Science in Christian Perspective

Letter to the Editor

Journal Guilty of "Snide Denigrations," "Spleenful Hatchet Jobs," Etc.
Frank Vosler 
8011 Morse Road 
New Albany, Ohio 43054



From: JASA 27 (December 1975): 192

I was a little disgusted with the book review section of the June Journal ASA. Are you people on a holy was against your brethren of the CRS? When Aulie spent most of his review of the CRS Biology text dealing with 18th century ideas, this was not serious analysis but a poorly disguised attempt to belittle the CRS team. His arguments throughout dealt superficially with straw men. It is evident at several points that he is not at all well acquainted with the writings of the CRS people.

Then these is the spleenful hatchet job on Dr. Gish's Evolution-The Fossils Say No! Again the reviewer is very ignorant of the writings of CRS scientists. For example, he says, "The author's criticisms of radiometric dating is, considering its importance for the theory, weak and biased." He follows this with a "rebuttal" which is blissfully oblivious of the extensive writings on radiometric dating of such men as Cook, Morris, Slusher and others. Dr. Gish, a biologist, does not claim to be expert in radiology but summarily incorporates the findings of those who are.

It is the same reviewer (same spleen) who reviews Whitcomb's book on the Flood. He says that The Genesis flood was "competently criticised" in the Journal earlier. Since I've only been reading the Journal a year I missed that. I hope that the present review of The World That Perished is not a sample of that "competence". His argument on the capacity of the Ark does not come to grips with the problem. One must at least count gene pools-not species. And then this boner: "Old errors are repeated without modification, such as the odd notion that the second law of thermodynamics is incompatible with evolution." Will your biologists never understand the meaning and impact of the Second Law?

The Journal ASA has dealt mostly with psychology and sociology-not much with the physical sciences. The attitude seems to be that all the hard science questions were settled 10 to 20 years ago and there's nothing else to be said on the subjects; hence, we must move on to higher planes of abstraction and All Truth.

In contrast the CRS Quarterly is full of hard scientific output. If you ASA people don't get off your supercilious rocking horse and back into the harness, you're going to lose this contest. If your science is so much better, let's see some of it. Deal with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, geological deceptive conformities, missing ancestors of Cambrian fauna, improbability of chance mechanism for chemical evolution, polystrate trees, "cretaceous" human fossils and tracks, the non-equilibrium of carbon-14, diminishing geo-magnetic moment, missing meteoritic nickel, short period comets, radiometric problems and many other phenomena bearing on origins and ages.

But for goodness sake read the CRS works on these subjects first so you'll know what you're supposed to be responding to. Dr. Gordon Mills article on hemoglobin and abiogenesis is excellent but in no way supports the snide denigrations of the other writers.