TO THE EDITOR:
Martha Landis’ letter is an excellent example of “harmful dogma” in motion.
She asserts that creationism is “threatening to the academic world,” with the latter apparently hiding under its bed. This will be news to physical and social scientists like Eugenie Scott, Barbara Forrest and P.Z. Myers who have engaged with it and shown it to be religious pseudoscience.
Landis claims that evolution is not a fact, ignoring direct observations such as Richard Lenski’s E. coli experiments, DDT resistance in mosquitoes, and speciation in Charles Darwin’s finches. She is correct that evolution is unproven. Outside of mathematics, very little is proven; most knowledge is not gained by deduction within a formal system. Does she decry gravity and the germ theory of disease as unproven? She asserts that the human body has not evolved; her only evidence is her personal incredulity.
Why is it dangerous to throw the doors open to pseudoscience? Consider some of the notions piggy-backing on noted creationists: Guillermo Gonzalez promotes global warming denialism; Jonathan Wells and Phillip Johnson say HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.
Harmless?
Charlie Soeder ’08
Carrboro
