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Todays Letters: Don't mix science and theology

Letters to the Editor
Published February 18, 2008

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Public: Faith trumps science Feb. 15, story 

I was indeed surprised to learn that apparently a majority of adults in our state actually believe that the content of biblical stories should be taught alongside real scientific theories. It seems that even at the dawn of the 21st century we have reasonably well-educated people who still insist on treating a premodern cosmology as science.

I am a Christian myself and have what are generally regarded as very traditional or orthodox convictions concerning the core teachings of my faith. However, it has never occurred to me - or to any of my professors at the Christian college I attended - to interpret the Genesis creation account as literal history.

Science is concerned with that which can be accounted for using empirical techniques such as observation and experiments. It is not concerned with "Truth" as such, but only with facts that can be verified. "Intelligent design" theory addresses theological and philosophical questions that cannot be subject to empirical verification and therefore simply does not qualify as science. Evolution, on the other hand, has an all but universal consensus within the scientific community, and this consensus exists because the factual evidence to support it is overwhelming and virtually unassailable.

However popular fundamentalist notions of truth have become, it would be wrong to damage the academic credibility of our public education system to allow them to be taught in science classes.

John Feeney, Tampa

Christians should move beyond evolution debate

Some of my fellow Christians feel the need to proclaim that they did not evolve from an amoeba or a monkey. However, the acknowledgment of evolution does not compromise a Christian's belief. In Mark 10:27, we are told that all things are possible with God. Whether or not we looked a little funkier in ages past, we appear in the same general human form here in 2008.

We Christians should worry less about how we first got here and concern ourselves foremost with following those teachings of Jesus that would make the world a better place. I propose we move from the endless argument over physical evolution to what polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk called the evolution of consciousness or "survival of the wisest."

Art Pollock, Dunedin

Public: Faith trumps science Feb. 15, story

Let students choose

The article shows just how much concern, as well as controversy, there is about evolution. I think the main concern is that evolution is a required course through the study of biology. Why not make evolution a separate course from biology and designate it as an elective course instead of a required one? This way students could choose whether or not they want to study evolution. The same could be done for intelligent design and/or creation science.

In any event, it should be the students' right to choose, not the schools' right to incorporate it into a required subject. Evolution is still a theory and has never been proved, yet it is taught as fact. That is misleading.

Richard Valentine, Palm Harbor

The gift of reason

As a science teacher and a religious person, the results of the Times' survey on evolution were very disheartening.

There are truths to be learned through the mind and truths to be learned through the soul. Evolution is an example of the former. The fossil evidence for evolution is undeniable. It can be seen today whenever an organism adapts to a new environment.

Those who deny the truth in the face of a century of conclusive evidence confound me. God gave humans the ability to reason and think so that we could see his works and be filled with gratitude and wonder. Who are we to question the method by which God chose to unfold his creation?

Steve Matthews, Tampa

What science does

It's sad to read that two-thirds of those surveyed are skeptical about the science of evolution. Are they skeptical about science when they use cell phones and watch TV via satellite? Are they skeptical when they take food from their refrigerator and microwave it? Are they skeptical when science doubles their life span?

It is science that has made our lives better. If you're skeptical about that, just try living in a cave for a few days. See how you like living in a world without science. You can pass the time by sitting around on your tailbone, praying that this evolution thing will go away.

Todd Hemphill, Trinity

Consider the odds

There seems to be some confusion due to failure to recognize the clear distinction between creationism and intelligent design. The former is a religious belief taught by the monotheistic religions. Thanks to our freedom of religion, you can take it or leave it.

Intelligent design, however, simply wants to point out the incredible unlikeliness that the magnificent order, beauty and provision all around us happened by a long series of chance events. With due credit to the fantastic advances that have been made by the scientific method (and which provided my career), are we too closed-minded to allow a hearing of the case for intelligent design in the schools?

As someone once said, if one totally rejects the possibility of there being an intelligent design of our Earth and the universe, then chance evolution is the only game in town. What other branch of science accepts such incredible odds?

Richard Parvin, Clearwater

Florida facing key test on science Feb. 15

Leave religion out

Thank you for the timely and excellent editorial. It is time that school education be concentrated on empirical stuff and not fantasy.

People should think of the separation of human classes, or read about the historic barbarism of the relatively recent Catholic Inquisition, the Balkans, Middle East wars and ad infinitum.

Definitely leave religion out of the classroom!

George E. Mayer, Brooksville

Put faith in God

The article on the varying opinions of evolution/creationism/intelligent design would have been better retitled "Faith in God trumps faith in science."

It often seems that science has become a religion unto itself, dead sure of its precepts and dismissive of dissent. Evolution supporters deride opposing viewpoints as primitive and anti-intellectual, worthy of the scorn heaped on heretics in an earlier age. Dissenting scientists are scorned and made pariahs in their disciplines, deprived of funding and marginalized, the secular equivalent to excommunication.

The problem is that faith in science is at bottom a faith in man, in his ability to know the processes of the universe. Faith in God is ... faith in God. God will always trump man.

Dennis Pemberton, Largo

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