http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/letters/

I sent the following letter to the editor. It is in reply to another letter the paper published, which I have appended after my reply here in Usenet.

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ARGH! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!!

I rather hope you publish this. It is bloody annoying to see ignorance go unchallenged when that ignorance may spread to someone not yet burdened with it.

I realize there is some educational value in publishing letters from ignorant uneducated savages (such as Timothy Carroll's letter last Friday): it allows the non-ignorant to judge the extent of community ignorance, and hopefully devise and build a common defense (government funding science education would be an excellent start, though I never pray for miracles).

However, there is also social detriment in publishing such ignorance. What, I ask _LVCL,_ was served by printing the absurd belief that "evolutionists teach that everything in the physical world evolved from a single cell?" No one in the evolutionary sciences asserts, let alone teaches, such an insane claim. No scientist outside the evolutionary sciences makes such a claim.

Or another example of a false, insane claim in the letter: "Evolution also maintains that warm-blooded birds over millions of years evolved into cold-blooded reptiles." "Evolution" does not speak nor write: it therefore does not "maintain" any claim. Nor do any scientists in the evolutionary sciences think, claim, assert, or teach that "birds evolved into reptiles."

Another: "Evolutionary scientists claim that they only believe in that which can be scientifically proven, right?" *WRONG!* One will only find mathematicians dealing with proof: proof does not apply to *ANY* other science. Evolutionary theory is not proven and never will be: neither will, for example, thermodynamics and chemistry. Science is not the venue of proof.

And so on. The United States must participate in the global market if our current way of life it to continue: we must compete in that market successfully. To do so, we must teach the citizenry the best of sciences that we can possible achieve, and thus "keep up" with the rest of the world. We cannot afford to abandon education and let it fall into the hands of superstitious morons and simpletons.

David Michael Rice Late of Las Vegas, Carson National Forest

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Darwinism should be taught with a footnote

Responding to Joshua Ellis' column "Look at your thumb, idiot" [Nov. 25]: From what I have learned, evolutionists teach that everything in the physical world evolved from a single cell, which evolved from dead matter. Does this sound familiar to you? My question is, How did a non-intelligent thing such as dead matter produce a living and intelligent thing such as a single cell?

Wasn't it Louis Pasteur who proved that life cannot come from non-life (biogenesis)? Why, yes, it was proven. Even today we do not see dead corpses giving birth to live babies, let alone a caterpillar evolving out of a rock. Why not?

Evolution also maintains that warm-blooded birds over millions of years evolved into cold-blooded reptiles. My question is, Where are the transitional forms? Yes, those fossil records that occurred during and in between the transformation? You know, like when the bird had transformed a little bit, enough to still have a wing, yet far enough along to also have a backbone? Where are these fossil proofs? Even Charles Darwin asked, "As by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"

Evolutionary scientists claim that they only believe in that which can be scientifically proven, right? Hogwash. Have they scientifically tested these statements? 'Cause, if not, based on their own assumptions, these statements are unproven and cannot be true.

I would think, at this point, that leaving the Darwinian teachings of evolution in public school textbooks is fine. (My kids will not be in public schools.) So long as we add a much-needed footnote: "The theory of evolution is not based on facts, but is based on unproven guesses. For further information on the origin of the universe, refer to Genesis chapter one verse one."

TIMOTHY R. CARROLL

LAS VEGAS

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