My Letter to Kansas State School Board Members

Dear Kansas State School Board Members:

I was a science teacher (and a Christian) at one of the leading edges of the early attacks on science in America. I taught science in Vista in1994 when the school board majority became controlled by what I refer to as "little god" Christians or "frightened” Christians.

Immediately after taking control, the new board members launched an ideological attack on evolution. The controversy stirred huge crowds. Our meetings were reported on the front pages of newspapers locally and nationally. Our district made the front page of the New York Times. We had satellite trucks parked outside the newly built middle school gymnasium where the anti-evolution board meetings were held. It was the only place potentially large enough in our district to hold the crowds. There was still an overflow listening area outside at the covered picnic table area with a loudspeaker broadcasting the comments made by school board and audience members.

Now Kansas is the recipient of the attention of the little god Christians and their wild agitating. Now it is your turn to be at the center of the controversy and media storm.

These little god Christians are frightened that someone will prove scientifically that the organizing principal of their lives, Christianity, is somehow wrong. No wild accusation, no amount of time spent organizing is too much for them if it “saves” Christianity. They will attack any board member, science teacher, or science curriculum from the pulpit and from Christian radio programs to save their misinformed views on science and their faith. The sick and hungry can wait. The great cause of fighting what they call “secularists” is all consuming and so satisfying to their need for a just cause.

The emotional attacks by little god preachers whip up congregational outrage and surprisingly also create congregational unity. Having evil doers who are outsiders and “are threatening our Faith and our children” is great for the financial security of the pastor. The pulpit attacks increase attendance and actually increase the amount of offerings.
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Those Sunday offerings are the life blood of each minister. The little god churches do not provide any safety net for their pastors or ministers. If the offerings do not meet financial needs (largest single church budget item is ministerial staff salary and benefits) then the minister and his family are out of a job and their home—the rent free church parsonage.

The stakes could hardly be higher for the pastors of little god churches. Life is so much safer for the pastor with the congregation working together and giving above and beyond their tithes for a mighty purpose. Pastors who do not understand this are out. It is all quite Darwinian.

Even with the great fervor and chaos our little god friends in Vista provided at each board meeting, on local Christian radio, and from the pulpit; the greater Vista community rejected their message. The secular community and the Faith Christians worked together and recalled the anti-science little god board members who were causing such turmoil. We have also kept them from re-taking power in every subsequent election. You can do the same in Kansas. No matter how conservative it is there in Kansas, it is more conservative here in Vista. Our district lies next to Marine Corp Base, Camp Pendleton and we have a huge number of retired military in our community. No democrat has ever won an election here even in the seventies.

The very worse thing about the little god Christians and their philosophy is the intolerance. No one else’s view counts except their own. No attempt was ever made by our board members to value the views of others of different faiths, or even other Christians who had different take on science and Biblical interpretation.

The little god Christians seem so afraid of knowledge. Here in Vista one of their school board candidates told me "knowledge once given can never be taken back." This seems like a kind of a weird philosophy for someone who wanted to be in charge of educating all the children in a district of 40,000. Another candidate said at a videotaped forum that “anal sex was the reason for so much teen pregnancy.” She was a nurse! I suppose today she would blame oral sex instead.

Some of the knowledge they fear has to do with the true age of the earth or universe (like the following. (1)There are six million annual (yearly) layers of sediment fossilized at the Green River formation in Wyoming that can be seen with the naked eye and time permitting counted. (2) There are one hundred thousand, visible countable annual layers of snow in the Greenland icepack. (3)There are several million annual layers of sediment deposition in cores taken from the Atlantic sea floor. Similar annual layers can be seen to be deposited each year currently on the ocean bottom, on glacial snow packs and all over the earth in every lake and pond.

I talked to one of "their" board members about all the ways, rational Christians can know that the earth and universe is old. Her response is that "god" might have created the evidence to appear to be old but it was really young. Then I asked her why she was worshipping a "liar god" who makes everything appear to be old but it isn't? Apparently it is a test of her faith to believe the earth is 6 to ten thousand years old in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

Yes, I have been to the Institute of Creation Research in Santee (forty miles away). Yes, I have read their literature and been on their mailing list. All of ICR stuff was a tremendous disappointment to me as a practicing Christian because neither in their literature or in person at the museum do they ever tell the whole and complete truth. I was brought up to believe that truth telling is a fundamental characteristic of a born again Christian. The ICR message is about frightening Christians to believe their way or risk not going to heaven as a Christian. They mixed it with scientific half truths and misrepresentations. The worse affront against God and truth is all the excluded information that is not told. Staff at ICR who do not toe the little god line perfectly at all the time and in all places have been fired.

ICR and other creationist institutes like the Discovery Institute purposely mislead Christians. I am able to see the deceptions because of my training in science. Most Christian are fooled because they do not have the background information to know the tricks ICR and other creationist institutions are playing.

I debated Duane Gish, ICR’s star debater, on National Public Radio where his tactics were to attack me personally, attack my faith and ramble on and on (this tactic I later learned has been nicked named the Gish gallop by others who have “debated” him). He allowed me virtually no time for a response. His obvious goal was to make sure listeners heard only (or mostly) him and were not allowed to hear accurate information.

I was a Nazarene for many years teaching Sunday school, a member of the Board of Christian Life, and director of the Caravans (Christian scouting) program. I resent the take over of my faith by the little god and frightened Christians.

I met James Dobson when he spoke at our church. (Our pastor at that time was, Wil Spaite, his former tennis partner on the Pasadena Nazarene College tennis team. Pastor Spaite’s personal connection was enough to bring Dr. Dobson to speak at our church.) As an aside, I will tell you that James Dobson was a very different man twenty years ago than he is today. At that time he was not an arrogant, bully who threatens elected senators and Congressman with retaliation if they do not vote his way. Power and the isolation of Colorado Springs have really changed that man. He should have stayed in California and not surrounded himself with sycophant “yes” men in Colorado Springs. A couple of months ago, I was shocked to find on his website, Focus on the Family, a call for an email attack on his critics in the press. Falling into little god-ism can really change a person.

I fear for our country if science is de-emphasized. I fear for my faith if our Christian belief system rests on the lie of Creation Science or the myth of their being a valid Intelligent Design theory.

Our country's future and the future of Kansas are at stake. Below is one example of the terrible price we all are paying today because of the little god Christian attack on science.

We lose at least one hundred thousand fellow citizens a year to horrible deaths from antibiotic resistant bacteria. Thousands of tons of our most powerful antibiotics are mixed with livestock and poultry feed as "growth promoters." Of course the bacteria in the animal and bird intestines, are selected in a severe environment of antibiotic soup to become more and more resistance to these antibiotics. (All animals including us are filled with intestinal bacteria or we could not digest our food, The animals and poultry are NOT sick.) The threat is huge because there are really only six different kinds of antibiotics and all are being used as growth promoters in the United States.

The hundreds of named antibiotics we see in the Physicians Desk Reference are all just tiny variations of those six. What appear to be hundreds of different kinds are really just new names given to the same six kinds. Non-therapeutic pieces are added to current antibiotics by “research” teams at Big Pharma companies and given fancy names. This method of drug discover involves no risk and great gain. There is never a problem that the “new” antibiotic will not kill the bacteria just like the old one did. A new patent is obtained to replace the expiring one and new markets created with massive ad campaigns.

Novel antibiotics have been impossible to find. No novel antibiotic has been found in over thirty years. Those six kinds are a precious resource. We will end up back in a time of not long ago when the son of the sitting President of the United States died from an infected blister. We ignore the teaching evolution at our own risk.

Bacteria are extremely promiscuous even between widely different kinds. Completely different bacteria can and often do swap genes with each other. Helpful intestinal bacteria easily pass on genetic material to disease causing bacteria. If animals could swap genes with widely different animals, the way bacteria can, we might see something as ridiculous as an ostrich giving some genes to a crocodile. Luckily large animals cannot swap genes between widely different kinds, like bacteria do. Otherwise we might see crocodiles running swiftly across the plains of Africa on ostrich legs attacking animals and people. Bacteria use easily transferable circles of DNA called plasmids to swap genes. Animals do not have plasmids.

This naturally selected, "evolutionarily acquired" antibiotic resistance in the lumen of our livestock and poultry is transferred to the bacteria on the hands, clothes (even the intestines) of workers in livestock feed lots, poultry farms and especially slaughterhouses. The workers carry the resistant bacteria home and then their families carry resistance plasmids into our communities.

We are now on the verge of a major epidemic of MRSA (resistant staph) in this country. Not only could the death rate from MRSA easily dwarf any flu epidemic ever seen in the US, but it will mean the end of surgeries in this country.

Any surgery you have ever heard of is only possible because of effectiveness of antibiotics used to stop potential infections in the incisions after surgery. With MRSA and even more resistant varieties around, there can be no safe surgeries.

Simple appendectomies will have a 30 or 40 % death rate like they did at the beginning of the twentieth century before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. By the way due the great penetration of resistance genes into our communities already, penicillin (amoxicillin) is virtually worthless today as therapy. It is given to children by doctors more as a placebo to assuage the concerns of mothers than to stop infections.

The resistance problem is less acute in Europe and the rate of resistant infections is far lower there. Why? The European electorate and the European politicians understand evolution and the frightening implications of its power. In Europe the practice of treating EVERY animal and bird with huge quantities of antibiotics so that they grow a little faster is banned. Sick animals still get antibiotics, but antibiotics cannot be used routinely as “growth promoters”.

The above is an example of just one terrible price, we are facing as a nation because of the attack on science by the little god and frightened Christians and their supporters in school boards--locally and state wide.

Evolution has not been taught in the classrooms of America in any systematic way in over thirty years. Any teacher who tries is inundated with complaints to his site and district administrators. Even here in Vista where rationality won, my youngest son had only one day dedicated to evolutionary theory in his freshman high school biology class. Evolution is the organizing principal of biology. He should have heard about it every day. Teachers are hammered if they mention the “E” word in class. They understandable shy away unless school boards actively promote its teaching.

Instead of de-emphasizing evolution in Kansas, you should be promoting it. Every day in every life science classroom in your state, your children should hear about evolution and its driving force natural selection. They should understand its force and power. What they do not know CAN hurt them.

Christians do not need to fear science. Knowing that God is in charge does not mean that He has to be only six thousand years old in charge of a tiny six thousand year old universe (instead of the massive 14 billion year universe. (The light year rule is the more light years the bigger the universe). I cannot fathom why the little god Christians want to worship such a tiny little god in charge of a tiny, little, marble sized universe. Or why they are afraid of God's creative force in the universe today, namely the natural selection that drives evolution. Since He set up the system that Darwin discovered, we as Christians should embrace it.

Please reject the little god Christians and their phony intelligent design theory. Let us be Christians of Faith, not fear, and accept whatever we and others discover about what God has done. Let us embrace science and its theories. When we learn about how the universe and the earth, and life on earth; we are learning about our Creator and his methods. Do the right thing, reject little god interference in the teaching of accurate biology and biological principals. Strengthen the teaching of evolution in Kansas schools. You have a beautiful state with wonderful people. Do what is right for your state and your people and your country.

Yours in Christ Jesus,
Darwindad
Vista, CA