To the editor:

The May 3, 2023 ‘Let’s keep religion out of public schools’ stated: “we are a nation in which people enjoy freedom of religion — any religion — as well as freedom from religion.” (quote from San Antonio Express-News)

Actually, public schools have been forcing religion on kids for decades.

Having looked over Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards in Science, I was wondering what they presented as proof for evolution in benchmark 9L.4.1.1.3; specifically item 2 which says changes in environmental conditions may result in: “the emergence of new species over time.”

It references the National Academy of Sciences ‘A Framework for K-12 Science Education.’ citing (LS4.A) ‘Evidence for Common Ancestry’ (section for grade 12), it says genetic information provides evidence of evolution. But all they supplied was inferences of how things ‘might work’; nothing even close to explaining how molecules change into extremely complex molecular machines. This document also references a book (ref.2) put out by National Research Council (2008), that gives more detail on how evolution works; but there too, only imaginary scenarios are given. You need to have a ‘Theory’ tying the evidence to the conclusion. The ‘Theory’ then must be checked by calculating probabilities to see if they are within reason. The reason we don’t see them is because probability calculations do not support random mutation/natural selection producing things like dual coding genes. An article in Computational Biology, 3 (2007) 855-861).stated” “Dual coding genes are statistically unlikely” in other words, next to impossible to be produced by random chance. Yet here we have the education establishment telling kids that the human cell with it’s 10 million factories (ribosomes) and vast communication network that rivals the internet; — all came into existence by random mutation and natural selection.

The Minn. Dept of Education and the Legislators need to pull ‘species evolution’ out of the K-12 standards and replace it with Intelligent Design Theory.

It’s really a “no-brainer”; if molecular machinery cannot increase in complexity through random chance, then by default, it had to have been designed.

Teaching kids ‘Species Evolution’ is promoting a ‘faith’ that preaches there is no Creator.

Phil Drietz

Delhi