Unfettered Letters

Evidence of evolution

We would like to address the scientific misconceptions presented by Brian Merrell (2/8, Letters, “Questioning evolution”). The scientific definition of “theory” is a body of rigorously tested ideas that constitute our current understanding of physical phenomena. The theory of evolution describes the unity of life through what Charles Darwin termed “descent with modification” — what we now understand as changes in gene frequencies in populations over generations.

Evolution thus does not address how life got here; it addresses the diversity of life that’s here now and how that diversity arose. The evidence of evolution is overwhelming, testable and can be seen everywhere, including in the development of bacterial antibiotic resistance.

Moreover, questioning evolution is absolutely tolerated. Questioning is the first step of the scientific method. Additionally, time is key in evolution: One substance does not suddenly produce another. Present-day biodiversity is the consequence of billions of years of progressive change. Further, cells are not inorganic (incidentally, organic compounds have formed from inorganic molecules).

Each time you jump into the air, you “celebrate” the theory of gravity. Circular logic does not substantiate this theory; only extensive and repeated testing has done so.

Assistant biology professor Mindy Walker’s Evolution class
Rockhurst University
Kansas City

Questioning evolution

Liz Craig (1/26, Letters, “Science backs evolutionary theory”) agrees evolution is a theory, then declares “it’s science” and a “well-tested concept that explains a wide range of observations.” That oft-repeated dogma has served to evolve this theory into foregone conclusion, and while to question is an integral part of science, questioning this science is not tolerated.

As for “well tested”, no test reveals how something comes from nothing or how some simple inorganic cells can suddenly change into immensely complex DNA. Genuine science cannot answer these or the many other dilemmas swirling around of the origins of life no matter how confident we are in any theory.

Ms. Craig said evolution is so fundamental to science that in 2009, the Year of Science no less, the “nation” is celebrating the anniversaries of Darwin and his theory. If celebration yields substantiation, then generations taking part in the annual Christmas celebration do wonders for Santa’s credibility.

Brian Merrell
Lee’s Summit

Answers about evolution

David F. Robinson (8/2, Letters) asked good questions about evolution.

To the best of my understanding, Robinson’s first four questions, regarding the origins of life, have speculative answers or hypotheses and are still argued among scientists.

I don’t know how a biologist would answer his fifth question, concerning the change to sexual reproduction

The answer to his sixth question — “Is evolution a faith-based theory?” — is no. There is a lot of evidence about this, on which most scientists agree.

Finally he asks, “ls a person stupid for asking these questions?” No.

Most of us believe in the theory of gravity, yet no one is sure why it works the way it does. That does not preclude us from believing it to be a good explanation of what is occurring.

It is important to know what elements of theory are fact-based, and what are speculative. And no one is clamoring to have an alternative theory of gravity taught in science classrooms.

Jack Mayer
Mission

Questions about evolution

The editorial of 7/24 (Opinion, “Top GOP choice for Kansas school board”) expresses a desire to avoid the embarrassment that would follow if the folks in northeast Johnson County were to select the wrong candidate for the state Board of Education.

The primary issue is evolution. I am not proposing the teaching of any viewpoint. I am proposing that students and parents be permitted to question what is being taught. We are told that it all started with a big bang. Why should parents and students not be permitted to ask questions such as:

What was it that went “bang?”

Where did it come from?

Where did the energy that caused the explosion some from?

How did life come forth from that which had no life?

How did the life forms make the change to sexual reproduction?

Is evolution a faith-based theory?

Is a person stupid for asking these questions?

David F. Robinson
Overland Park

Evolution is supernatural, too

Secular wisdom scoffs at the theory of creation, calling it religion, while it reveres the theory of evolution as fact. Declaring a theory fact does not make it so, nor is the assertion scientific. Webster defines religion as “the service or worship of God or the supernatural.” Creation and evolution both mix interpretation of the world around us with the supernatural.

Evolution breaks various laws of science that, by definition, can never be broken. It says that what is scientifically impossible, such as evolution between species, will supernaturally occur given millions of years of random chance. Pigs will fly, given enough time and good fortune. Come on, have a little faith.

Regarding the fossil record Charles Darwin wrote about in his The Origin of Species, “Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”

It’s more than a century later, and little has changed other than calling his theory a fact.

Life and science go on while each of us believes what we will about our origin because nobody really knows for sure, this side of heaven.

Brian Merrell
Lee’s Summit

‘Expelled’ movie review

The Star’s reviewers showed their unwillingness to objectively cover the documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” Their articles are riddled with fallacies and misstatements, belittling the participants and all the while avoiding the evidence presented.

In one article (4/17, Preview, “Truth isn’t always the point”) The Star’s movie critic gives credence to an obscure Web site’s assumption that the position of “Expelled” can’t be valid because its production company made other films for “faith and family.”

A review (4/18, FYI, “Anti-evolution screed lacks intelligence”) lambastes Ben Stein, “a Nixon administration functionary who reinvented himself,” yet fails to mention that Stein is a Yale-trained lawyer, an economist and a university professor.

These movie critics’ clear siding with evolutionists is very unfortunate. Thinking people will view the documentary and be disturbed at the refusal of media and academics to forthrightly discuss all the evidence and information.

Janet Harmon
Overland Park

After viewing the documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” I found Roger Moore’s movie review contains much that lacks intelligence itself, especially when the author states that the scientist interviewees were possibly chosen for their eccentric appearances.

He is apparently unaware that Richard Dawkins, for example, was surely selected by Ben Stein because Dawkins, regardless of his looks, is a prominent atheistic scientist who is virulently opposed to intelligent design. Stein’s documentary becomes hilarious when Dawkins is filmed admitting to Stein that life on Earth could be the result of intelligent design as long as the designer was a being from outer space who was himself the product of atheistic evolution.

Stein used his skills acquired as a Yale-trained trial lawyer to meticulously build the case — using the testimonies of highly credentialed scientists such as Richard Sternberg, formerly a Smithsonian magazine editor, and Guillermo Gonzales, an astronomy professor at Iowa State University — that a scientist, no matter his credentials, risks losing his job if he questions Darwinism.

Mr. Moore amusingly stamps these testimonies as from the “under-credentialed” when his own scientific credentials deserve a big question mark.

Eulea Tharp
Blue Springs

Editor’s note: Because the makers of “Expelled” declined to show the film in advance to newspaper reviewers, The Star ran the only review of the film available through its news services — a pan by Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel.

Science and evolution

I was very interested to learn about Ben Stein’s soon-to-be released movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” (4/14, Local, “Actor holds special viewing of film for state lawmakers”).

Its topic is evolution, and something I have been aware of for years: Science today has been hijacked by naturalism and atheism.

Today scientists say that by definition science has to exclude all but naturalistic causation in research, so it precludes even considering any scientific facts that point towards life and the universe showing evidence of purposeful design.

Stein’s movie examines the censorship by the science establishment of any evidence outside the naturalistic box that science has put the universe in.

The father of the modern scientific method, Francis Bacon, considered science to be the organized pursuit of knowledge about creation. The father of genetics, Gregor Johann Mendel, was a Catholic monk. The father of physics, Isaac Newton, was a Bible-believing scientist.

There are other groundbreaking and notable scientists who didn’t think science had to focus only on naturalistic causation for everything, but were real scientists who considered science should go wherever the evidence leads, instead of restricting and censoring it.

Curtis Kincheloe
Liberty

God and evolution

John Mulder (12/27, Letters) says that he’s “a well-educated scientist and retired university professor” and gives “zero credence to the theory of evolution.”
“Further,” he writes, “creation doesn’t need a fabricated theory to explain its truth. Never has evolution been able to refute a single creative act by our Almighty God.”
By what scientific method can Mr. Mulder demonstrate the presence of God?
As for fabricated theories, what is God but a fabricated theory? Isn’t that how faith would be described to someone unfamiliar with its tenets?
As for evolution refuting actions by “our Amighty God,” I would turn it around and ask him to show me how God refutes evolution.
Mr. Mulder wants me to believe in the existence of a being, present since before the beginning of time, that created everything around us, that floats around in the heavens, that knows everything that goes on with all of the peoples of the earth. He is, I’m sure, able to offer no proof of this.
To borrow an observation from George Carlin, “If you can convince people of that, you can convince them of anything.”
Lane Sekavec
De Soto

Evolution, the human body

Perhaps Dr. Mark Puglisi (12/22, Letters) needs to brush up on his medical journals before he dismisses the lowly appendix as a purely vestigial or useless organ and thus evidence against divine creation. It seems that just last October researchers at Duke University Medical School published a theory for the purpose of the appendix in historical times.

When science asserts that anything it cannot or does not understand and explain is nonexistent or unexplainable, then it ceases to be science and begins to be dogma. Hubris has no place in medicine or any other branch of science, Doc.

Mark Browning
Raytown

Mark Puglisi Jr., MD, doesn’t know me but has pronounced me as scientifically illiterate for being in agreement with Darline Metsker regarding creation of the human body.

Then Clarence Edmondson Jr. declares that Darline has been poorly educated and that evolution explains creation.

These conclusions were based upon Darline’s questioning the latest revelation about proposed evolutionary development of special capabilities to prevent pregnant women from falling over.

Permit me to state that I am a well-educated scientist and retired university professor. I give zero credence to the theory of evolution. Further, creation doesn’t need a fabricated theory to explain its truth. Never has evolution been able to refute a single creative act by our Almighty God.

John B. Mulder
Author of Creation’s Sensible Sequence
Leawood

Body’s evolution

Anyone wondering why American students are falling behind in science proficiency need look no further than Darline Metsker’s letter “God’s design for women” (12/17). Just because she finds a holy book’s explanation of women’s appearance “easier” does not mean that it’s the correct one.

Did it occur to her that she simply lacks the scientific understanding to grasp the concept of evolution?

Many people once found it easier to believe that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around it.

I ask Darline and millions of other scientifically illiterate Americans how evident God’s special creation is in the appendix, which, absent the free inquiry that leads to surgical intervention, would be killing thousands of people and written off by the faithful as “the will of God.”

Mark Puglisi Jr., MD
Kansas City

The letter by Darline Metsker (12/17), in which she is critical of evolution, is a good example of someone who did not have a good science teacher.

She attempts to tell us that all of the credit for a woman’s body is due solely to the Creator. The truth is, evolution does not conflict with the creation of life at all. Evolution is an academic endeavor by man in which he tries to discover the changes that occur as time passes.

Since man was not on the Earth when it was first created, he does not have firsthand knowledge. He can only rely on his skill of investigating his environment by careful observation and record keeping.

Creation gave us the universe, evolution attempts to understand it.

Clarence Edmondson Jr.
Kansas City