Letter To The Editor

Dear sir,

Your first edition of The Main Issue, while distributed door-to-door in the Rutland area of Kelowna, does not appear to have been similarly distributed up here on the hill. I got my copy from a friend in Rutland who was every bit as amused as myself to learn that the dark ages of ignorance and retrogression are alive and well in Kelowna. Nevertheless I would very much like to have delivered to me the remaining nine issues of the series. If you don’t wish to oblige me, not to worry, I can always obtain them the same way I obtained the first one.

I have sent the aforementioned first edition (along with a copy of this letter) on to American Atheist, Inc., of which organization I am a proud member. Perhaps it will also afford them a few laughs. But then again, it may instead just make them cry, to see what depth of ignorance and stupidity a supposedly literate person in the closing years of the twentieth century can sink. At the very least it will demonstrate to their editor, who had heretofore held a view to the contrary, that rank-and-file Canadians are every bit as stupid as their American counterparts.

You start your first paragraph on page 1 with an outright lie when you state that, “Charles Robert Darwin scratched the itch of nineteenth century liberalism for an alternative to creationism.” He did nothing of the sort! His views were forced upon him by the evidence he gathered during his voyage on the Beagle. It is only you creation crackpots who start with the assumption that your viewpoint is correct, and then try to find evidence, or strain the available evidence to support it. Furthermore, both Darwin and Wallace, half a world apart, both arrived independently at the same conclusions, and had it not been that Darwin happened to be the first to publish, what much of the world presently refers to as “Darwinism” might very well be known today as “Wallaceism.” The very fact that the theory is being constantly modified as more and more facts become known, attests (at least to thinking people) to the superiority and impartiality of science over religion. Very ignorant people believe very solidly in god. Very educated people seldom believe.

While trying to decide what might be your reasons for bursting into print with this trash, I have been able to come to only two conclusions, as follows:

I. You are deliberately and consciously evil, and have only a pecuniary motive.
2. You are:
a) densely ignorant,
b) extremely stupid,
c) heavily bigoted,
d) thoroughly brainwashed.

If you are in the first category my impulse would be to regard you only with scorn, contempt, and loathing, but if you are in the second category I then regard you instead with pity. As Professor Fulks says in his CHRISTIANITY, A CONTINUING CALAMITY (p.7): “Clearly, our quarrel is not with the worshipers. The blame then, lies squarely upon those cunning parasitical groups who, not believing a word of it themselves, nevertheless use it as an instrument of social control.”

In the April 1990 issue of the American Atheist Magazine, is an article by Professor Frank R. Zindler, a former professor of biology and geology, now a science writer and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the American Schools of Oriental Research, wherein he lists (p.40) the Tenets of Scientific Creationism as reprinted from pages 12 and 13 of the 1985-1987 Graduate School Catalogue: Institute for Creation Research. Tenet number 6 states that, “Processes today operate primarily on fixed natural laws and relatively uniform process rates but, since these were themselves originally created and are daily maintained by their Creator, their is always the possibility of miraculous intervention in these laws or processes by their Creator.”

On page 40 Mr. Zindler states as follows: “Just such a clear and adequate reason arose not long ago in the midst of a debate I was having with Duane Gish the ICR’s superstar debater, on a radio station in Columbus, Ohio. Since Gish held that the universe is only a few thousand years old, a caller pointed out that we can see stars and galaxies a million light years away – meaning that the light we see has been traveling for millions of years. About to have his aces trumped by a fact of science, Gish simply replied that God could easily have created the light already on route, and that the light we see never actually comes from a star!

“Gish scored no points on this occasion, however, because I pointed out that the ability to resort to miracles whenever needed to save one’s ‘theory’ makes creationism a game played without rules. Real scientists are required to play by the rules WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Creationists follow the rules of science so long as it is expedient. Then they resort to miracles. But resorting to miracles is not offering an explanation: it is asserting that no real explanation exists. Whenever creationists resort to miracles, they are admitting that their system cannot account for the facts of nature: it cannot explain the world.”

I suspect that Duane Gish will think twice before taking on Frank Zindler again. But then again, maybe not. After all, one sufficiently steeped in superstition might never be reached by facts, reason, and logic.

Nevertheless, I am willing to offer you advice on how you may educate yourself out of your ignorance. You may read the American Atheist monthly magazine. Also I am enclosing herewith an application form for you to become a member of American Atheists. Instead of the lies, fallacies, myths, distortions and other fiction with which you have been inundated all your life, you will then have access to REAL science, REAL history, REAL astronomy, REAL philosophy, etc., and who knows, perhaps your mind will be freed at last.

Yours truly,
Name Withheld