In general, a newspaper's published letters to the editor concern things like a recent editorial stance, an opinion about some current event-- usually political matter, or some news item. The Oklahoman, though, doesn't always work like that. Consider a recently-published letter by Elliott Doane of Oklahoma City. Everything Mr. Doane says is spot on:
The theories of evolution of living things and of the universe have been refined and questioned for more than 150 years, while evidence supporting them has accumulated steadily. Any scientist disproving either would be famous. None has, so now every competent scientist accepts the validity of both. This hasn't stopped religious zealots from attacking them. Their latest ploy: Teach students to “think critically” and make up their own minds. Sounds good, right? Wrong!Like, holy crap. It's refreshing to see this in print from the Oklahoman-- you just don't get this sort of thing every day. Of course, it's also a bit pathetic. I mean, would the New York Times feel the need to waste ink critiquing theocrat attacks on science? Not unless there were a large news-worthy event that put the whole
I admit that I don't read the Oklahoman cover to cover (as it were) so I may have missed some recent story about a local high school trying to "teach the controversy" about evolution. However, I fell like such a story, though, would be something I'd have come across, so I'm assuming this is an out-of-the-blue letter by Mr. Doane-- perhaps a frustrated high school teacher himself. If so, though, why run it? Oh, right. We should expect quite a bit of push-back from the Oklahoman's more theocratically (and not scientifically) inclined readership asking trenchant questions like "if evolution is real, then why are there still monkeys?" and so on. It's almost as if the editors thought "how to we agitate our readership a bit and gin up some controversy?" and then pulled this letter our of their reserve bin.
On an unrelated note, I wanted to comment on the final part of Mr. Doane's letter. Read it and see what stands out:
Today the evidence for both evolutionary theories is so extensive and complex that it takes many years of study to master either one. Virtually no high school student can accomplish it, so they're incapable of sensibly making up their minds on either. When you hear “teach critical thinking and let students decide for themselves,” don't be fooled. It's another attempt to undermine sound science because of religious beliefs.What is this "both evolutionary theories" bit? No doubt Mr. Doane's letter was much longer and edited down-- something the paper expressly reserves the right to do. If so, however, they really botched things up. Admittedly, Mr. Doane says at the outset "theories of evolution" referring, no doubt, to the many tweaks and improvements science has made in biology and chemistry since Darwin. (Darwin didn't have a clue about things like DNA and was unaware of Mendel's work on genetics, for instance.) And while I'm hardly an evolutionary biologist, I am unaware of two competing theories of evolution in the same way that cosmologists debated between the Big Bang and Steady State theories of the origins of the universe back in the 40's and 50's.
My guess-- totally born out of cynicism towards the editors of the Oklahoman-- is that they deliberately kept this out-of-context remark in the letter to suggest that there is some serious debate about evolution. As a dog-whistle to the theocratically inclined, it suggests that the field is unsure about evolution and allows one hope that "intelligent design" can still win out over more "atheistic" models. Let's see in the coming days what happens with all of this.
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