If advances in science are ignored, education goes backward

It's sad and discouraging to see scientific illiteracy demonstrated again and again by so many Americans. It's even sadder that one of them is on a school board and another claims to have been a science teacher. Obviously they're not acquainted with the scientific method or critical thinking skills.

Biological evolution is an empirical fact as well as a scientific theory. The scientific argument as to the factual nature of evolution was settled in the latter part of the 19th century.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is an explanation of how and why evolution occurs. It explains the fact of evolution, not whether it exists. Darwin's theory wasn't widely accepted until the earlier part of the 20th century as scientists began to understand genetics.

There are no competing theories to Darwin's that haven't been proven false. A modern understanding of genetics and DNA has shown that Darwin's modernized theory is the only one that fits the facts. In the last century and a half, no controverting evidence has been found to natural selection theory.

Creation myths are not, and should not, be scientifically testable. There's no experiment possible to test which competing creation myth is correct, whether it is Christian, Dakotah, Hindu or any of the thousand of others. We accept religion, or not, based on our beliefs. Our religion is integrated with our culture and world view, not science.

Also factually incorrect is the statement that new species haven't been observed to evolve. Longlived species such as ourselves or elephants take a great deal of time to speciate in human terms. Many species have much shorter generation times and have been observed to speciate through adaptive radiation, both directly and indirectly.

Aside from microorganisms and insects and such, there are several examples that have been clearly observed among even fish. With a modern understanding of DNA, speciation events can easily be retraced.

It is true that all living things discovered on earth, so far, share a common ancestor. Yes, we share a common ancestor with a snail.

While we look rather different as adults, those differences aren't there at the beginning of life, nor in the comparative analysis of their cell and biochemical structures. Our common ancestor lived more than 600 million years ago, hence the great difference.

If you examine a bonobo or a chimpanzee whose common ancestor with us lived only around 6 million years ago, the close resemblance is obvious.

While Laura Dunn and Lorin Wainwood make no valid points, they do demonstrate the failure of our educational system. There was a time in Europe, generally called the "Dark Ages," when students were taught that the world was flat, that the sun circled the earth, that disease was caused by poisons and curses, and that Christian creationism was true.

We no longer teach these things in science classes because we know them to be false. Charles Eastman Westlake Village