A few inconsistencies

To the editor: In a recent letter to the editor, a young respondent who is being home schooled has questioned the “theory” of evolution. She finds a few inconsistencies and thus calls into question the whole concept of how natural selection brings about species change. She goes on to propose that the education establishment offer equal time to the teaching of creationism, or “the theory of intelligent design.” Creationism posits that some 8,000 years ago, in six days, a higher power created the heaven and earth, then light, the plant kingdom, all the animals of the sea, air, and land, and on the sixth day, man & woman. The last act of creation must have caused considerable stress, and so the Almighty rested on the seventh day. The logic of the genesis story has Homo sapiens living at the same time as the Neanderthals, Homo habilis, the dinosaurs, and every other creature that ever was alive on the earth - all in the last 8,000 years. That is a problem of tyrannosauric proportions. In contrast, the problems with the theory of evolution are small details. In science we are constantly finding nuances to original theories and laws of Nature. The theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, even gravity, have all been fine tuned since their original discovery. Our student respondent has learned about faith as part of her upbringing, but it has a separate place and doesn’t belong in the education curriculum, whether public or home schooling. Mort Malkin Damascus