Letter To Demand Progress

8 Mar 2011

My favorite Internet freedom organization, Demand Progress, is spreading its campaign. It has recently put together a couple of petition campaigns against “the war on science.” One was a petition to the Texas Board of Education, and the other is to Congress supporting a resolution honoring Darwin. I am now going to have to write my congressman urging the exact opposite of what their petition says. Here is the text of my hastily written email:

I just want to say that I support most of your work, have signed many petitions, and have even shared links urging others to sign, but as a supporter of free speech I have to say that I can not support your efforts to silence critics of evolution. I support your initiatives for Internet fairness and free speech, and as a huge proponent of free speech, I also support public education of evolution and its opposing views.

There is this mistaken belief that not believing in evolution equates to not believing in science. This is absolutely not true. Evolution is only one aspect of science. It is the belief that another aspect of science, natural selection, occurs in such a way that another species arises through the mutation of genes (simply put). The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence to support the claim that natural selection has ever progressed to a point where one species mutated into another; all so-called examples have ended with the same species they started with. Disbelief in evolution does not cause science to crumble as many scientists would have you believe. It does not even have to be at odds with natural selection. While some of the theories are impressive, they are simply eye-wash to make those who do not believe in God feel better.

I will continue to support your stand for Internet rights, but please stick to those freedom campaigns. It seems to me that stifling opposing views where they need to be discussed, in a classroom environment, runs contradictory to your other campaigns.

Tagged: creationism evolution