Reasonable Doubt

I have family and friends for whom the internet has no allure. They don’t understand the vast potential of the web to enhance their lives in meaningful ways. Personally, I can’t imagine living without the internet, although I did for most of my life. I was 25 or so in the year 1996 when I got my first computer and signed up for an AOL account. I’ve been an avid internet user ever since.

But what I’ve come to realize is that the internet is the democratization of information and knowledge. If you don’t understand this and use it to your advantage then you will be beholden to traditional media to ‘inform’ (more like, entertain) you and to tell you what and how to think.

You will be much more likely to be a talk radio listener or to ‘consume’ news from the big traditional outlets, Fox and the alphabet soup of news media, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, none of which are probably much better than Fox.

You will be a passive media consumer instead of an active acquirer of knowledge.

Even so, even if you are an avid internet news junkie, you still have to be careful and learn how to properly vet your sources. There is a plethora of non reliable sources and biased sources out there. Just because it comes up on Google does not mean it’s reliable.

Learn to vet your sources and get out there and be an active participant in this experiment we call Democracy. Learn and figure things out for yourselves. Don’t let popular opinion dictate your opinions to you.

With twitter, blogs and a plethora of non traditional media on the internet, you have virtually no excuse to be ill informed.

Governor
It is my understanding that you will be making a final decision whether to sign or veto the controversial bill SB 893, dubbed the “monkey bill”. I would like to implore you to think very seriously about the repercussions signing such a bill would have on the education of TN’s children. I am a 39 year old, non traditional student at UTK studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I can assure you that within the scientific community there is nothing controversial about biological evolution. To allow teachers to critique such widely accepted scientific theories and to pretend that there is somehow a controversy is disingenuous at best. The only community in which biological evolution is controversial is within the fundamentalist Christian community.
You have stated that while last week’s letter and petition with over 3000 signatures had an impact on your thinking, that you also have to take into consideration that the bill passed the house and senate by a 3/1 margin. That is true, but what you must also realize is that the vast majority of those voting for the bill do not have an educated understanding of evolutionary theory.
I want to assure you that I pay attention to such things as this, and that they play a huge role in helping me to decide whether to stay in TN in the future for my children’s education. I have a 4 year old about to start Kindergarten in August and a 1 year old son who will be in a few years. I don’t want them subjected to religion in the science classroom. We, as science advocators, don’t go to Sunday school and demand that they “teach the controversy” about the truth of Christian theology because that would not be our place to do so. Why is it considered right and proper for the fundamentalists in our midst to do practically the same thing in our science classrooms?
I implore you, if it is not too late, as a resident of beautiful East TN to make the right decision and veto this bill for the children. Keep science in the science classrooms and religion in the Churches and let the kids make up their own minds. Do not disadvantage them in their quest for a top notch education by encumbering them with unnecessary and non existent controversies. Allow our public school teachers to teach the science only. That’s what they have been trained to do and it’s what our children deserve.
Sincerely

—
Brian Flatt

1) Your mom and dad and perfectly capable of being wrong about a whole lot of things. We are not perfect, we are just your mom and dad and love you very much. Same goes for your grandparents and those before them. Don’t look to us, or them,  to give you the bedrock Truth. All we can do as your parents, is to guide you in what we feel is the right direction and help give you the tools that you will need on the journey, but ultimately the search for Truth is a journey that you must take yourself. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you MUST believe or scare you with the notions of hell and fear that they were raised with. Recognize that very few people in this world are capable of rising above their upbringing and hence most end up with the very same beliefs as their parents. We don’t want this for you. We instead want you to be able to think for yourselves, to be able to use your own brains to come up with conclusions based upon Reason and not tradition or dogma. If we succeed in instilling these virtues into your lives then we will be happy and will support you in whatever adventures you decide to pursue.