Here is the text of a letter to the editor of the Fort Worth Weekly about an article they published about Intelligent Design. The article was ignorant to say the least. Here it is if you want to read it. The Discovery Institute’s response is here
To the editor: The article “Devolution in Education” (Sept. 3, 2008) by Laurie Barker James sought to correct the thinking of those who might wish to allow Intelligent Design’s incisive critique of macro-evolution entrance to our tax-funded classrooms. To read the article without any previous engagement with ID arguments, one would be led to believe that it is simply a matter of science versus religion, or reason versus faith. Why the need for debate? The gist is, ID proponents are not real scientists, and they don’t have any evidence worth looking at!
True science, according to a real science teacher quoted by James, “deals with natural explanations which are testable.” It’s simple, “it’s descent with modification.”
Naturalistic science has the facts. Creationists have the pink fairies. Let philosophical naturalism teach demonstrable “facts” like the ones I was taught in England: Giraffes got their long necks through constantly straining for higher branches; whales came from cow-like land critters that ventured into the oceans, and like James Bond’s car, adapted to life under the waves. The “scientific” explanation for wings? They came from proto-wings, which originated from flaps of skin under the arms of some extinct beastie.
We know that descent with modification explains varieties of dogs and horses. But macro-evolution (e.g. molecules to mind) isn’t provable, isn’t in the fossils, and can’t explain how information supposedly evolved. And it is possible to test for design.
Macroevolution is the creation myth of religious liberals and atheists. Don’t question it! Evolutionists are scared to death of you or your child hearing the other side of the story. But there’s always another side to the story.
Paul Martin Henebury, Ph.D
Veritas School of Theology
Granbury
