{"id":191,"date":"2006-02-16T20:35:29","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T02:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/?p=191"},"modified":"2008-03-24T11:21:29","modified_gmt":"2008-03-24T17:21:29","slug":"fletchers-reply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/archives\/191","title":{"rendered":"Fletcher’s Reply"},"content":{"rendered":"

I previously wrote a letter to Governer Fletcher about his pushing of Intelligent Design during his state of the commonwealth speech.<\/a> I just got the reply and since the Governer (or more likely his staff) wants to continue to use old technology (my tax dollars at work, free versus paying postage) and actually mailed me a paper letter instead of just replying with the email address they had, I have to type it in. Any errors are probably mine.<\/p>\n

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Dear Mr. Norris,<\/p>\n

Thank you for contacting me regarding the teaching of “intelligent design.” My educational background provided me with thorough understanding of science and the theory of evolution. Our nation, however, was founded on self-evident truths. Among these truths are inalienable rights “endowed by their Creator.” From my perspective, it is not a matter of faith, or religion, or theory. It is similar to basic self-evident objective truths that are the basis of knowledge. For example, 2+2=4. It disappoints and astounds me that the so-called intellectual elite are so concerned about accepting self-evident truths that nearly 90% of the population understands. In fact, this acknowledgement led to the intellectual curiosity Einstein spoke of that, in turn, led to the exploration of new knowledge.<\/p>\n

To deny this understanding of our nation’s beginning, and prevent it from being taught to American students, is to undermine the foundation of our nation. Schools should be able to approach this subject from a historical perspective, not a religious one, without offending anybody. I have not suggested any new legislation, and none is needed. Since 1970, state law specifically allowes public schools to teach, “creationism” in conjunction with the theory of evolution. In 1990, under the landmark Kentucky Education Refore Act, control of curriculum now rests with local districts. I urged school district to utilize this freedom and empower students with all possible considerations regarding the origin of matter and species. It will be up to the teachers and local school officials, however, to make this decision.<\/p>\n

Our nation’s founders gave credit for our inalienable rights to a Creator. Among our rights are you liberty to disagree with goverment officials any my liberty of free speech. Those who laid the foundation of our country knew this would ne the greatness of America. Although you may question the intelligence of raising this issue, the computer, which is state-of-the-art, and less sophisticated in function than this writer, was built by an intelligent designer.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/div>\n
Ernie Fletcher<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I have read through this at least 5 times now, and I still don’t think half of it are complete thoughts. The 90% figure that he quotes at the top is an obvious falsehood. While their may be 90% of the population that believe in a god not all 90% of them believe in a creation story and of those that do, not all of them believe in Intelligent Design. Also, no matter how many people believe in something that doesn’t make it true nor does it make it science. At one point almost everyone thought that the world was flat. Regardless of how much they believed that, that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t. A large part of the worlds population thought that lightning was cause by gods. That doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t. Believing in something doesn’t make it correct.<\/div>\n
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The last part about the computer, doesn’t make any sense either. No one claims to have broken the laws of science to create a computer. Last I checked everything in todays computers still works within accepted facts and laws. Intelligent Design is not the same. To accept Intelligent Design you have to believe in some form of magic.<\/div>\n
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I also like the statement of talking about the historical aspect of Inteligent Design, because so far the only historical information that I have ever heard about Intelligent Design involves “The Bible” and as far as I know it is not an accepted text book for public schools (yet). Where else are you going to get historical data for creationism? I haven’t seen any papers with science studies that document data over a long term regarding Intelligent Designs “system”. Where is this historical data?<\/div>\n
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I wonder how many people know that there are laws allowing the teaching of Intelligent Design in Kentucky’s schools. I also wonder if it was pushed if the courts could deem those laws unconsitutional as promoting religion in schools. Along similar lines as the ruling in PA.<\/div>\n
Also apparently the “endowed by their creator” line that he is quoting was also poorly researched, because it isn’t in the consitution, it is in the Declaration of Independence. The constitution that our country was founded on is ACTUALLY designed to be a non-religious document. The people that wrote it made an effort to make it that way, because they knew that religous zealotry is a bad thing, no matter how popular your religion is at any one time.<\/div>\n
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All in all, in my opinion, a poorly worded and structured letter with few real points and obviously not a response to my first letter.<\/div>\n
A few quick google search results:<\/div>\n
http:\/\/news.kypost.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20060114\/NEWS02\/601140336\/1014<\/a><\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.challengernky.com\/articles\/2006\/01\/15\/around_nky\/doc43c805f1ad9dd473296160.txt<\/a><\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.bluegrassreport.org\/bluegrass_politics\/2006\/01\/governor_fletch_1.html<\/a><\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.bluegrassreport.org\/bluegrass_politics\/2006\/01\/intelligent_des.html<\/a><\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.courier-journal.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20060111\/NEWS0101\/601110436<\/a><\/div>\n
http:\/\/frontier.cincinnati.com\/blogs\/gov2\/2006\/01\/is-teaching-intelligent-design-smart.asp<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I previously wrote a letter to Governer Fletcher about his pushing of Intelligent Design during his state of the commonwealth speech. I just got the reply and since the Governer (or more likely his staff) wants to continue to use … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[193,173,140,143,55,116,246],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-brent","tag-creationism","tag-fletcher","tag-intelligent-design","tag-kentucky","tag-politics","tag-skeptic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brentnorris.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}