10/4/2005 5:00:00 AM Letters to the Editor for October 3, 2005
Clarification called for on letter
To the Editor:
In an Aug. 31 letter to the editor, Tom McKinney defended the theory of evolution as having been scientifically tested and demonstrated hundreds of times. In fact, scientists have never succeeded in duplicating the macro-evolutionary changes they believe must have happened in the past to account for the incredible diversity of life we find today. What scientists have demonstrated is the micro-evolutionary changes an Intelligent Designer would allow for a species to survive changes to its environment.
In the same letter, McKinney acknowledges that evolutionary changes do not occur quickly but over millions of years. But this makes such changes neither observable nor repeatable, as the scientific method requires. While micro-evolutionary changes require assumptions that must be accepted on faith and cannot be verified scientifically. This puts Darwinian macroevolution outside the realm of true science and into the category of religious belief. The crowning achievement of modern science is perhaps the space shuttle. And yet scientists now know that a single-celled bacterium is infinitely more complex and well designed than the space shuttle. Should we believe that something more complex than shuttle happened by chance millions of times over although we cannot observe or repeat it happening today? Evolutionary scientists have defined science to the exclusion of God. And yet science ought to be defined as the pursuit of truth, whatever it might be.
It's time we wake up and realize that bad ideas have bad consequences and reject failed theories. As McKinney alluded, the theory of evolution has replaced God in our public schools and he seems concerned that that might change. But considering that Eric Harris wore a "natural selection" T-shirt the day he and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students at Columbine High School, I think it needs to change.
