Letters to the editor

Genesis revisited

The Tree of Life: Platypus begat chimera, chimera begat dilemma

Editor, The Times:

It is rather sad to see the evolutionary spin doctors try to put a positive face on something like the platypus. "Bizarre DNA of Platypus tells a story about us" [Times, News, May 8] did not offer any plausible evolutionary scenario for such a creature's existence. This is because there is none.

The platypus has long given the evolutionists nightmares. The article states the platypus is a "transitional creature." Even evolutionists admit that the platypus does not qualify as transitional. It is a mosaic, a curious compilation of features that continue to defy evolutionary explanation. Such chimeras offer no help to the hypothesis of evolution.

The article speaks of the platypus (and echidna) being isolated on a branch of the evolutionary tree. What is true of every branch on the evolutionary tree is that there are creatures only at the tips of the branches and absolutely nothing leading up to them. The tree does not exist, nor do the branches, only their tips. Not much of a tree when it comes down to it.

The spin doctors are hard-pressed on this one. If only the media would give equal time to other responsible viewpoints. And yes, they do exist.

— Glen Howard, North Bend

Deconstructing the arc

A belief in atheism and evolution by natural selection comes up way short when you throw pure science into the mix.

Evolutionists rely heavily on the science of biology, which employs as its main support resourceful guesswork and subjective conclusions. You see a lot of maybes and might-haves and could-haves in their writings that have no place in mathematics, chemistry or physics (the pure sciences).

It has been math probability, chemical structure, the discovery of precise cellular organization (biochemistry) that have played havoc with evolution theory.

In the strictest sense, evolution by natural selection is not a science but a conjecture that has been sold as an established fact. We were content to accept it as a theory, but when it strayed into established fact, it became non-supportable by the pure-science folks and, like many things conceived by man, could not stand exposure by the light of truth.

In the words of a great statesman, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time."

— Ray Womack, Olalla

The how-to testament

Thanks for the comedic "Vatican: Belief in aliens in line with faith in God" [News, May 14].

I loved the part where the Vatican's chief astronomer (now there's a contradiction in terms) said science doesn't contradict religion. That was funny.

Science is based on evidence, where religion is based on ignorance. Almost everything religion has told us throughout history has been refuted by science; it's only a matter of time for the rest to fade completely into mythology.

And the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science? Even funnier. From the beginning, the church has done everything in its power to suppress science and knowledge in general. It wasn't until the '90s that it finally accepted evolution. If it hadn't, millions of Catholics would've been none the wiser.

Science gathers proof, then starts drawing theories, where religion makes assertions and only recently has tried in vain to gather proof for those assertions.

It's reasonable that we'll find life beyond Earth, and reason trumps faith every time.

— Adam Schmidt, Tacoma

A time to pluck

I know dinosaurs are supposed to have been far more intelligent than we used to give them credit for, but I had no idea they were astute enough to develop time travel. Yet that is exactly what "Did T. rex roar — or cluck instead?" [News, April 24] implies when it claims birds are descended from Tyrannosaurus rex. T. rex, after all, lived at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, and the earliest birds evolved in the Jurassic, which ended about 80 million years before that.

If the DNA evidence shows that birds are more closely related to T. rex than they are to any living reptile, couldn't that be more easily explained by assuming they were both descended from a (much earlier) sort of dinosaur?

If not, perhaps the old lizard king himself will be materializing in the middle of Pioneer Square any day now. After all, it would be a slightly shorter time jaunt to come up here than to go back to the Jurassic.

That should liven things up.

— Andre Duval, Seattle