Letter: Bork has it right
Stephen Gould, in his May 31 Op-ed article "It's only science: Darwin can't
evolve into a politician," quoted Robert Bork simply to attack his
conservative political views. Bork says that "science has left atheism as
the only respectable intellectual stance." This is a truism since by
"science" Bork means the philosophical position that the totality of the
human experience can be accounted for by means of matter/energy at the
exclusion of the supernatural.
Unlike physics, paleontology is a science in the sense of forensic science.
The evidence for evolutionary transition of humans from apelike ancestors is
not abundant enough to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it has
occurred. The overwhelming numbers of Americans still believe in a Creator.
Evolutionary theory is not a theory in the same sense as Einstein's
gravitational theory where there is an underlying mathematical model with
predicative power.
The underpinning of biological sciences is biochemistry and at that
microscopic level there is no scientific model that can explain the
evolution of complex biological systems and functions.
Gould refers to Darwinian evolution as the centerpiece of the biological
sciences. I am sure that that statement is just as foolish as to say that
the Big Bang theory is the centerpiece of the physical sciences. Advances in
medicine, science and technology have nothing whatsoever to do with how the
whole thing came into being.
Scientists ought to be careful lest it be said of us: "Professing to be
wise, they became fools."
MOORAD ALEXANIAN
Wilmington