Darwinism

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 18

Darwinism

Sir,—Eric Walters shows that he is not a fundamentalist. However, he still thinks that there was a supernatural origin for plant and animal species, namely a creator who made them all immutable. This is still religion, not science, and therefore there is no justification for teaching it. in public school science courses. Perhaps Mr Walters and other creationists would state why they favour biological origins by special creation and why creation by the evolutionary process is so objectionable to them. The theory of evolutionary origins is incorporated, into their theology, without difficulty, by many Christians. — Yours, etc.,

COLIN BURROWS. December 18, 1981.

Sir,—Trevor Nicholls takes my letter out of context. My enthusiasm is confined to the possible substantiation of facts and my attack was directed to those who, attacking Darwinism as unacceptable, offer total coptradiction as an alternative in the name of their infallible

God and the preservation of their most vulnerable religion. Trevor Nicholls cunningly rides the fence of non-commitment but if he is a Biblical Creationist he should be sufficiently forthright to say so and. offer supporting evidence. I am vehemently anti-Biblical creation for the simple reason it cannot possibly be fact. With no-one present at the time of creation, who recorded all the contradictory details including quotations from God himself? All the relative literature ever written cannot make the Biblical story viable. I am disappointed to see your correspondent prefers deviatory tactics instead of facing the issue fair and square—Yours, etc.,

ARTHUR MAY December 17, 1981.

Sir,—Eric, Walters (December 18) says that gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution. This is both false (many so-called “missing links” .have been found) and illogical (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). Fossil-hunt-ing is like looking for a needle in a haystack — not finding it does not mean it is not there. Therefore, it is impossible to evaluate evolution on the basis of absent fossils. Only through existing fossils (and there are millions of them) can the theory be truly tested. If evolution is false, primitive and modern species should be found in equal proportions at both ancient and recent fossil sites. This is not the case, however. Scientists have only found modern species in recent deposits and more primitive species in older ones. The older the fossil, the more primitive the species. The conclusion is obvious — either evolution is true, or God plays practical jokes. — Yours, etc.,

R. TAYLOR. December 18, 1981

Sir,—l am always quite fascinated by the argument, Creation v Evolution, mainly for the point of view that .evolutionists start with a prerequisite, pre-conceived universe. To make any theory valid, one must surely begin at the beginning. It appears to be widely acceptred that the universe began with "the big bang.” We must ask ourselves what could have caused an explosion of such proportion to send all the “debris” spinning into space to evolve into a universe of such balance and control, a control obviously sympathetic to man’s life on Earth? To go back even further, where did the material come from in the first place? If we are to accept that it was all an accident, we must also, of course, look for the cause and in doing so acknowledge a power greater than ourselves. — Yours, etc., (Mrs) D. G. HEARD. December 18, 1981.

Sir,—Many of your readers have muddled two separate issues: (1) the question of whether evolution has actually occurred; and (2) the question of how it has occurred. Scientists stopped arguing about the first question more than 100 years ago. In fact, even before Darwin came along, many scientists thought that the evidence for evolution was overwhelming. What they disagreed on (and what they still dis agree on) is the second question, which concerns the exact steps by which evolution occurs. (Fast or slow? Little or big steps? Survival of the fittest or the luckiest?) Darwin's contribution was to answer this question by putting forward the theory of “natural selection.” (Slow, little steps, the fittest). This is what the term “Darwinism” properly refers to. By confusing these two questions people may get the false idea that scientists have doubts about evolution when, in fact, they don’t. — Yours, etc.,

JOHN REDMOND. December 18, 1981.