Archive for Tuesday, March 23, 1999


March 23, 1999


To the editor:

In his editorial on evolution (3/17/99), Leonard Krishtalka trots out all the old, worn reasons why we non-scientists should sit down and shut up when the topic of human origins comes up. He argues that we should not let religious dogma cloud our thinking about science. As engineering professors familiar with the scientific method, we would assert that Krishtalka is either blind to his own dogmatism, or is trying to divert our attention from it in order to convert us to scientism.

The scientific method begins with proposing a theory about the nature of our world, such as the Darwinist theory of evolution. Next we make hypotheses of the sort "if the theory is true, then we would expect to observe X." So we look for X. The more X we find, the more confident we become that our theory is accurate. But if we don't find X, or if we find lots of things that are decidedly non-X, things which run counter to the theory, then we must discard or revise the theory.

What the Darwinists fail to mention is that their theory has a presupposition, namely, that the universe is a closed system into which nothing, God included, can intervene. Note however that this presupposition is assumed to be true, not demonstrated so. It is a belief, a dogma, an assertion. The problem is, when evidence comes up that would tend to refute Darwinism, it is rejected because it implies that something has intervened into our closed system, and the Darwinist presupposition says that is not possible. Much evidence of this type exists, but space limitations allow us only to cite only one example.

Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe has discovered complex structures in even the simplest living cells that could not have evolved from incremental mutations, since any single change to the cell would result in it being nonviable. Yet, his evidence is thrown out of court and dismissed as "religion" by the Darwinists since it leads to the conclusion that someone intervened into our supposed closed system. To accept only evidence that supports a theory and reject, a priori, evidence that refutes it is not only bad science, it is dishonest.

Clay Belcher,

3121 Tomahawk;

Ken Demarest,

745 E. 1485 Rd.

Commenting has been disabled for this item.