Re: paleonet Re: time for gloves to come off

[Noel Heim <naheim@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ed and Others,

The battle against ID/creationism should be waged through letters. 
However, I'm not sure writing defensive responses to articles in
national publications will suffice on their own.  What we need to do
is convince our local law makers that ID is not science and should not
be included in any science curriculum, at any level.  President Bush
can say all he wants about what he thinks should be included in
science curricula, but ultimately it is not up to him.  It is up to
local school board officials.  Elected officials at the state and
local levels should be the targets of our letters, not the readers of
the New York Times or Washington Post.  This is of course no easy task
and it will certainly take more than letters from a few
paleontologists and evolutionary biologists.  We need to convince our
friends and family to convince their friends and family, and so on, to
write to local officials explaining why they feel including
pseudoscience in school curricula is damaging to our educational
system and to society in general.  In essence we need to initiate a
grass roots campaign and it needs to be preemptive.  The targets
should not be focused solely on states or school systems that are
currently considering teaching ID/creationism.  The ultimate goal is
to convince our elected officials that the majority of their
constituents want to keep real science in schools.

Noel Heim
Department of Geology
The University of Georgia