To the editor:

Open letter to Mr. Irigonegaray:

Thank you for your efforts to save the integrity of the science programs in Kansas schools. I believe you tried every way you knew to present the facts. However, facts mean nothing to people who care not for them. Emotion and guesswork will become the standards by which children will be programmed, not educated.

Connie Morris stated that she “forgives you” for your statements. What she did not say is the opinion held by some of these people: that you will go to Hell for your beliefs. I’ll meet you there.

Having been of the Christian belief all my life, I am now ashamed to use the word. It now means embarrassment for our state, pigeonholing of people with educated beliefs, and a new denigration of the word “intelligent.” It means people who can think no further than the end of their noses, who must come up with an answer when there is no explanation for what they desperately want to understand. It is the anthropomorphization of God. How sad for all of us.

The voted-upon standards will be of this Christian belief system, there is no doubt. The board is tilted, and I agree that the “hearings” were a terrible waste of our money. I am frightened by what is happening in our state.

Elaine Creaden,

Lawrence