Editor:

John Baumgardner, in your Aug. 23 issue, wrote a column titled "Case for Teaching Creationism". In it he says nothing about why creationism should be taught, but talks up the seeming inconsistencies in evolutionary biology, as he understands them. I am not an expert on either subject, but you have published some of his arguments earlier, as I recall, and they were refuted by subsequent letters. This leads me to believe that Mr. Baumgardner doesn't understand either evolutionary theory or the scientific method, or both.

I leave the clarifications of evolutionary theory to others who know something about it.

With his Ph.D., Dr. Baumgardner should know that the scientific method consists of continually questioning the latest theory and showing inconsistencies in it. This he fails to do, but let's ignore that. Another part of scientific inquiry is to propose a better theory which explains the inconsistencies in the first and does an improved job of correlating and explaining observations of both present and past evidence of life, possibly with some intimations of possible cause and effect. I gather, though he doesn't say so, that he proposes creationism as the competing, improved, theory.

This gives me heartburn from two perspectives. First, I don't believe that creationism addresses, for instance, the genetic code which Baumgardner refers to in one place as "the genetic language by which the minutest details of the structure and function of every organism on our planet are described and encoded So how can creationism compete with evolution in explaining the genetic code?? Just say "that's the way it is, there is no explanation"? Doesn't sound very scientific.

The second, more severe, case of heartburn comes from the idea of a give-and-take discussion because creationism is intimately linked to religion. To immerse it in a scientific debate is to invite criticism and religious attacks. This is a terrible idea. I would like to read Baumgardner's opinion on whether we should compare creationism and evolution as competing scientific theories, each to be attacked by adherents of the other. I believe that to be a terrible idea, but it would be a fair fight.

There are many other unsubstantiated facets of the article, but perhaps this letter will start a discussion in which each participant reads the others' articles.

Finally, since he divides teachers into atheists and Christians, it seems that he would teach only the creationism from Genesis. That would be a shame, since some of the Native American creation stories are truly beautiful. In fact, since Jews and Moslems also believe Genesis, do they qualify as Christians or atheists?

Perhaps we should simply dismiss Dr. Baumgardner as a religious zealot saying that his religion is better than ours. That gets my vote.

John Lilley