From:    David Bloomberg                        
To:      All                                    Msg #352, 93-09-12 11:25:42
Subject: Letters to Editor -- Tribune

My letter, and that of NCSE Exec. Director Eugenie Scott, were not printed by 
the Chicago Tribune (in response to the Vista article which I posted here 
earlier).  However, the following two letters were, on 9/4/93:
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PARK FOREST--It is generally accepted that a public school is not the proper 
place for teaching religion.  Therefore, the recent decision by a California 
public school district to introduce the teaching of creationism in its 
classrooms is a disturbing and dangerous one.
    As an explanation for the origin of the world and of man, the biblical 
story of creation is clearly religion, while the theory of evolution is 
clearly science.  Science has a legitimate place in a public school classroom; 
religion does not.
    Those who advocate the teaching of creationism often do so under the guise 
of presenting "the other side."  But calling a viewpoint "the other side" does 
not necessarily bestow the viewpoint with validity.  For example, in teaching 
about the Holocaust it is hardly valid to present as "the other side" the view 
held by some that the Holocause never existed, since there is simply too much 
incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
    Likewise, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth and man 
were not created in the manner described in Genesis. 
    As a result, a public school should have no interest in presenting this 
view as "the other side" when it is totally without the support of science.

                                            Jeff Robertson

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OAK PARK--Is the fuss in Vista, Calif., and elsewhere really about creation 
versus evolution?  Or is it rather about whether minds should be open or 
closed?
    The scientific method is a self-correcting system of thought.  That is its 
glory, but it seems to terrify dogmatists to the point where some of them 
would deny God the right to create through evolution should He so choose.  And 
nobody knows that He didn't.
    Creationists stress the very important proposition that humankind is not 
incidental to the universe, just as anti-Galilean geocentrists did nearly 400 
years ago.
    But we humans have not lost any special quality we may have had because 
Earth is no longer seen as the center of everything, and we will lose none for 
recognizing that we spring up out of that great wellspring of life that 
animates the world if not the universe.  If that isn't sacred, what is?
    As to purpose, perhaps Shelley came close when he suggested we are "the eye 
with which the Universe beholds itself and knows itself divine."  And that 
requires clear vision and objectivity, not dogmatism and closed theologies.

                                            Charles F. Davis