" We dont really know what he would think about todays issues of hanging the Ten Commandments in public places, school prayer, the teaching of Christian religion and sex education in public schools, abortion, even about placing In God We Trust on our currency. We can only guess what he might have thought based on the bits and pieces of the historical record."

Wanna bet, I'll Jon V. knows. lol! "

" shumphreys, so you think religion should be taught in schools? "

" Jon: Yes, all religions are taught in schools. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinuism, Catholisism, Islam. Not the training in the theological aspects, but the basic principals and knowledge that each religion believes. No, I don't think a teacher needs to be there preaching about Jesus' miracles, Jehovah's wars and salvation thru the blood. That's where Mom, Dad and church come in. "

" " shumphreys, so you think religion should be taught in schools? "
----
Religion and its history should be taught ABOUT in schools. But you wouldn't like that, Vanatta, because only Christian indoctrination is permissible to you. "

" Indeed I do Mr. Vanatta and I have said so before. Children must learn about ALL the worlds religions. You can't understand world history or solve the worlds problems if you don't understand ALL the worlds religions and the part they have played and are playing in world history. Such education needs to come from public schools where it can be taught honestly without distortion or prejudice. When left to religious groups to teach about other world religions they distort the facts and try to demonize the other religions. You have shown us the extent of misinformation that you has been taught/spread about other religions. "

" ....think I'm going to go to the store today, & get that "No Soliciting Sign", & get it put up right quick.

Some of you crazy thumpers & pushers really are nuts, especially when it's under the guise of goodness & togetherness.

Gag me with a fork!

Maybe the local rag will spare us some, & make it a four week time span, between letters to the editor.
LOL! "

" jon.....it must be lonesome in your small world. or, maybe you're too naive to know. "

" How will you guarantee that religion taught in schools will be presented without prejudice and distortion? Who will be the judge of this? It sure won't be taught without prejudice at the college level. Most professors think that they know everything and that their beliefs are the only right answers. That has been proved over and over in the postings here. "

" How will you guarantee that religion taught in schools will be presented without prejudice and distortion?
----
Simple. You teach historic fact, and not supernatural dogma. "

" Actually Introduction to Religion classes are taught quite well in colleges without prejudice and misinformation. I took a class at Parkland several years ago, very interesting. It was encouraging to see so many curious young and older folks in the class, a real mix. I might also add respectfully curious folks.Also if you check out a reputable book store (not a Christian book store) you will find several very good books about world religions that present the information fairly,accurately and respectfully. "

" The Decatur public school system has been teaching world religion for a number of years. In fact they were teaching it over 30 years ago, when did my student teaching there back in the early 70's.

However I don't think it's taught the way the Vanatta's of the world would like.

Religion does not belong in the schools in any other form, unless it is before or after school and on a completely voluntary basis. "

" There is one faith one religion that is taught in schools now. Since evolution is not supported by evidence and it cannot be proven it is a faith. Faith is all that can be taught about evolution since there are no provable facts and no observable evidence to prove it. Evolution is taught with prejudice and distortion. Prejudice because no other faiths are allowed. Distortion because students are not told that no example has ever been found of one species evolving into a new species through mutations. "

" Mr. Vanatta how dare you insult God by suggesting that She couldn't be clever enough or wise enough to create such a magnificent mechanism as evolution. The proof is all around you in the food you eat each day, the clothes you wear, the crops in our fields and even the fossils in our local streams. You have lost the war so get over it and embrace life. "

" Evolution is taught because it is scientific fact, Vanatta. If you want to pin your religious beliefs on evolution being false, you are going to end up an atheist. And welcome to the club. "

" Was there a subterainian secluded community around here somewhere? Some people seem as if they have been tucked away for a few decades? Possibly driven under ground in the 50's to a bomb shelter, and suddenly they are out in the world, not sure whats going on now, but sure what they think they know of it is the only truth. I am not being mean, some of them could have been in a coma, and woke up and there is something called internet. There are lots of possible scenarios, of how someone could be so detatched, and say alot of this stuff. Its alot to deal with, I understand. there are other pages of information, than just this paper. Its been a bit lacking on real information for some time. PBS has a site, that has lots of useful information, on a variety of topics. Or just type what you want to know more about, in the search box, on a browser page, and pick a site that ends in .gov, to start. When you get the hang of it, more endings are there, but some aren't as safe. Take your time, its alot to deal with. Welcome to 2008, congratulations on returning to society. Its not perfect, but as of today, we aren't in a depression again, so keep your fingers crossed on that one. "

" I believe in evolution. It's obviously happening all around. People have gotten taller, less body hair, and smaller mouths. I don't, however, believe that humans came from monkeys or some primordial spooge in the ocean. "

" Religion is taught every day in our schools. The religion is secular humanism. And TQ, if science as it is taught in our secular texts is always fact why do they have to keep revising it year after year? Maybe to try to explain away hoaxes like peppered moths, piltdown man, or Haeckel's embryos. "

" Mr. Vanatta, I think that your misinformation about evolution likely stems from simple ignorance. You should consider taking a course in biology at any reputable college. Voice your concerns and see what they have to say. "

" someday we will be left with nothing good in life, quarrels and quibs will replace steady happiness and all will be an argument "

" Mike P wrote on Sep 23, 2008 8:08 AM:
" Was there a subterainian secluded community around here somewhere?""""


whew!! i thought it was just me having those thoughts. "

" Why should I accept evolution when you cannot produce the evidence?
I already have a faith. Tell me about your faith and I will tell you about my faith. "

" Mr. Vanatta we have produced the evidence. Over the past year I have suggested several books that you could read. Others have suggested responsible websites you could look at. It doesn't do any good to pretend the evidence isn't there. God never expected his people to be deaf, blind and dumb. If you believe he created you then why did he give you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a complex brain to think and reason if he didn't want you to use them? "

" You always say there is evidence but you never produce the evidence humphreys just because you mention books that is not evidence I can produce many books by accredited scientists that have presented evidence for creation by the God of the Bible. I don't want books I want actual evidence. I just visited the Creation Museum where there is abundant evidence for Gods Creation. For every animal depicted there an actual fossil has been found. Not so in natural history museums some of their animal depictions are just some ones idea of what a transitional form would look like. I see them all the time in natural history museums a little thing crawling up out of a scum pond sprouting legs with a sign telling how many millions of years ago this happened. No fossil of this animal has ever been found. PRODUCE SOME EVIDENCE HUMPHREYS not just someone's dream written in a book. You don't have any evidence all you have is a faith. Molecules to man evolution is impossible and even more impossible is nothing to a molecule. You just dont have it humphreys. As bad as you want it its just not there. If evolution is a fact there would be billions of transitional forms all over the world but with all the searching evolutionist have done with government financing they have not yet found one legitimate transitional fossil. If there was as much government financing for searching for evidence of Gods creation the museums couldnt hold the finds. Many scientists today are taking the stand that evolution is impossible even though some of these scientists cant accept the Creator God they know that evolution is impossible.
Why should I accept evolution when you cannot produce the evidence?
I already have a faith. Tell me about your faith and I will tell you about my faith. "

" Wow ED MILLER, you sound really smart! I bet you were educated by the Discovery Institute, which is SOOOOOO widely acredited! Color me green with envy. "

" Reading the comments of some on here, you would think you had stepped back in history a couple of hundred years or so. It's kind of embarrassing to think there is so much ignorance in our area. No wonder Sara Palin is such a hit with the backwoods rubes. I also suspect these are the same folks who think Bush is a great leader. "

" Really, Mr. Vanatta, evidence is as close as your own back yard.

You see, evolution means change over time. Specifically, that change is to living organisms as they respond to their environment. And when the environment changes (which it must in order for us to keep our living planet), the organisms must change with it or die.

So how does your back yard figure into this?

When I was a child oh so many years ago, I used to enjoy making chains with the dandelions growing in my yard. They had very long stems, and you could pluck the flower off of the end and curve the stem around to make a bracelet. Or you could place four stems end to end to make a necklace. If you did it just right, you could attach the flowers back and have such beautiful jewelry.

Have you taken a look at the dandelions in your back yard lately? Most of them have stems that are only two to three inches high. You can still make jewelry, but it takes a lot more stems to get the job done than I ever had to use years ago. Dandelions have changed.

So what in the environment has changed to cause such a response in a common flower? Right around the time of the 1950's, more or less, people began doing something that wasn't all that common before. They began keeping their lawns mowed. Such a simple, inconsequential thing, right. But now we are seeing the results of several decades of this change. Dandelions are shorter than they used to be. They evolved.

You see, dandelions, as evidenced by their bright flowers, are pollinated by other organisms (in their case, insects.) When they lived in tall grass and shrubs they had to be tall to get noticed and visited by those pollenators. The dwarfs of the dandelion world rarely got pollenated, and therefore rarely reproduced. Dandelion stems on average grew to a foot or more in height.

Then we started mowing our lawns. It became a liability for dandelions to grow tall since they would only be mowed down, usually before reproducing. The dwarfs became the favored individuals, and they have been taking advantage of their advantage ever since. As far as my great nephews are concerned, dandelions are flowers that only grow to a height of two or three inches. That would be below mowed lawn height.

Now, put enough of these small changes in a link end to end and subject the same organism to those changes, eventually you could end up with something that no longer resembles its originator. Since the desired traits are connected to genes and how they behave (created by God) eventually you end up with an individual genetically altered enough that reproduction with the original is no longer possible. You have a new species.

If you are looking for direct evidence that a new species has evolved, you are out of luck. That type of change takes a great deal more than a few short lives of men. That is why we study the fossil record, use comparative anatomy, and spend so much time examining the structure and similarities of DNA between species. We have to study the trail of changes. We're getting really good at it.

If the dandelion story isn't enough, then maybe I could interest you in the moth that changed its color because of the industrial revolution in Europe. Man has caused many changes. "

" Mr. Vanatta when did you last eat a slice of bread, pasta, piece of cake, a donut. They are all made with wheat flour. The wheat that grows wild doesn't look like the wheat cultivated in our fields because of the evolutionary principle of change with modification. The wheat has been genetically modified to produce wheat that can be mass produced for cultivation in cold climate areas of the great plains, of the high humid areas of Illinois. Those modifications by the way started naturally before man took over the process. The process exploited by crop scientists today is the same. Change with modification which is what evolution is all about. "

" Then ther is Tiktaalik, a 375 million year old fossil unearthed in Canada in 2006, technically a fish with scales and gills and curious fins. fins with thin ray bones for paddling like most fishes but they also have sturdy interior bones that would have allowed them to prop themself up in shallow water and use its limbs for support as most fourlegged animals do. It's combination of features thow the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and their descendents, the four-legged vertebrates-a clade which inculdes amphibians, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and of course, humans. "

" Then there is Radiometric dating. Radioactivity measures the atoms produced by the radioactive breakdown in rocks. By comparing this data with data from meteorites they could estimate how long ago the earth formed along with the rest of the solar system. The earth was 4.5 billion years old. All of this comes from evolution.berkeley.edu A website that states the facts, the Truth and nothing but the truth. "

" shumphreys wrote on Sep 24, 2008 8:24 AM:
" Then there is Radiometric dating. Radioactivity measures the atoms produced by the radioactive breakdown in rocks."

Uh Ms. Humphreys, that is wrong in so many ways. If you pulled that quote from Berkeley's website, I can see why they are the LSD capital of the country. "

" shumphreys, Wheat is not evidence of evolution but is evidence of mans manipulation. You are grasping at straws with that (no pun intended). Man has done much to improve the plants that our food comes from. No evidence for molecules to man evolution here. "

" shumphreys, Ah yes here comes the tiktaalik again, Susan weve been through this before and here you are dragging it up again. The tiktaalik is nothing more than just another 4 lobe finned fish and as I pointed out before how it was so amazing that it was brought out just right before the Dover Pennsylvania NOVA program. Tiktaalik raises more questions than it answers and most of the questions are about the gaps evolutionists have. I repeatedly say if evolution were a fact it would not be difficult to find legitimate transitional fossils demonstrating the transitions. Not only does it require a multitude of fossils but it requires evidence for a multitude of transitions because of all the small changes that would be required to have happened. But as yet after decades of frantic searching and use of government funds (NOVA) not even one legitimate transitional fossil has been found. There has also been millions of taxpayer government funding (NASA) in searching space for signs of origin of life and there again no legitimate evidence found for life coming from another planet. "

" Macroevolution has been neither observed nor proved through testing and yet it is taught as fact. Science? As Ben Stein said, No Intelligence Allowed

Radiometric dating is based upon assumptions that things have always been as they are now. It is very unreliable giving readings that differ from other methods by billions of years. In the dating of rocks in the Grand Canyon four different techniques gave ages ranging from 10,000 years to 2.6 billion years for the same rock. There is nothing objective about it when the results can be dismissed just because they dont agree with what evolutionists already believe.

Why should I accept evolution when you cannot produce the evidence?
I already have a faith. Tell me about your faith and I will tell you about my faith. "

" Techno-less, I am not looking for evidence that a new species has involved, you are along with all the other evolutionists, and you have been looking for years to no avail. Looking for a new species with new genetic information.
Wow Techno-less are you ever behind in your knowledge, the peppered moth is a story about how a moth turned into a moth, wow! Setting aside the usual fraud at no time has there been any new information introduced into the genome of the moth (which is what molecules-to-man evolution would require) This is just another example of the lack of proof evolutionists have and they are so desperate for proof they still have to use these fraudulent decades old disproved myths for their best evidence. "

" Techno-less: Yes, dandelions have changed, but they are still dandelions. They haven't changed into lizards or dogs or trees. "

" Techno-less: I am amazed at the dandelions ability to think and reason. "Gee, if I want to get pollenated I had better grow tall." Or "if I don't get shorter I'm going to get my head cut off." Amazing! LOL

And the moth thing has been shown to be a hoax a long time ago. The moths shown in the pictures in textbooks were glued or pinned onto the trees. Those moths don't even rest on trees naturally. "

" Techno-less, I noticed years ago how short the dandelions are in town as compared to how they grow in country fields--those that are allowed to grow without being mowed down, anyway. Why everything has to be cut down and mowed down in this state escapes me, but that's for another editorial. Anyway, dandelions can grow either way, short or tall. They either adapt (as necessary) to the lawn being mowed or to competing with other tall plants in a field. All the genes responsible are and have been within the plant; the plant responds with what's been selected for by the environment. As a result of its adaptability, the dandelion is a very successful plant. "

" Honestly Mr. Vanatta, what about DNA evidence, or do you just choose to ignore it? How do you explain the fact that we share DNA with rats and cats and elephants and chimpanzees? Evolution is nothing more nor less than change with modification. Get used to it. You also haven't addressed the fact that you insult God by insisting that he/she couldn't be INTELLIGENT enough or WISE enough to think up such a marvelous mechanism. The unearthing of fossils happens all the time and the discovery the transitional fish creature wasn't timed to produce evidence for a court case although it certainly proved the reality of those pesky little transitionary elements that you choose to ignore. "

" That adaptability is what evolution is all about. Some changes are just temporary but it is change with modification where the change becomes permanant and is passed on to the next generation that evolution addresses. Why is it that things we moderns consider "weeds" are so tough, so adaptable and my prize roses aren't? Not only that they have lost their scent. Sometimes some changes aren't for the best. "

" Sapient, yes, dandelions are still dandelions after many generations of response to change. But will they be dandelions a thousand years from now? Ten thousand years from now? Will they still be yellow, or will another environmental change favor a color change? Will they remain dwarfs, or grow to ten feet in height? Or maybe they will fail to adapt, and become yet another species falling to the non-existance of extinction. Why do people believe that what we have today will always be the way it is. Or to fail to see that God built into his creation the ability to adjust to changes in the environment by changing with it. You are looking for eternity in the span of one second. God and his creation have no time constraints.

Evolution is change over time. Time has passed. Dandelions have changed. And they did it right in front of us. But then, how can you be expected to understand the big picture when you cannot recognize that which lies beneath your own feet? And when you fail to see how much more wonderful creation is than you are giving God credit for. It was a stroke of genius.

Incidently, I dare you to find scientific papers describing how plants evolved into animals, or verse visa. You won't find them. But I can show you animals that look like plants. I can also show you animals that looks like balls of snot. Go figure! "

" Then there is the caterpillar that just decimated my Rue, it looks like a bird dropping and turns into a Tiger Swallowtail. Now that change from caterpillar to butterfly is not evolution, just change. There is a difference. Oh and the person who talked about the moth study, that was years and years ago. He hasn't kept up with the times. There has been alot of water under, and over the bridge since then. "

" VTucker. You are correct in ways that you have not yet explored. All the genes were present and selected for by the environment. Mowing the lawns in town favored the dwarfs. Lack of mowing in the country favored the giants. You have compared two isolated populations of the same species and noticed how they react to different environmental demands. That is the very thing that grabbed Darwin to begin with.

Now move your thought forward in time. Assuming that both of these populations remain isolated away from each other, then each would continue to respond to the demands placed by the environments that they reside in. Suppose one of the country individuals had a mutation causing the petals to turn blue. Under the current conditions this change is meaningless. But suppose that some change in the environment favored blue as the desired color. Within time, the country flowers would be tall with blue flowers while the town ones would remain dwarf and yellow. Who would remain alive to notice that they once had been the same flower.

Evolution states that first and foremost there is variation in the traits that a population exhibits (in other words, the genes were already present, possibly due to mutation). Secondly, it is the environment that puts the pressure on the population to determine which traits are the most desirable. These become the dominant
characteristics for the species. If the environment undergoes a change, then life, because of these variations, has the built in ability to change with it. Even if dandelions should fail and become extinct, another population with its own variations has the ability to change and move into the empty slot. Life goes on. I told you. It's brilliant!

Now imagine thousands of years of isolation with changes caused by the demands of the environment that each population lives in. In time, the country flowers may have undergone so many changes, or the town flowers may have changed, or they both may have changed, so much that the genetic structure of each will no longer intermix during breeding. They are now two different species.

So, whether you are comfortable with it or not, you managed to describe a basic premise of evolution very well.

Variation. Environment. Isolation. Time. Change. Start over. "

" Great explanation Technoless. One of the biggest problems people like Mr. Vanatta have is grasping the time concept. Which is one reason why they are so insistant upon a young earth. Time is what makes it all possible. "

" As Ben Tripp said, the thing that is so terribly wrong with faith is that it's predicated, every single time, on a terrible fallacy: that God just 'is'. There's no evidence of God, so God exists. Or everything is evidence of God, so god exists. Or as most Americans avow, it's in the Bible, so it's true. Never mind it's also in the Koran, which they hate and fear, and that every religion has had similar texts, going right back to the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and on and on into the darkness. Faith is the enemy of truth, because faith requires you take somebody's word for something, especially something utterly preposterous.
"Truth requires that you use your senses and your brain to observe what is, while Faith requires you use your senses and brain to observe what isn't." "

" lefty wrote on Sep 23, 2008 11:32 PM:

" Wow ED MILLER, you sound really smart! I bet you were educated by the Discovery Institute, which is SOOOOOO widely acredited! Color me green with envy. "

Now come on lefty, ed is self taught lol "