Correspondence
BELTH, ZOE LANTELME & FREILING, EDWARD C. & Pleasants, Julian R.
Correspondence Often poetic Great Neck, N.Y. To the Editors: Thank you for the excel-lent essay by Anne Brennan, "The Creationism Controversy: the Religious Issues" [Oct. 22]. It is written with...
...A plague on both their houses...
...However, the status of the theory of evolution is not nearly as exalted as evolutionists have led her to believe...
...A fossil is a present fact, but it is only circumstantial evidence for the fact of how it came to be...
...But the main reason they don't feel threatened is that they haven't yet realized how evolu-tion turns the whole idea of Fall and Re-demption literally upside down from its traditional position, as I pointed out in these pages, Aug...
...In fact, Anne Brennan's use of metaphors is not only illuminating to the subject, but often poetic...
...To the Editors: It is encouraging to see that there is a growing awareness that there is extremism on both sides of the creationist-evolutionist controversy...
...Between the complementary facts of creation and evolution, there can be no argument...
...Right now, they are not getting one...
...Their survival as theories depends on their ability to predict the outcome of natural or man-made experiments...
...22] Francis Flaherty made a very valid point about the threat evolution teaching poses to the free exercise of their religion by the children of religious fundamen-talists...
...EDWARD C. FREILING Circumstantial evidence Notre Dame, Ind...
...ZOE LANTELME BELTH Fact & theory Fredericksburg, Va...
...The scientific academy" is by no means "unanimous in its acceptance of the theory of evolution...
...Most scientific theories are used by scientists to explain observed facts and to predict future, not-yet-observed facts...
...JULIAN R. PLEASANTS Associate Professor of Microbiology College of Science University of Notre Dameiversity of Notre Dame...
...Prominent evolutionists have expressed their dis-may that physical scientists, like myself, are especially loath, to accept it...
...But evolution is a peculiar theory in that it attempts to substitute for observation, to state as facts a series of past events which could not be observed by any human ob-server...
...This theory is definitely second-rate because: (I) since it is unfalsifiable it cannot claim to be truly scientific...
...That is where we balk...
...The theory of evolution would make it the whole story...
...Most mainline Christian religionists do not feej threatened by the teaching of evolution, and do not empathize with fundamentalist Christian parents...
...We have too many examples from the history of crime detection of how circumstantial evidence, even from a crime lab., has led to false reconstructions of past fact...
...Con-fusing theory with fact, and believing that theory can substitute for fact, is what should be labeled unscientific, yet it is an occupational hazard for us scientists, and has been a major obstacle to scientific progress...
...To the Editors: In "The Creationism Controversy: the Social Stakes" [Oct...
...Even many competent biological scientists find fault with it...
...15, 1975...
...The important thing is that students, and the public in general, are given a balanced perspective...
...22] does a beautiful job of seeking a balance between these opposing groups with her dual-lens ap-proach...
...It is written with such a welcome lack of pedantry and special jargon usually found in the field...
...For me, the circumstantial evidence, in the absence of anything to the con-trary, is totally convincing that the fossil record came to be what it is by a process of evolution...
...To clarify her statement that "the theory of evolution" is supported by "an overwhelming body of confirming evi-dence," it is necessary to distinguish be-tween evolution as fact and evolution as theory...
...That is a fact which nearly all accept...
...Evolution tries to reconstruct past events which could strictly be called facts only if we had eye-witness accounts of them...
...I hope we leave it upside down, but many others may not, and they may begin to see that it is more than the literal interpretation of creation which is threatened by evolu-tion...
...They are both ideologies...
...On the other hand, creation is as much of a fact as evolution is, but like evolu-tion, it too is not the whole story as creationists would have us believe...
...Both are necessary to make sense out of the data...
...But a religion which be-lieves it has eye-witness (divine witness) accounts to the contrary, is entitled to discount the circumstantial evidence, without being labeled unscientific...
...Even if teachers cannot teach cre-ation science because there isn't any, they must, at the appropriate times and places, point out that using a scientific theory as a form of detective work to reconstruct the past makes it subject to all the limitations of detective work based on circumstantial evidence...
...The quarrel is be-tween creationism and evolutionism, as the theory of evolution has been called...
...The fossil record clearly shows that evolution is an important part of the picture...
...2) it cannot explain all the evidence, like how mammals could have evolved from reptiles, and (3) it suffers from an embar-rassing lack of evidence about missing links...
...Anne Brennan [Oct...
Vol. 110 • January 1983 • No. 1
