This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive:
I am appreciating the irony of creationism expert Steve Grohman’s claim that science is “flawed” while enjoying the benefits of agricultural, medical and technological sciences that feed him, keep him in good health and provide him the plethora of modern conveniences he obviously enjoys. This seems rather hypocritical and ungrateful. In making his prideful claims to superiority over scientific consensus based on overwhelming evidence, he is biting the hand of science that feeds him.
At the very least, our universe is 12 billion years old. That means the Bible’s 6,000-year-old world only accounts for 0.0000005 percent of all of time. Everything in the Bible takes place in a mere few hundred square miles of planet Earth, a planet nearly 8,000 miles in diameter, floating in a universe that is at least 156 billion light-years wide.
The theory of evolution, which is currently the best model we have for the origins of all life on Earth, is one of the most majestic and beautiful ideas ever conceived. It is supported by 3.5 billion years of geological strata revealing fossils of ever increasing complexity. Scientists reliably date the age of these fossils by observing the percentage of Carbon-14 that has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14 based on Carbon-14’s half-life of 5,730 years. I find it absurd that the same people who reject this science put total faith in electricity, car engines, computers and modern medicine, all of which work on the same physics and chemistry.
The astronomer Carl Sagan once said that when we are sick we can either pray or take medicine. I suggest those who reject science and empiricism prove their faith by rejecting medical science and pray their way out of their next illness. Evolution tells us that life is dynamic, and we are constantly improving. The Bible tells us that we are hopelessly flawed and powerless without the help of an invisible deity. Look at human history and we see that we are improving. Every century we grow intellectually, culturally, scientifically and technologically. We are destined for the stars and beyond — well, some of us are. We’ll send a post card to the creationists we leave behind on Earth.
RYAN SOMMA
Elizabeth City