Dear Christis,

As a fresher I picked up Issue 35 of Christis with great interest and having read the letters page, I found myself launched into the age old argument concerning creation and evolution. Having read some of the letters there I decided to write in a vain attempt to show that the issue is not as clear cut in favour of evolution as many would have us believe, and that there is, in fact, a case to be put for creation.

Jo Dunn’s letter seems to contain the two elementary mistakes which seem to be commonly held: firstly that evolution is a “proven scientific fact”, and secondly that it has “almost unanimous support in the scientific world”. I shall deal with the second mistake first. While the evolutionary theory does have the backing of a majority of scientists, there is still a significant minority who consistently cast doubts on what they see as the flaws and inadequacies of the evolutionary theory. The list of sceptics include Nobel prize winners as well as other well respected scientists. The Creation Research Society in the United States now has hundreds of members, and it is important to remember that membership is confined only to those with science degrees.

In tackling the question of whether evolution is a “proven scientific fact”, I would like to quote from Nicky Gumbel who said that “… to regard a scientific theory as more than provisional is bad science.”. Perhaps this warning should have been remembered before Jo Dunn made such a sweeping and unfounded statement. Macro-evolution remains unproven, the number of so called ‘missing links’ are few and far between, and genetic mutations capable of turning a fish into a frog or a frog into a bird have never been observed and certainly never been proved, while the so called Cambrian Explosion of life remains a significant problem for the evolutionary theory. Before the Cambrian layer there were only simple life forms, but afterwards there seems to have been an explosion of life — as if certain life forms had been directly created — with no obvious linkage between the two layers.

I would like to end with the words of a former Professor of Rheumatology at Leeds University, Verna Wright, who wrote in the book Creation and Evolution:

For myself, I believe in a six day creation. A straight-forward reading of Genesis by an intelligent man, not exposed to the evolutionary model, would suggest a literal six day creation. The only way around this interpretation would be to suggest the account was allegorical or poetic. Neither in the opening chapters of Genesis, nor elsewhere in the Bible, is there a suggestion that the account is symbolic. Moreover, it is not found in the poetic section of the Old Testament.

If such views can be held by a professional scientist on a subject which he has carefully studied, then surely they should not just be dismissed out of hand, and perhaps Jo Dunn should not be so ‘blinkered and brainwashed’ by accepted theory that she is unable to look at the evidence for creation with an open mind (or even accept that such evidence exists).

Matthew Stallabrass