Correspondence
i A Conservative Second I was absolutely appalled by your current cover story attacking the Darwinian theory of evolution ("Survival of the Fakest," by Jonathan Wells, TAS, December...
...In 1981 , Colin Patterson, a prominent paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, gave a seminar at the American Museum of Natural History in New York...
...Palo Alto, California Tom Bethell replies: Ron Unz gives no evidence of having read the article he deplores...
...This would indicate reading differences between men and women, which I am not qualified to explain, but which influence the final product...
...I've seen medical textbooks that report as fact theories about the physiological regulation of sleep that have been discredited for over twenty years...
...He goes on in this vein for a few pages in Report to Greco...
...There is fertile ground for inquiry in the theories on the origin of life...
...I sympathize with Dr...
...Modern evolutionary theory," he writes, "is the thoroughly documented foundation of half of all modern science...
...Mthough I am a conservative, I would rather support an ultra-liberal political leader who believed that the world was round than a conservative political leader who believed that it was flat, because the latter belief is clear proof either of appalling ignorance or complete insanity...
...Let him reveal some of the "documented" facts about evolution...
...My research reveals the following: The current selections of the Mystery Guild reveal that 17 are written by male authors, 29 by female authors...
...To be sure, it stirs passionate emotions in true believers, as Unz shows...
...God bless all writers who are challenging the Darwinists...
...I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence...
...Mystery Loves Company I'm 7 ~ years old and I read my first mystery when I was nine or ten...
...Thanks for a greatly interesting article...
...Today, even the most extremist and backward Islamic fundamentalists have accepted modern evolutionary theory...
...Unz is acquainted with facts about evolution that Wells failed to mention, or with errors in his argument, he should send us chapter and verse...
...It is always tempting to add one's favorites to any reading list, and Mr...
...Keep up the good work...
...Although I no longer support that bastion of racial quotas and multiculturalism, hearing "The Victors" on a crisp autumn afternoon still gives me goose pimples...
...Bonaventure, New York Pigskin Blue I believe that Steve Chapman's "Songs for a Saturday" (TAS, November 200o) has combined the University of Michigan's alma mater, "The Yellow and Blue," with the fight song "The Victors...
...He had recently tried putting a simple question to various groups...
...Intelligent Design will have more impact than Darwin in a few decades, especially since the math backs it up...
...There are no melanic moths or faked embryos by Haeckel...
...Thirty-five of the protagonists are female, 13 male...
...JOEL H. BENINGTON, PH.D...
...i A Conservative Second I was absolutely appalled by your current cover story attacking the Darwinian theory of evolution ("Survival of the Fakest," by Jonathan Wells, TAS, December 2oooJanuary 2001...
...Anyone who has studied complex, chaotic, self-organizing systems cannot help but see that the laws of the universe are organized so that any complex system will eventually reach chaos, and then from that chaos, order 10 Fe b r u ary 2 o o z 9 The American Spectator emerges...
...Karnick's are excellent, but I would like to mention one author and two of his books: Phillip MacDonald's Murder Gone Mad (1931) and Warrant For X (1938), considered by many two of the best mysteries ever written...
...mALLEN C. STOWELL Clinton, Iowa Designer Fabrics As a reformed atheist, I was fascinated by the article on Baylor and Dembski ("The Lynching of Bill Dembski," by Fred Heeren, TAS, November zooo...
...The ideological straitjacket required by many institutions of "science" has stifled inquiry into this powerful phenomenon, and thank "The Designer" that Dembski has the guts to stand up against the PC behemoth...
...I urge conservatives not to follow that path...
...Hit the books, Ron, and get offyour high horse...
...Department of Biology St...
...Some are shown to be false, others misleading, others based on faked evidence...
...Wells in wanting textbook presentations of basic biology to be both accurate and realistically substantiated...
...The Roman Catholic Church, which unlike most of the American enemies of evolution, is led by men who have real theological and philosophical training, accepts evolution...
...I know why, and S.T...
...One could argue that textbook writers have a special obligation to be accurate when treating of a subject as emotionally and spiritually charged as evolutionary biology...
...And the treatments of human origins, homology, the "Tree of Life," the Miller-Urey experiment, and recent evolution in Galapagos finches do not make any of the simplistic and misleading claims that Dr...
...However, later in the book, it quotes Darwin that perhaps life may have spontaneously arisen in some murky pool...
...In place of each of the ham-handed examples that Dr...
...NICK ORANCZAK Catasauqua, Pennsylvania In the December 2000/January 2001 issue, Jonathan Wells exposes a number of errors and half-truths common in introductory biology textbooks used in high schools and colleges...
...So, you tell us, Ron...
...Karnick has confirmed my beliefs ("Holiday Gift Guide: Mystery Books," TAS, December zooo/January 2OOl...
...They will transform themselves into a fanatic cult drawing its primary support from the most ignorant elements of the population...
...What is sorely needed is a textbook tiffed "The Evolution in the mail and have put off other activ- of Lies" explaining the "Tree of Lies"-ities until I digest its amazing content...
...Although he mentions reasons, I believe the primary cause of the gradual disappearance of the genre, as we once knew it, is as follows (and at my age I can damn well say what I like...
...MARK P. SIMPSON via the Interact The American Spectator 9 Fe b r u a r y 2 o o z 11...
...A string was attached between them over chaos, and I was balancing on this string and advancing in terror...
...On a positive note, I'm happy to report that the textbook I use in my general biology course, which has by far the highest market share among introductory biology textbooks (Biology, by Campbell, Reece, and Mitchell), is free of all of the misleading examples and overzealous interpretations cited by Dr...
...The alma mater does pay "copious tribute to the school colors," but the fight song is all about football...
...The three feature articles on science feed a particular interest of mine, and I appreciate the Dembski follow-up ("The Deed Is Done," by Fred Heeren...
...I have 27 novels I have purchased in the last six years, broadly classified as mysteries, that I haven't read, except for a couple of pages or chapters, and that I shall never read...
...Darwinian evolution is (arguably) the single most important scientific discovery in all human history...
...mRICHARD FITZGERALD Johnson City, Tennessee More on Darwin I just got my December/January issue tion: "My disillusion and indignation endured for months...
...Disbelief in the modern theory of evolution falls into much the same category...
...Go Blue!-and pass the water buckets out...
...I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time...
...The problem is hardly confined to the treatment of evolutionary biology...
...I look forward to reading your magazine because it is unafraid to print the truth...
...DON ROGERS via the Internet I fervently wish I'd had your December issue 53 years ago...
...I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in a fairminded explanation of how evolution is currently thought to work...
...RON UNZ Chairman, English for the Children Chairman, Wall Street Analytics, Inc...
...Modern evolutionary theory is the thoroughly documented foundation of half of all modern science...
...Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true...
...It is going to come as a shock to a lot of people, not just Ron Unz, to realize how little we know about the "single most important scientific discovery in all human history...
...I support traditional social values and maintaining the crucial role of organized religion in our society...
...My son's biology book states that there is an immutable law of biogenesis, which states that life always comes from life...
...However, I'm not surprised that introductory textbooks contain errors in treating of evolutionary biology, since they typically contain errors in treating of any subject...
...How extreme...
...If Mr...
...So while little of the "evidence" in the introductory textbooks may stand up to rigorous critique, that emphatically does not mean there is no evidence out there...
...Bonaventure University St...
...But to suggest that maybe Darwinian evolution is a sham because the textbook treatments are flawed is the lamest form of scientific criticism...
...Although I am a theoretical physicist by training, I would admit that Darwinian evolution is far more important and solidly established a scientitle doctrine than Einsteinian relativity, Newtonian mechanics, or Heisenberg's quantum physics...
...I have long been interested in the evolution debate due to the difficulties that our discoveries in microbiology present...
...But I am a scientist first and a conservative second...
...Wells has found in introductory textbooks, one could readily substitute a substantial body of evidence supporting the general principle that the textbook writers were trying to get across to their unsophisticated audience...
...In a like tone, the sub-heading of the article proclaims that, "many of the pillars of Darwinian theory are either false or misleading...
...Darwin was unaware of genetics, chromosomes, and microbiology, yet his theory is taught to our children as if it was predicated on these mysteries that we are only now unlocking...
...But I think he will in the end agree that it is more important to know the truth about an important subject than to cherish our prejudices about it...
...Literary agents and editors at publishing houses are predominantly women...
...If conservatives reject Darwinian evolution, they will lose the support of nearly every scientist, every technology entrepreneur, every practical businessman, and the bulk of America's college educated population...
...Wells has warned us against...
...In fact, what is there, careful and nuanced as it is, strikes me as being an immensely persuasive argument for Darwinian evolution...
...If the structure of a single living cell is more complex than the man-made structure of New York City, it is puzzling as to how a cell could occur by even the most complex set of accidents...
...If America's conservative movement turns against evolution it will totally discredit itself, and become a complete laughingstock...
...On one side of the abyss stood the ape, on the other the [church...
...It would have spared me from very much grief when I was in high school being brain-washed with Darwin's delirious daydreams...
...It took years for me to get my head on straight...
...Nikos Kazantzakis describes his (and my) ordeal in school when Eoanthropus dawsoni (Piltdown man) was accepted as authentic evidence of transpacific evolufrom misguided theories of Darwinism to monumental whoppers of Clintonism...
...On most issues, I would probably be characterized as a strong social conservative...
...Jonathan Wells's article, adapted from Icons of Evolution, examines some of the best known claims...
...I am a conservative...
...He argues that "when the false 'evidence' is taken away, the case for Darwinian evolution, in the textbooks at least, is so thin it's almost invisible...
...In fact, I've heard of scientists who get some of their best research ideas from testing whether what's reported in textbooks is actually true...
...The common misrepresentations in biology textbooks that have been copied for generations are finally being unmasked...
...Approximately 65 percent of all novels are purchased by women...
...And to call the few examples tediously repeated in introductory textbooks "pillars of Darwinian theory" is just silly...
Vol. 34 • February 2001 • No. 1
