Send Evolution ‘Truth Squads’ to Kansas

Re “Evolution Isn’t a Natural Selection Here,” May 6: Kathy Martin, a Kansas board of education member, wants to teach religion as science. This is but another salvo in the culture wars. But the media have not correctly identified the two sides of the war, or its ultimate consequences.

The war is between the people of faith versus the people of fact. It is the fable of an angry, violent deity found in dusty texts written 2,000 years ago by ignorant men who believed that the world was flat versus the men of science and the technology of the Enlightenment.

It is prayer versus penicillin; tolerance versus terror; theocracy versus the rights of man.

America, it is time to choose: revelation or reason?

Ray Shelton

Glendale

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The scientific community needs a counteroffensive tactic to put this nonsense to rest. I suggest that “truth squads” visit the biggest Christian congregations in Kansas every Sunday, with the purpose of engaging the ministers (during services, of course) in a lively debate over scientific inconsistencies in the Bible. Be sure to take the media with you, so they can record the warm welcome you’ll undoubtedly receive. We all know how the Christian right welcomes open discussion and disagreement.

Bonnie Sloane

Los Angeles

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Although some fine people live in Kansas, the state is a vast prairie of ignorance. I should know. I was born and raised there. Martin personifies this ignorance when she proposes that creationism and “intelligent design” be taught in the state’s classrooms.

When I was in high school in the 1950s, our science teacher (a real scientist) always handled any mention of evolution with kid gloves lest some of our small-town inquisitors call for her head. I am sad to see that my home state continues to march away from the light of reason into darkness.

Michael Fawcett

Los Osos, Calif.