Another update on Josh Brecheen.

It has been good to see the mostly positive reaction to the ill-conceived comments of Oklahoma State SEN Josh Brecheen. If this man is looking to make a name for himself, he certainly is. He put an editorial in the local paper from his senate district, The Durant Daily Democrat. In addition to the uproar over several things wrong with attempting to try to have creation taught in public schools, the comments in the newspapers website have been lambasting him for his outrageous views in other subjects as well.

Being a native son of Oklahoma, it pains me when I see this sort of pubic display of foolishness. But even more so when it is done by our government officials.

Here are a couple a links to learn more about this issue and this man. 

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/when_did_oklahoma_start_electi.php

http://www.durantdemocrat.com/view/full_story/10775841/article-Reader-says-Breechen-badly-misunderstands-evolution-and-science-?

http://www.durantdemocrat.com/view/full_story/10776295/article-Brecheen-says-the-religion-of-evolution-is-plagued-with-falsehoods?

Letter from Oklahoma Senator Josh Brecheen concerning evolution and creation.

One of the bills I will file this year may be dismissed as inferior by “intellectuals” so I wanted to devote particular time in discussing it’s merits. It doesn’t address state waste, economic development, workers comp reform or lawsuit reform (although I have filed bills concerning each) but it is nonetheless worthy of consideration. It is an attempt to bring parity to subject matter taught in our public schools, paid for by the taxpayers and driven by a religious ideology. I’m talking about the religion of evolution. Yes, it is a religion. The religion of evolution requires as much faith as the belief in a loving God, when all the facts are considered (mainly the statistical impossibility of key factors). Gasp! Someone reading this just fell out of their enlightened seat!!! “It’s not a religion as it’s agreed upon by the entire scientific community,” some are saying at this very moment. Are you sure? Let’s explore the facts.

As a high school and university student forced to learn about evolution I was never told there were credible scientists who harbor significant skepticism toward Darwinian Theory. I easily recall a full semester at SOSU where my English 1 professor forced us to write almost every paper over the “facts” of evolution. That professor had a deep appreciation for me by semester end due to our many respectful debates as I chose to not be blindly led. I specifically remember asking how in 4,000 years of recorded history how we have yet to see the ongoing evidence of evolution (i.e. a monkey jumping out of a tree and putting on a business suit).

Following a 2001 PBS television series, which stressed the “fact” of evolution, approximately 100 physicists, anthropologists, biologists, zoologists, organic chemists, geologists, astrophysicists and other scientists organized a rebuttal. So much disagreement arose from this one sided TV depiction that this group produced a 151 page rebuttal stating how the program, “failed to present accurately and fairly the scientific problems with the Darwinian evolution”. These weren’t narrow minded fundamentalists, backwoods professors or rabid religious radicals; these were respected world class scientists like Nobel nominee Henry Schafer, the third most cited chemist in the world and Fred Figworth, professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale Graduate School.

Ideologues teaching evolution as undisputed fact are not teaching truth. Renowned scientists now asserting that evolution is laden with errors are being ignored. That’s where we should have problems with state dollars only depicting one side of a multifaceted issue. Using your tax dollars to teach the unknown, without disclosing the entire scientific findings is incomplete and unacceptable. For years liberals have decried how they want to give students both sides of an argument so they can decide for themselves, however when it comes to evolution vs. creation in the classroom, the rules somehow change. Their beliefs shift, may I say... evolve to suit their ideology.

We must discuss the most recognizable icons of the evolution religion. Darwin sketched for The Origin of Species a visual to explain his hypothesis that all living creatures evolved from a common ancestor. The tree of life scenario, engrained upon most of our memories, depicts gue transitioning into a hunched over monkey which then turns into a business suit.

Darwin himself knew the biggest problem with his visual (cornerstone concept of his hypothesis) was the fossil record itself. He acknowledged major groups of animals, he coined “divisions” (now called phyla) appear suddenly in the fossil record. The whole basis for evolution is gradual differences and changes to be confirmed by modified fossils (phyla cross-over). Even Christians believe in biological change from species to species (adaption) over time. The taxonomic hierarchy which includes species, genus, family, order and class must be visualized for understanding separation from phyla and species classifications. As an OSU Animal Science graduate I readily admit the adaption of animal species from interbreeding such as Santa Gertrudis cattle, a “weenie” dog or even a fruit fly. Even the difference among lions, tigers and cougars could be attributed to species adaption and interbreeding if one so decried. Additionally, human differences seen notable in ethnicity proves that change among species is real but this is NOT evolution, its adaption. Changes with the classification of species is DRAMATICALLY different then changes among Phyla. Phyla changes would be if an insect, with its skeleton located on the outside of soft tissue (arthropods), transformed into a mammal, with its skeleton at the core of soft tissue (chordates). Phyla changes must be verified for Darwin’s common ancestor hypothesis to be accurate.

The rapid appearance of today’s known phylum-level differences, at about 540 million years ago, debunks the tree of life (common ancestor) scenario. This biological big bang of fully developed animal phyla is called the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion’s phyla fossils and the phyla of today are basically one in the same. These phyla fossils of that era are fully developed, not in a transitional form. In fact we don’t have a transitional form fossil crossing phyla classification after hundreds of years of research looking at sediment beds spawning the ages. There are certainly plenty of good sedimentary rocks from before the Cambrian era to have preserved ancestors if there are any. As for pre-Cambrian fossils being too tiny or soft for secured preservation there are microfossils of bacteria in rocks dating back beyond three billion years. Absolutely ZERO phyla evidence supporting Darwin’s hypothesis has been discovered after millions of fossil discoveries. Darwin’s cornerstone hypothesis where invertebrate’s transition into vertebrates is majorly lacking and so is Darwin’s “theory”.

I will be introducing legislation this session to ensure our school children have all the facts.

This discussion is to be continued in next week’s column..

Josh Brecheen

I have not changed any of the spelling or grammar from the source article.

http://durantdemocrat.com/pages/full_story/push?content_instance=10717736&need_to_add=true&id=10717736#cb_post_comment_10717736

Chapter One; LIVING IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD part two

Somewhere between my curious nature and my desire to interact with my environment, I looked critically at the world. So as a child, when my family went to church, I really had no idea what it was about. I liked the children sermons given at Our Savior's Lutheran Church. It was fun to go in front of the sanctuary and sit with the other kids beside the pastor, since he seemed to be the reason everyone was there.


When I was a child my family attended this church in Durant, OK. It is Our Saviour's Lutheran Church. It was my first time to be exposed to anything religious. The sanctuary looks nearly the same as it did when I was a child. I remember that the cross was quite impressive and I would stare at it endlessly, enjoying all the colors and shapes of the tile artwork.

Some things I recall about church at an early age involves a lot of people that I didn't know. We shared Sunday School classes with kids that were not in my regular school. When singing songs, the words in the hymnals were not sung in the same order as a book is read. You got dress up in nice clothes when you went to church. The buildings were nice and had a lot of cool stuff to look at. Plus, we usually went out to eat on Sunday after church. These were a few of the reasons that I liked going to church.




This was the first church I ever attended of my own choice, Bethel Baptist Church in Ardmore, OK. It was just a few blocks from my house so I walked there most every Sunday morning. When I was staying with my Grandmother the Sunday School teacher, Don Ray Thomason, would come out in the country to pick me up. It was a very nice and friendly place.

A few years later my family moved to Ardmore, OK and the family pretty much stopped going to church. Strangely enough, I was the only one in my family, for a long time, that went to church. It started when I was ten years old with a Vacation Bible Study. I told my Mother about the church; we visited the church; she checked the place out and decided that the people were OK. At the VBS, I remember one of my favorite things was working on the arts and crafts, wanting to make them as good as I could. But I thought the stories were nice, too. This began my personal journey with God and Christians.
At church, during the sermon, I would listen closely to the words the preacher would say and read along with the Bible. When a verse was given, I would start ahead and read after it. I knew that would give me better understanding of the context of what was being said. I knew from growing up reading The Hardy Boys book series and other books. One has to read the whole story to know what is going on in context. I enjoyed the challenge of learning about what was being preached and taught in the church. So, I was in church almost every Sunday. I went to Sunday School, the service, and when I could, the Sunday and Wednesday evening services, too. If we had evening visitation at the nursing homes I would attend.
To me, this was one of the first things that I did for myself, outside my family. Besides going to school, living in the small town didn't provide a lot of options for activities. So for me, church became my hobby. I actually went there so often that I would show up on Saturday to help mow the lawn. I quickly learned many of the stories and words of the Bible. It wasn't long before I could say the books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation forward and backward.
This was also the time when I learned to read aloud. It was a skill I was quite proud of. I had received the King James Version of the Bible, so I felt that reading those “odd” words as I was speaking was doing well. It was the only Bible I had honestly ever read. It was odd that it was not written as a paragraph, but in separate verses, one at a time. I actually liked reading the Bible. The stories seemed so odd to me, but it sure was good when a story came up in church that I had already read. As I was familiar with the story, the message was easier to understand. Plus ,it made it better when I reading the verses aloud in my Sunday school class, because I knew what the story was about.
It was, at times, excruciating to hear others my age and even older, struggle with words as they read. Especially the Hebrew names and cities. Of course, I just said them the way I was taught. I had to correct some of the pronunciations, as I learned how to say them when I got older.
Recently, I went back to visit Ardmore, OK and took the pictures of Bethel Baptist Church and reconnected with my first Sunday School teacher. Don Ray Thomason was a very important influence in my life as a young boy. As one that believes in God, he is a good example of someone who tries to live the values he professes. At the time I attended the church, I would often ride with Don Ray as he picked up people for church. He is still doing that Today, however, the church now has two vans so Don Ray doesn't have to use his personal vehicle.
To me it was important to visit them. [Don Ray's wife is Betty Jo, whom I also knew at the time.] They are a good example of living a good life and applying the principles of the life of Jesus, without a strong persecution aspect. I would say that to me, Don Ray and Betty Jo represent the prototypical positive image of what a southern Baptist couple should be. If it was only based upon how someone lived their life, they indeed provided a good example.
However, there is more to life than just a sterling example of behavior. There is the reality of the Universe and the way cause, effect and logical principles apply to life. At this point, many people are more than willing to accept a good life and live blissfully in the limited knowledge of what they have learned. But, that was not the path I chose.
One of my early joys was attending the adult Bible study on Wednesday nights at Bethel Baptist Church. I had my own study guide. In the days proceeding class, I would read and fill in the answers according to the text listed in the study guide. I recall the first one I had was on the book of Acts. Of course, this really is not much of a study of the Bible, as there are often more than one answer that can be derived from the text and your understanding of the text. Until you go to the class, you don't know which one is “right”. But the idea that I was a kid and doing the same study as the grown ups was pretty cool.


This is the interior of the Bethel Baptist Church In Ardmore, OK. With very little exception the sanctuary looks the same it did in 1976 to 1978.

I was like a newly hatched chick in a nest. I just wanted more and more of this stuff. I still didn't really understand why but my adherence to Christianity surely impressed many of the older people in the church. I often received compliments about my attendance and participation. This is also when I was told, strangely enough, “That God has something special for you in your life, Thomas.” This always seemed odd to me for several reasons. First, what could this special thing be. And second, how could this person have an idea like that? How could they possible know? But it was just another of the anomalies that I came across with religion. I smiled and said, “thank you”.

Chapter One; THE NATURAL WORLD part one

The purpose of this book is to examine and understand the purpose of religion in the view of the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. It is hoped that you and I will work to explore some of the ideas of God, Religion, and the supernatural in America and the world. I am not going to take the time to explain the detailed biological aspect of Natural Selection. To be quite honest the nuts and bolts of the process from the lab and such are beyond my current knowledge. One thing that makes this book so great is that I use interpretive analysis of the evidence to explain the concepts. There are a great many books and videos available at your local library or bookstore that can give you the background you need on the subject.12 For one of many Internet resources the University of California at Berkley provides a nice primer to begin with.3 One of my favorite, as you will learn in section three, is Cosmos: A Personal Journey.4 Just as with the probability of life must be common enough for it to occur at least one place in the Galaxy or universe, because we are here and alive. Likewise, there must be a reason for religion in human evolution because it is also here in every culture known on Earth.
It may seem like a strange idea for me as an atheist to to try to explain and even justify a reason for religion. I am not sure I will be able to go as far as to justify it but I will try to take a even handed look at its aspects and influences on modern life. I assure you I am far from the first one to do this and I may not be the best one to attempt this subject. I do, however, feel I have a somewhat a unique perspective on this subject as my background has been deeply involved in both science and religion. Without a doubt much more so in religion than science but both still very much self researched and pursued. My purpose in writing this is to help explain in more common terms how and why religion is used and some would say even needed at times by mankind.
Concerning science, I always had a curious nature of how things work. I remember as a young boy of eight or nine years old getting tools and taking apart things like radios, furniture, turntables to see how they worked then putting them back together. I was lucky that even at that age I knew it was a good idea to have the electric cord unplugged or I may not have had the chance to write this Today. I was glad when after putting the item back together it worked as it should. When I was not successful at reassembling something it would cause my mother no end of distress. The question usually was, “Thomas why on Earth would you take [insert item here] apart?” To which my answer would be, “ I wouldn't to see how it worked.”
Part of this curious nature came from my older brothers and I making plastic models as kids. We would go to the local T.G. & Y. discount store and buy all types of models they had, from cars to planes and ships of all sorts. Plus I learned to use the detailing tools with paint and sanding to make the models look their best. Then after spending hours upon hours making the cars look great we would have a “crash and burn” day. That is when we would take the cars and at different levels of destruction watch them come apart. Finally the result would be a glue enhanced fiery crash of two or more cars.
What this means to me is that a lot of attention to detail was a big part of my youth just to have it all go up in smoke for my own enjoyment. Even the smoke held fascination for me. As the plastic burnt it had a black smoke which was different than the smoke of grass burning or cigarettes or other things I had seen burn prior to that. Plus it was easy to capture by simply putting another piece of plastic above the flame and letting the black smoke gather on it. All this lead me to understand that there was a very specific process to be able to make models and to disassemble and reassemble household items.
I also spent hours walking all over the small town of Durant, Oklahoma to see what was around town. I was like a tourist and wanted to see everything that was around me. It was a curious world with the trees, rocks, streets, cars, homes and people all around me at different levels of condition all on the same street and city I was in.
As I remember, some of my most favorite things to do as a young boy was to watch the construction workers on the streets or on a housing site. I would stand by a backhoe and watch them dig deeper or longer and move the dirt out of the hole to the truck or to the side of the hole as it went along. Also I would watch as these men built homes putting up the frames and even walking around inside the wall less house. It is there when I notice that the plumbing fixtures came up through the concrete and the plumbers really didn't spend that much time at the work site. Only in the begging and the end. But it seemed the rest of the workers were there all the construction. So watching these men work provided me an early experience of how cause and effect was in reality. You raise a board, nail it to another board, continue the process soon your have a frame for a wall.
One of the other places that I would find myself at many times is when I heard a fire truck near by I would try to find it to see what was going on. If there was a fire I would watch the fire fighters working. It always fascinated me that they worked so fast but the fire would still destroy the building anyway. The town I lived in was very small so a fire anywhere in town wouldn't take that long to find anyway.
While on one of my walks I came upon a mimosa tree with leaves that were very small and would pull off easily into my hands. The result left the leaves in my thumb and forefinger a conical appearance to them. After pealing off several layers of these leaves I went to wash off the green from the leaves and to my amazement there was a soapy lather as I rub my hands together. I am not sure if this is a natural soap or just a normal reaction to that particular plants being rubbed underwater. I did take it to mean that if I ever needed to wash my hands and there was no soap but one of the mimosa trees I would use that. And I did use that information many times while I was a young boy. Another plant I gained knowledge from was the magnolia tree. They had these trees all over the town and they had peculiar flowers and buds. I found that is I picked the flower and rubbed it with my finger or tore it, very quickly it would turn from the white color to a dark brown. One thing for sure I learned about the magnolia tree id there flowers are very sent filled. I didn't mind playing with the buds of the tree but I didn't so much like the smell afterward, another lesson in cause and effect.
Walking around town looking at the creeks and streams, following them to see where they went and what was in and around them was also a past time I enjoyed. One time with some from friends from my neighborhood, we were at a nearby creek and found a huge turtle. We had found many other smaller ones in the past but this one had to be 14 to 16 inches, head to tail. It wasn't like the little snapper turtles that we normally found. We decided that turtle had to gotten there from a recent rain the day before. That was the only way we could figure out that the huge turtle could make it all the way down to that part of the creek. There very well may have been other ways but this was the conclusion we reached. Even at the age of eight my mind was piecing together cause and effects of the natural world. I know that things had to make sense naturally.




This small creek, a clear running stream in Durant, OK, is the same location where I spent time as a child with friends gathering crawdads, other small animals and exploring the natural world.

At this age most little boys want to have a place for themselves, a “fort, tree house” or “club” if you will. But what does a little boy know about construction? I knew that the walls had to be strong enough to support the roof. I had observed a lot of construction but doing is quite another thing. I also knew that if you didn't have enough wood to make it high enough to stand up in you can dig down into the ground to give yourself more headroom. Kevin Winguard, a friend of mine and I built a clubhouse secure enough to stand on its own and walk inside upright. We made the walls, roof and floor ourselves. We even ran a power cord out to it so we could have light and play music on my record player. Not only would it hold us, but my two brothers were actually was surprised how deep it was inside when they came in.



When I was eight or nine years old I lived at this house in Durant, OK. This backyard is where I built one of my many “forts” with my friend Kevin Winguard.

What Kevin and I had done was to put posts or boards into holes we dug into the ground to make sure it was high enough for us to stand in, yet deep enough to hold the weight. The walls were stepped and arranged in a circle and the opening was stepped down into the ground to get in and out easier. This clubhouse last for about six months.
What I have learned from this and other experiences like this is that when I see artifacts of man from the past. I see not only the history of man but my own history as a youth. When I used the tools and items around me to make something greater then what was there to begin with. Each step man has taken in progress is still with us today because we are the same men and woman of that time. We have just learned to build upon the work of other great inventors and ingenious people from before.

1 http://richarddawkins.net/
2 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
3 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01
4 http://www.carlsagan.com/