Evolution is only a theory
From Angus Watson Sir: In your 20 March issue Andrew Kenny misses the point in the argument against Darwinism ('Down with superstition'). To question evolution theory on the one hand does not necessarily mean one is thumping a Bible with the other.
There do remain problems with Darwinian evolution, the development of complex organs such as the eye being one of them. A year after The Origin of Species was published in 1860, Darwin confessed to a friend, 'The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.' Kenny, despite a purported neutral position, dismisses Darwin's shuddering as 'silly'. There is no hard evidence for the evolution of complex organs, only theory. There is no hard evidence of cross-species evolution, nor, more importantly, of cross-phylum or cross-kingdom evolution. There is no clear evolutionary fossil path for any complex species; no giraffes with medium-length necks, for example.
To question Darwinism is good science, not whirling fundamentalism. Darwin was an atheist, it's true, but an atheist can still question evolution while agreeing that there is no current acceptable counter-theory. Why then are Dawkins et al. so against any anti-Darwin inquiries? Anything to do with lucrative literary careers built on the immutability of their theories? We should accept that there may be another explana tion for our existence, no matter how unlikely, that we don't know yet.
Angus Watson London From David Watkins Sir: On reading the last paragraph of Andrew Kenny's piece — 'I accept Jesus as the supreme moral leader' — I was forcibly reminded of C. S. Lewis's trenchant words in Mere Christianity. He writes: 'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great a moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic or else the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.'
David Watkins Aylesbury, Bucks From Peter Ovft Sir: Andrew Kenny states that Wilberforce ended slavery. He did not. He was instrumental in ending the slave trade in the British empire in 1807, but the abolition of slavery in the British empire was entirely and solely due to the efforts of my great-greatgreat-great grandfather, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton Bt., MP, who after a lifetime of effort saw through the necessary Bill in 1834.
Peter Croft Cambridge
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