This week, Eric C. Toolson, UNM Biology Professor, wrote about the

Dover, Pennsylvania, legal decision against teaching ID in public schools. His column spawned a counter-attack printed in today’s

Albquerque Journal. mjh

ABQjournal: ID UNMasked for What It Is� Religion

By Eric C. Toolson, UNM Biology Professor

Judge Jones may have been taken aback by what he heard in his court, but none of this

comes as any surprise to scientists who have attempted to counter scientifically absurd claims and the continual efforts to force schools

to teach fundamentalist Christianity as science. Deliberate misrepresentation of scientific concepts and distortion of scientific

evidence are the stock in trade of ID promoters. Jones’ opinion merely exposes their tactics to public view.

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

No Hard Evidence

Supports Darwin

As a grad student 35 years ago, I was astounded to find out that there is no real evidence for Darwinism at all�

not in the fossils, not in the wild and not in the lab. All my teachers had told me that evolution had occurred, but I suddenly realized

that none of them had given me a shred of real evidence.

Afterward, I found that most people, including most scientists, think

evolution occurred not because of evidence, but simply because someone else told them it had occurred. …

D. RUSSELL HUMPHREYS,

PH.D.
Albuquerque

Nobody appreciates hyperbole more than I do (a self-proving statement), but “NO

real evidence … AT ALL,” not a “SHRED of REAL evidence.” Puh-lease! Skillful exaggeration is part of debate, but don’t lie to win.

One can only imagine what a disappointment Humphreys was to his teachers. However, Humphreys’ conclusion is important. As

students, we have all accepted many things from our teachers as a given. But good students ask questions without assuming they already

know more than the teacher. It’s a delicate dance.

Perhaps we should move this debate over to cold mathematics. What is the PROOF

that 2 + 2 = 4? Isn’t geometry full of so-called “theorems” and “proofs” — can we really trust any of them? How do you know what pi is

and how would you prove it? Trusting your teacher doesn’t count! If you can’t prove it, does it not exist? Is pi a lie?

It

wasn’t until I studied Calculus that so much that had to be accepted ‘on faith’ was finally proven. But Calculus wasn’t

discovered/invented until a few hundred years ago — was all of math before that just “faith” and no more valid than the Gospels?

Perhaps we haven’t discovered the evolutionary equivalent of Calculus yet (though I think Watson & Crick probably did).

[11/28/08: letter deleted at writer’s request]

Religious zealots see the world

through religious eyes: everything is their religion or someone else’s (false) religion. You project what you already know. Insert the

“hammer and nail” aphorism here.

Why is life without a designer so intimidating to [so many]? Don’t be afraid — it’s the same

world without a god. You are still accountable to yourself, your family, your friends, your teachers, and your society. Are you really

only good out of fear of punishment or promise of reward?

Open Eyes, Check Out All Theories

As a Christian, I

find it hard to believe there are people who really recoil at the possibility that there might be a being so indescribable and powerful,

who could have created all that the eye can see and then some. …

Let us not be so dogmatic. We should encourage exploration and

study of all scientific theory, whether you agree with the outcome or not.

HOWARD DEWITT
Alamogordo

class="mine">I don’t recoil at the possibility that there might be a being so indescribable and powerful. I’m a big fan of

possibilities and certain we fail to perceive more than we do perceive. But not every possibility is a probability and even fewer are

realities. There is no god. As an atheist, I find it hard to believe people recoil at that fact.

Evolution Lacks

Photo, Fossil Proof

We are told there is no evidence for design. Test it yourself. Write down every speck of evidence that you

find for a wristwatch being designed or that the book you are reading did not randomly come together. When you have done this, compare

your data to the incredible workings of the human body with its coded DNA, you will see vast evidence for design emerge. …

PHILIP ROBINSON
Albuquerque

Now, this one is really interesting. Does it matter that I don’t own

a watch?

The watch is a product of human intelligence and culture. Human intelligence might be argued to be millions of years old;

certainly hundreds of thousands of years. Culture has existed at least 50,000 years. How long have there been watches? Non-astronomical,

mechanical time pieces may be thousands of years old, but I’m betting wrist watches aren’t 200 years old (too lazy to google it).

Who designed the watch? A human being. IF you allow that human beings are a product of evolution, then evolution had a hand in the

designing of the watch, as well as Philip the Doubter and Mark the Believer. We are inside the black box we seek to describe. Our very

intelligence is either the product of evolution or fiat — it constrains what we are capable of conceiving and discussing (language is

also a product of this process). But, we’ve had this argument before (mjh�s blog — Wherein Mark disproves the existence of god).

Now the earth is at least 4

billion years old — if IDers don’t believe that, what time frame would they allow us to use? If they happen to say whatever number of

years Evangelical Christians believe, then that whole claim that the “designer” isn’t just the narrowly-defined Christian god really is

a smokescreen.

But let’s say that Adam and Eve sprang from Zeus’ forehead 10,000 years ago. It took 9,800 years to design a

watch. Why weren’t Adam and Eve created wearing watches? Or given gold watches on expulsion? Yours really is a vengeful god.

Anyhow, let’s say that self-replicating organisms didn’t come from afar via a comet or god’s fallen eyelash; let’s say it all

starts right here. Now, I do NOT believe that after 4 billion years, a watch would appear directly out of natural selection (indirectly,

it did), anymore than I believe an infinite number of monkeys will produce a duplicate of an entire play. Why not? Because Life doesn’t

need a watch anymore than monkeys need literature. Life produces what life needs. Billions of years allows for a lot of very subtle or

abrupt changes, most of which won’t leave a trace (unless it’s in the DNA).

Once we have what we need, humans produce what we

want, including pornography and religion, with many noxious bi-products like pollution and zealots. Oh — and watches. mjh

PS: See www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/nada/id/ for all my coverage of this

topic, a sub-topic of www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/nada/ (NADA = New

American Dark Ages).