Employee of Walker Machinery Co., Lincoln County Commissioner, and a true, W.Va. Hillbilly. The following letter appeared in the Lincoln Journal the week after Doug Waldron's letter.
Dear Editor
Doug Waldron, who works for a company in the earth moving business is understandably in favor of mountain top removal. However, his letter of 4/14 is disturbing, and disturbing for reasons that have nothing to do
with mountain top removal. There are strong arguments on both sides of
this divisive issue, some of them supported by facts. Mr. Waldron
addresses none of them. Instead, he belittles those who don't see
things his way: he describes those on his side as hardworking, patriotic,
responsible citizens; those opposing his view are lazy, unpatriotic,
drug-using parasites. We are all tempted to demonize those who don't
agree with us, but name-calling is no argument at all. Perhaps Mr.
Waldron's intention is chiefly to increase one side's hatred of the
other.
It is destructive enough when we do that as private citizens.To do
it as an elected official is especially disturbing. One can be passionatewithout being unfair and illogical.
Don Churchill, Sweetland, W. Va. My Response
The Lincoln Journal, May 1999
In a letter to the editor on April 12, Doug Waldron put words in my
mouth and then attacked his own invention. In an article of March 13,
1999, I wrote "The people who most consistently represent the coal company view are PR people who would spout whatever line the boss pays them to spout...they believe in nothing and their talents go to the highest bidder." Waldron rephrased this to say, "... all people who support mountaintop removal mining were just doing what the boss was telling them to do and that they were for sale to the highest bidder." The public relations people the coal companies hire say what they are paid to say. Coal-miners say what they feel and believe. Come the next strike and those public relations people will be paid to denounce the miners as extremists.
I have never questioned the sincerity of the working people who mine
coal in West Virginia. I do question the sincerity of the owners and
managers of the coal mines. They would fire every miner in a New York
minute if they could find a machine to replace them.
In the same letter Doug Waldron refers to "out-of-state extremists".
My family has been in this state since the early 1800s when Isaac
Barker settled at White Oak Creek on Big Coal River. My father lost an eye in the mines, my grandfather fought at Blair Mountain. My Uncles,
brother-in-law, son, friends and former students have been miners. I am not from out-of-state and being for the mountains as they are seems far less
extreme than destroying the mountains. Absentee owned coal companies like Arch Coal of St. Louis and Massey of Virginia are the "out-of-state
extremists."
Those destroyed mountains will provide no jobs in the future. On the
300,000 acres that have been strip-mined in West Virginia, 180 million
board feet of hardwood lumber could have been cut every year, forever.
Hardwoods don't grow on so-called "reclaimed" strip-mine sites, the ground is as hard as concrete.
Creation Science
The Charleston Gazette, March 2, 1997
At Duval High School in Lincoln County, I teach Chemistry and physics. Next year we may not be offering genetics at Duval unless creationism, as a science, is given equal status with evolution.
Jeff Harper lives across Sam’s Branch Creek from me. Jeff is the man who objected to evolution being taught in the genetics class. Jeff is a former student of mine and a friend. He is a wonderful father and neighbor and works hard at two jobs. He keeps National Guard planes flying and helps keep he family farm going. We fought side by side against one-school consolidation. So you can see the problem is not simple.
I think Jeff is wrong, but I know he is sincere in his beliefs and I know that he stands up for what he believes. I would much rather have him on my side than on the other side.
My guess is that in Lincoln County an overwhelming majority agrees with Jeff. Members of the board of education are very aware of this. The night the board voted not to approve the evolution-tainted syllabus for genetics, a crowd of angry parents was on hand. This board of education, elected as opposed to consolidations, was busy consolidating some grade schools. The members didn’t need anymore trouble that night in front of those already stirred-up citizens.
The creationists claim that evolution is “just a theory.” There is confusion as to what the word theory means. To scientists, a theory comes about after a hypothesis has been tested over and over by many different scientists and it appears the evidence points in a certain direction. A theory is the result of lots of data collection and evaluation; it is not just someone’s casual opinion.
It would be more accurate to say something is “just an hypothesis.” A scientific hypothesis is an idea that can be tested by experiment. Science deals with ideas that can be tested in the physical world. If it can’t be tested by experiment, it is not science.
Is creationism scientific? Can it be tested in the physical world? Can we use our senses or instruments to bring information to our senses to test the hypothesis? This is the issue. If the answer is yes, then creationism can be taught as a science. If the answer is no, then it could be included in a course that studies religion.
I don’t think creationism can be tested. To test it you would have to interview God and have the interview repeated many times by many different people. Maybe that is prayer. But I can’t check your prayer to see if God really spoke to you.
Evolution gets tested every summer. Farmers, using insecticides, breed resistant strains of bugs that by the end of the summer are laying eggs in the insecticide bags. Overuse of antibiotics has bred varieties of bacteria that are immune to the medicine.
Certain mutations, caused among other things by radiation, survive and their offspring are resistant and multiply. Creationists object to random mutations. They prefer God as directly causing the mutations. Why would God cause mutations that kill innocent people? If God is causing the mutations, God is not on our side.
When someone claims to have proven a hypothesis by experiment, other scientists jump all over it like a chicken on a June bug. Not too many years ago, two scientists in Utah claimed to have produced nuclear fusion at room temperature. Fusion is what causes the sun and all the stars to be so hot—if you believe scientists.
Other scientists were skeptical of this “cold fusion.” Science’s greatest virtue is skepticism. Skepticism is insurance against fraud. The skeptics tried to repeat the results. No one could get cold fusion to happen. The hypothesis that fusion could happen on a lab table in test tubes was tested and found wanting. Cold fusion never became a scientific theory because it could not be proven over and over by independent experiment. Science works only when evidence meets honesty.
The creationists whom I have heard speak seem to think that scientists are a bunch of dishonest people who make things up to fit the model they have for the universe. One even doubted that uranium decays into other elements. Proof that there are liquid regions beneath the surface of the earth was rejected because you can’t go there and observe—which is strange, since they base their beliefs on things unseen.
Officials at the Institute for Creation Research are sure that the space program and the search for extra-terrestrial life are government plots to “indirectly promote the rejection of Genesis as the true account of origins.” They count Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Muslims as their only fellow travelers among the denominations and religions of the world. They come within a cat’s hair of calling the Pope a communist. Somehow, globalism creeps into their disgust for evolution, and they don’t fail to mention the Trilateral Commission.
Creationists aren’t looking for answers. They already know the answer, and the facts must fit that answer. Science doesn’t know the answer. Science examines the evidence and follows where it leads. If the evidence shows that God causes the mutations, then the scientist says so. Contrary to creationist paranoia, scientists are not a bunch of heathen atheists out to prove that God doesn’t exist. If you believe that god exists, you believe it on faith and that’s religion, not science.
Some people believe that evangelist Ernest Angley can heal by bumping the afflicted on the head and shouting, “heal!” The hypothesis that he can heal is a scientific hypothesis. It can be tested. Simply take him a person with an arm that has been cut off and ask him to put the arm back on.
Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart claimed that he healed his Studebaker many years ago on the way to a tent meeting. He simply rubbed anointing oil
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