A chara, - Dr William Reville, in "Christianity and the theory of evolution" (April 1st) would have us believe that those of us who reject that theory are some sort of fundamentalists. This is untrue. Fritz Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful (hardly a fundamentalist treatise) claims that the theory borders on being a hoax. That it is certainly, when presented as other than mere theory, demeaning of the noble calling of scientist.
Psychologist, Karl Stern, states his objection as follows - "If we resent, for the sake of argument, the theory of evolution in a most scientific formulation, we have to say something like this: At a certain moment of time the temperature of the earth was such that it became most favourable for the aggregation of carbon atoms and oxygen with the nitrogen hydrogen combination, and that from random occurrences, of large clusters molecules occurred which were favourably structured for the coming about of life, and from that point it went on through vast stretches of time, until through processes of natural selection a being finally occurred which is capable of choosing love over hate and justice over injustice, of writing poetry like that of Dante, composing music like that of Mozart, and making drawings like those of Leonardo."
Of course, such a view of cosmogenesis is crazy. And I do not at all mean crazy in the sense of slangy invective but rather in the technical meaning of psychotic. Indeed such a view has much in common with certain aspects of schizophrenic thinking.
Common sense and perspicacity revolts at the proposition that a presence or force, totally devoid of given potentials, can grow towards a state capable of them. The idea that thinking, loving, creating beings, can evolve or progress onto logically from matter or from species devoid of such qualities is a nonsense. Animals have never produced as much as a line of poetry, a one liner" in humour or a note of music denoting intellectual, intuition or soul searching. The acceptance of the theory of evolution as fact requires an act of blindfolded faith to animate such a vaulting presumption.
Ancestor ape is not even to the best of my knowledge, of playing a decent game of "snap". He/she is, of course, happily and "animally" with us and long may this be the case. That is if we humans do not destroy natural habitats, the very environment in which wild life thrives. This brings me to my final point. Neither animal, mammal, fish, fowl or flower is capable of sub speciel behavioural acts and patterns. That propensity belongs to humanity alone on earth, it is called sinning. We can choose to demean or even corrupt our very humanness and further estrange ourselves from our creator. Such choice is inevitably at the root of all evil and spiritual disharmony which breeds crime and inhuman behaviour in the world. It blinds us to that potential in which we all share, "without any exception whatever" to become more fully human. Genesis and monotheistic religious belief have always and will always be ultimate guides towards self curing our wounded natures, towards genuine human fulfilment and the eventual regaining of our lost relationship with God. Rath De ort,
Garran Ghleann Sceiche,
Ard Aidhin,
Baile Atha Cliath 5.