make the organ allocation system fairer. About 70 percent of the organs transplanted in the United States go to people who haven’t agreed to donate their own organs when they die. People who aren’t willing to share the gift of life shouldn’t be eligible for transplants as long as there is a shortage of organs.
David J. Undis, Nashville
The writer is executive director of LifeSharers, a non-profit network of organ donors.
Abridged N.Y. Times articles
Re: “U.S. again short on troops’ armor,” Aug. 14 news story.
This article, as published in The Denver Post, was 13 1/2 column inches. The original article, as published in The New York Times on the same date, ran to 50 column inches, significantly longer and more informative.
I believe you do your readers a disservice when the original source of an article is cited but you do not indicate that it has been severely abridged. I have noticed this abridging of articles from The Times on several occasions; in some, the original sense of the article was either compromised or lost in the editing process.
In the future, it would serve your readers well to either inform them that the article you publish is abridged or to publish it as originally written.
Richard P. Curtis, Denver
Bush’s 2nd-term doldrums
Re: “2nd-term doldrums tripping up Bush,” Aug. 14 news analysis.
In his analysis of the Bush second-term doldrums, John Aloysius Farrell misses the most troubling aspects of George W. Bush’s presidency: the deficit, which has been greatly increased by cutting taxes at the same time Bush and the Congress have increased spending; and the size of the federal government. Together they have created a debt that will last generations, jeopardize federal programs, future investment and strap states of needed federal dollars.
The other considerably troubling issue with the Bush presidency is his refusal to acknowledge or accept responsibility for his role in rushing our nation into a war based on unconfirmed intelligence and deceit, practiced by him and members of his administration. Congress has allowed the president’s role in the intelligence failure to go uninvestigated, despite the obvious “misstatements” and blunders, if not outright corruption.
Mark Benner, Hugo
Social Security reform
Re: “70 years of Social Security,” Aug. 14 guest commentary.
James Roosevelt Jr. does not write about the problems of Social Security or any concrete solutions.
The problems are:
1. The middle class and working poor cannot afford the equivalent of burying 15 percent of their income in the backyard.
2. As our population eventually stabilizes and technology increases our life expectancy, it will take closer to 30 percent tax to maintain Social Security as we know it.
3. Our Social Security benefits are not determined by what we pay in. They are determined by what our children can afford.
The solution:
1. Make Social Security optional. Those close to retirement can stay in the current system by paying their 15 percent.
2. Open up Social Security for cash contributions. Contributions will be divided by the number of years from a person’s retirement age to average life expectancy for their age. Say a person retires at 65 with $300,000, and life expectancy is 80. They would receive $15,000 a year for life. If they retired at 70 and life expectancy was 82, they would receive $25,000. The system would be self-supporting with no tax money and nearly triple the return you could get by living off the interest alone.
3. Dependents of deceased workers and disabled workers are welfare issues, not retirement issues.
Keith Sharpe, Commerce City
TO THE POINT: Short takes from readers
A legislature that passes a law against teens using cellphones while driving can surely pass a statewide law against 4-year-olds operating powered ATVs. Can’t it?
Richard Weber, Denver
I am sick and tired of reading of the increase of American men and women being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. When are the citizens going to put a stop to the Bush administration using our men and women as cannon fodder to try obtain its goal?
Gordon Riley, Littleton
Mr. Bush, cut short the vacation, get back to work and end this war you started.
Abe WalkingBear Sanchez, Cañon City
Is it really worth billions to learn if there was any life on Mars a billion years ago? NASA is using money that could help feed the hungry and homeless. We have people with no health care. Needed services have been cut in every city. The deficit is monstrous.
Marvin Malk, Aurora
The main purpose of the space shuttle now seems to be to learn how to repair the space shuttle in space!
Herb Spencer, Franktown
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