American Education

We don’t know where Mark lives. We could not tell from his email address, so we sent him an email and asked him. He did not reply. Presumably, he is not an American. Here is what he wrote.

I came across your site and read your first 2006 article on whales. I must say I am disappointed. Is this representative on the American education system? It is no wonder America is a failing country that must import its' [sic] engineers and other academic talent. Firstly, nowhere in the Theory of evolution does it state that that [sic] one change negates another. What is the profound issue that a trait comes about twice? Bears have hair and so do we, thus my point completely negates yours. Relationships have nothing to do with traits. Closeness of relation was only a supposition until the advent of genetic science, which showed many of those suppositions correct. Second[,] Darwin concerned himself with Natural Selection, not with humans evolving from apes as your type so perverts his work. Thirdly, educate yourself. From a country that simply does not teach this, and is failing in EVERY category of education among its own population, I have no idea from whom you get your knowledge (considering there is ZERO information on the web that is publicly available to you), or why you feel you have the authority to comment on things you know nothing about (which can be seen in your flawed reasoning). If you would like, I can give you some actual LEGITIMATE arguments that are actually academic that would at least make your position plausible. But then again, I know you are surrounded by fake Ph D's [sic] etc [sic] from religious diploma mills run out of some bedroom (why is it that is allowed in America anyway..the [sic] only country that does this). I realize any of my rantings are not going to make you rethink a better path for your ultimate cause, but I will leave you with this: At least fight what you have a small hope of winning. Stick to intelligent design via evolution in some form. You will NEVER win what you are after this way. Put your time and resources into something feasible or else the whole lot of you look fragmented and foolish. and [sic] finally, learn some website design. People are not fooled by your "No frills" sign as if you are doing them some favor keeping it simple. Clearly you have NO idea about web design from the visual to the technical. I cant [sic] possibly take you seriously or feel you have any intelligence to offer the topic, if you cant [sic] get something as basic as web design down. It takes two days and a book to do something magnitudes better, I suggest you do it. If you cannot do something as simple as this, how can anyone expect to believe you have the smarts to comment on something as diverse and complex as evolutionary theory. [sic] I don't mean any of this as a personal slam against your beliefs, but your are [sic] not going to win any converts by embarrassing yourself. Take care [sic]

Actually, we do agree with him on one point. The American public school science curriculum could be improved. However, the school system where he lives hasn’t served him much better. We hope that English isn’t his first language because that would excuse his grammatical errors. We were tempted to write to him, “If you cannot do something as simple as write grammatically correct English, how can anyone expect to believe you have the smarts to comment on something as diverse and complex as evolutionary theory? You’re not going to win any converts by embarrassing yourself.” Fortunately, we resisted that temptation.

Let us recap his points, one by one, such as they are.

Firstly, nowhere in the Theory of evolution does it state that that [sic] one change negates another. What is the profound issue that a trait comes about twice? Bears have hair and so do we, thus my point completely negates yours. Relationships have nothing to do with traits.

We have absolutely no clue what his point is. Why does it matter if a bear has hair or not? We can’t imagine which of our points his point negates.

Closeness of relation was only a supposition until the advent of genetic science, which showed many of those suppositions correct.

Genetic science has raised many more problems for evolutionists than it has solved, as we have shown in past newsletters.

Second[,] Darwin concerned himself with Natural Selection, not with humans evolving from apes as your type so perverts his work.

Apparently he never read this:

Of the anthropomorphous apes the males alone have their canines fully developed; but in the female gorilla, and in a less degree in the female orang, these teeth project considerably beyond the others; therefore the fact, of which I have been assured, that women sometimes have considerably projecting canines, is no serious objection to the belief that their occasional great development in man is a case of reversion to an ape-like progenitor. He who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape of his own canines, and their occasional great development in other men, are due to our early forefathers having been provided with these formidable weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his descent. 1

Mark then says,

Thirdly, educate yourself.

That’s good advice from someone who doesn’t always capitalize the first letter in a sentence, doesn’t understand contractions, uses a period rather than a question mark to end a question, is ignorant of the many problems that genetics poses for the theory of evolution, and doesn’t know that Darwin wrote a book about human evolution.

I know you are surrounded by fake Ph D's [sic] etc [sic] from religious diploma mills run out of some bedroom (why is it that is allowed in America anyway..the only country that does this).

We have written several times that our readers should judge arguments on their merits, not the credentials of the proponents of those arguments. No one associated with Science Against Evolution has a fake PhD. Yet he knows we are surrounded by them. But then, he knows a lot of things that aren’t true.

and [sic] finally, learn some website design. People are not fooled by your "No frills" sign as if you are doing them some favor keeping it simple. Clearly you have NO idea about web design from the visual to the technical.

Perhaps he has the latest web browser, so it never crashes because it can’t run a snazzy Java script. But children in the woefully inadequate American public schools, might be stuck with obsolete browsers connected to the Internet through painfully slow dial-up connections. That’s why we use the simplest HTML tags, default fonts, and as few graphics as possible. We don’t want anyone to be unable to read our material because they have limited equipment. We depend upon substance, rather than style, to make our pages interesting.

We are glad that Mark has given us this opportunity to address these issues.

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Footnotes:

¹ Darwin, 1871, The Descent of Man, Chapter 2, http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/