Evolution is science and arose from investigation

NAME and address supplied ( Echo April 12) made an interesting contribution to the evolution vs. faith debate but I agree with John Catt (Echo May 3) that he is wrong to claim that the former amounts to a religion.

No-one claims that Relativity or Quantum Theory are religions although both have seriously jolted our ways of thinking and have demolished a lot of our prejudices and shown that our intuitions were false.

Evolution is science and arose from scientific investigation. The fact that we then had to rethink our place in the cosmos does not make it a religion. The latter deals with gods and the supernatural. Evolution very definitely does not.

Keith Perkins accuses me of blasphemy and insulting his religion. I was under the impression that I was defending real science against pseudoscience. Last time I checked, we lived in a country where honest debate and comment were not only allowed but encouraged. I didn’t notice my namesake accusing Craig Roberts of insulting my beliefs.

When we free thinkers express ourselves, we are labelled militant atheists and our books and articles are denigrated as diatribes. As long as the debate doesn’t get out of hand and result in hate and worse, we should all be able to express opinions without people getting so upset.

I was not claiming that the two laws were fundamental laws like relativity or gravity. I was merely supplying the full quotes to show that Craig Roberts was giving us a partial quote which gave support to his ideas and omitting the rest which went on to state the exact opposite.

The layers in the geological column are disrupted in places due to convulsions by earthquakes. That’s why we see strata in diagonal formation.

There are plenty of transitional forms. The horse has a long history of development.

There are also adaptations to new environments like hippos sharing common ancestors with whales. Whales retain atrophied back limbs, a completely useless relic in an animal created separately by a god. Ostriches retain a claw at the base of their wings which is also completely useless.

None of Craig’s ‘evidence’ is peer reviewed by experts or accepted by anyone who doesn’t have a theological axe to grind.

I am retiring from this debate because whatever I write gives Craig another chance to trot out his sciency sounding nonsense.

The ingenuity of creationists to continually come up with vaguely plausible sounding science verbiage is quite impressive but it is also dangerous and encourages irrational modes of thought.