To the editor:<\/p>\n
For nearly 10 years I have been writing letters to the editor of the Cape Coral Breeze. When I think about The Breeze it is with appreciation and gratitude that there is a real newspaper not controlled and influenced by a giant conglomerate.<\/p>\n
Most of my letters were written in opposition to Donald Trump and I did my best to use objective evidence in support of my opinions. I consider this quote by Carl Sagan my standard when making a claim against Trump, or any claim on any topic: \u201cExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
This brings me the March 19 letter written by Billy Herman, \u201cPlaybook aside.\u201d The writer referenced the letter written by Bob Pabst, \u201cPlease close the playbook.\u201d Mr. Pabst did not think my letter \u201cEvidence\u201d was based on evidence. Mr. Herman thought my letter \u201cEvidence\u201d was factual and he explained why. He also undermined Mr. Pabst\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n
The great Christopher Hitchens argued that while people deserve respect, ideas do not. If a position was unfalsifiable or dogmatically immune to evidence, he believed it didn\u2019t merit formal debate because it violated the basic rules of rational discourse.<\/p>\n
So, the real issue wasn\u2019t that he avoided fundamentalists-it\u2019s that he sometimes thought debating them was like debating astrology or young-earth creationism: rhetorically lively, but intellectually stagnant.<\/p>\n
In closing, thank you Billy Herman for your wonderful letter to the editor.<\/p>\n
Paul Kiefner<\/p>\n
Saint Augustine, formerly Cape Coral<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: For nearly 10 years I have been writing letters to the editor of the Cape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-207781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}