Today’s letter-to-the-editor appears in the High Point Enterprise of High Point, North Carolina. It’s titled: Evolution isn’t science; why teach it? We don’t like to embarrass people (unless they’re politicians, preachers, or other public figures), so we usually omit the writer’s full name and city. But today’s letter is an exception — it’s written by Robert L. Youngblood of Trinity, North Carolina.
What makes him exceptional is found in this newspaper article, 11 seek three school board seats, which informs us that Youngblood is a candidate for a seat on the Randolph County Board of Education. We assume it’s the same man; there can’t be two with that name in a town with a population of only 6,614. Also, a man with that name wrote an earlier letter in the High Point Enterprise, Show me your evidence of evolution, in which he’s identified as chairman of the Randolph Tea Party.
We’ll give you a few excerpts from the candidate’s latest letter, enhanced with our Curmudgeonly commentary, and some bold font for emphasis. First he refers to an earlier letter that criticized him, which we haven’t tried to locate, and then he presents his defense. Okay, here we go:
I did not equate science with liberals and communists. I equated evolution with that distinction, for evolution is in no way science.
Oh, it’s okay then. He only equates evolution with liberals and communists. Youngblood doesn’t know that people like your Curmudgeon exist, or what we think of him. He drools on:
I did not say Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould had abandoned evolution. I said they abandoned “Darwinian Evolution.” Both Dawkins and Gould, were embracing “the hopeful monster theory,” which basically states “every 50,000 years an alligator lays five eggs and a chicken pops out.”
We hope you’ll understand that we haven’t bothered to Google around to refute that one. Let’s see what else he says:
If C14 is still present in a fossil it must be less than 100,000 years old. Every fossil found so far has C14 in it. That is your science speaking.
Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,700 years, so it’s only reliable for dating objects up to about 50,000 years old. Older fossils may have a minute trace of carbon-14, sometimes from contamination, but it’s simply untrue that really old ones have C-14. There’s a contrary claim at the website of ol’ Hambo (Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds), and that’s probably where the candidate does his research. He continues:
[The earlier letter] mentioned “Fossil record.” Is he not aware that the only place all 13 odd layers appear are in the textbooks? There is nowhere on earth, including the Grand Canyon which on average is over one mile deep, where you will find only four.
That’s rather chaotic. His main point is debunked in the TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims — see The geological column. But the candidate isn’t done yet:
Each layer found has both modern day and extinct fossils together. The Cambrian explosion contains many of the same, even though it is considered the lowest.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! We won’t bother to debunk that one either. Here’s more:
Science has indeed provided improvements to the human condition, such as medicine and technology, but evolution isn’t science and it has not provided any improvements whatsoever. I would really like to know their answer to how evolution provides one iota of improvement.
It’s true that the contribution of creation science zero, but as for evolution, TalkOrigins debunks that one too — see The theory of evolution is useless, without practical application. And now we come to the end:
The bottom line, my tax dollars support the teaching of this willing ignorant pseudoscience. I in no way wish to have religion taught, I want to see empirical science, i.e. demonstrable, observable and verifiable science.
The school board election is in November. If Youngblood wins, things should be interesting in Randolph County.
Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
The Candidate declares [bold added]:
Criminy, this candidate even knows Greek. That should lock in a few extra Tea Party votes.
Okay, I’m impressed. He wouldn’t get my vote, though, unless he also demonstrated mastery of Latin by sparkling up a sentence with the word scintilla.
Why do I get a mental image of one impressive mullet and a heavily armed pickup truck when trying to picture this doofus?
This person is an excellent argument for why we should do away with local elected school boards in the United States. Any lunatic can run for the school board and will often be elected. They then proceed to do serious damage to the educations of the children in the school district with their insane ideologies and religious beliefs.
I spent a number of years in Japan where there are no school boards. The curriculum for all schools in the country and how it will be implemented is determined by professional educators in the Ministry of Education, insuring that each Japanese child is given a high quality education free of some kook’s religious or political agenda. Is it any surprise that Japanese students way outperform American students on standardized exams, particularly in the areas of Math and Science? There is no creationism in any classroom in Japan.
What a total ignoramus!! I was all set to write essentially the same points made by Dr. Kennedy — having this man in a position to influence children’s education could be considered child abuse.
“We won’t bother to debunk that one either.”
No need to – no more beautiful spectacle than a creacrapper refuting himself.
@SK: “The curriculum for all schools in the country ….”
That’s how all civilized countries do it.
(For those Americans who feel insulted: all civilized countries also have a Supreme Court – not my native country The Netherlands).
@RSG, mnbo,
This educational system we have in the U.S. is why I despair of many parts of the country ever escaping the backwardness and ignorance that condemns them to lives of physical and intellectual poverty.
A group of drooling slack jawed creationists gets elected to the school board and inflicts a superstition driven curriculum on the school system which severely stunts the intellectual growth of the young people in the district. The uneducated children grow up, run for the school board themselves, and perpetuate the unfortunate cycle all over again on the next generation.
I posted the following at the High Point Enterprise website:
“As a retired professional geologist, I can say with total confidence that Mr. Youngblood has not a clue concerning any of the aspects of earth science he opined about. To debate him would be as unethical as dueling with an unarmed man. That said, I’d love for him to show us a list of successful petroleum or other mineral exploration companies that employ any of his bizarre notions of geology.”
That a moron like the candidate in question is even trolling for votes is a complete travesty.
While not everyone in Randolph County is this ignorant, there is a sizable and vocal segment here who believes everything this loon says. He ran for school board two years ago and missed being elected by only a few hundred votes. Even though he had written many letters to the editor before that election (most even crazier than this one), he did not publicly mention his anti-science beliefs during the campaign. After that election, he abandoned all pretense of rationality. Unsurprisingly, Youngblood is a birther, a climate change denier and believes the UN is trying to take over our country by using the Common Core. He urges people to put their children in Christian schools and is adamantly for school vouchers. This is a not a stance taken by someone who wants to represent the public schools. While his letters are totally off the wall, his demeanor is not that of some wild eyed, drooling, hillbilly snake handler. He seems reasonable when speaking in public, and this is what makes him dangerous. If he wins in November, watch out for Dover, The Sequel.
ghardin: “He urges people to put their children in Christian schools and is adamantly for school vouchers.”
This alone should disqualify him from a position on the school board. He has no intention of improving public education in Randolph County; to the contrary, he would dismantle it.
Here’s a link to Mr. Youngbloods school board PR piece from last time. Note that he is a Creationist Apologist confirming Curmy’s speculation.
Let us hope that the Randolph voters remain equally discerning in 2013.
http://courier-tribune.com/sections/news/local/bob-youngblood-randolph-county-board-education.html