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Opinion

Article
    this rough draft was a response to the above opinion
    article




    Jack B. Nimble
    xnimble@att.net
    626-665-0000
    2024 Laspanada St.
    L.A. CA 91026
    re: Editorial 2/12/09 "Evolution's survival"

    (When the particles you're studying are capable of looking back up through the
    microscope and saying "we're not going to perform according to the rules you
    thought you had worked out yesterday."  your discipline is a soft science.  if,
    when judges, legislators and opinion leaders ask you for your opinion, instead of
    recusing yourself. you give an opinion based on your extrapolation of past
    increases in knowledge and which you hope will materialize  " in a few years",...)



    For the sake of argument, define a religious belief as holding something as fact
    that you cannot prove.

    If the survival of evolution means that the proven and demonstrable facts of
    species variability, fossil record, etc. have not been suppressed, ok.  But if a
    capital "E" is put on evolution by those who would use it to make school and
    police administrators, jurists, and legislators sheepish about considering anything
    but material values as applied to mechanical beings who are merely portions of a
    universe which is composed of nothing more than mega-quantities of incredibly
    tiny billiard balls whose bouncings since the big bang have created the world of
    today and all the behavior in it, well, whose science IS this that tells us that this is
    the final truth about the universe and should win with no debate over the
    religionist who also bases his recommendations to the powerful on beliefs he
    cannot prove.



    Maybe your malodorous skunk is a case of the Pot calling the Kettle Black.




    (Take, for example, all the doctors who prescribed Thalidomide.)

    The religious were making judgements based in inadequate or even incorrect
    data for thousands of years before there was even a pretense of scientific rigor.  
    How do those who are so anxious about what philosophical approaches are
    taught to our children explain the human race having got to this lofty position of
    having some science to teach at all?  You'd think the human race would be still
    grubbing for roots because we had no curriculum police to save us from our
    ignorance.
    this snippet was used to ask the help of a
    journalist friend in the final composition of the
    submission

    Original Message:
    -----------------
    From: nimble <xnimble@att.net
    Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:53:04 -0800 (PST)
    To: editor@garmentandcitizen.com
    Subject: LA Times letter needs help



    Ed,
    (Apologies if this crosses any unread emails.)
    If you don't mind, I solicit your opinion on what's wrong with this letter to
    the editor:

    Jack B. Nimble
    xnimble@att.net
    626-665-0000
    2024 Laspanada St.
    L.A. CA 91026

    re: Editorial 2/12/09 "Evolution's survival"

    For the sake of argument, define a religious belief as holding something
    as  fact that you cannot prove.

    If the survival of evolution means that the proven and demonstrable facts
    of species variability, fossil record, etc. have not been suppressed, ok.  But
    if a capital "E" is put on evolution by those who would use it to make school
    and police administrators, jurists, and legislators sheepish about
    considering anything but material values as applied to mechanical beings
    who are merely portions of a universe which is composed of nothing more
    than mega-quantities of incredibly tiny billiard balls whose bouncings since
    the big bang have created the world of today and all the behavior in it, well,
    whose science IS this that tells us that this is the final truth about the
    universe and should win with no debate over the religionist who also bases
    his recommendations to the powerful on beliefs he cannot prove.
    this was his take on it

    --- On Fri, 2/13/09, editor@garmentandcitizen.com
    <editor@garmentandcitizen.com> wrote:


    From: editor@garmentandcitizen.com
    <editor@garmentandcitizen.com>
    Subject: RE: LA Times letter needs help
    To: jackbnimble@yahoo.com
    Date: Friday, February 13, 2009, 8:59 AM


    Jack,
    I think some of your letters can be difficult to understand
    because you love words--a bit too much for the purposes of
    succinct communication.  Newspapers put a premium on brevity--
    when possible--and clarity. I think this is what you are trying to
    say.

    A lot of our elected officials, school administrators and various
    other want to discount entirely the chance that the human race
    came from anything other than an evolutionary process.
    Many of the same eschew the idea that a God created mankind
    as a relic of religious beliefs as opposed to rational science.
    For the sake of argument, let's call a regligous belief as
    considering something to be true even if you cannot prove it.
    Putting an uppercase "E" on Evolution seems to be the same
    thing.
    Exactly what rational science has prove evolution to be a final
    and indisputable fact.
    Or is Evolution the new religion of officialdom?

    Take a look at that and use it as a base to recast your thoughts.
    I think
    you'll find that they ring more clear,

    Ed
    I couldn't confront this, so dropped the
    idea

    Thanks, Ed!



    I guess if these matters weren't difficult to express, the
    human game would be less interesting.  If someone could
    calculate how to change the behavior of even one
    psychotic-- without killing neural tissue-- as easily as a
    physicist can tell you how many kilocalories were expended
    at Hiroshima, why, there'd be an egalitarianism of sciences
    that would make the psycho-sociological people absolutely
    snooty!

    I like your version except for two things: 1) I was trying to
    influence the officials to look at my thesis without putting
    them on the defensive, viz. your first and last sentences.  2)
    I thought the order of the exposition of the various concepts
    was, story-like, a build to a finale. (a build admittedly ruined
    by the vagueness of my "unprovenness" as well as the
    incredibly long sentence that nevertheless wouldn't easily
    reduce because it "told the story".)

    That said, I'll study your alterations very carefully.



    nimble