Hail to the "Uncommitted"!
Regarding the Wolf article "The Church of the Non-believer," (Nov 2006), I write to show allegiance with Gary, and refuse the call to go to war over just two contesting "theories." I'm not a pro scientist, but I did teach science and math for a short while, and still read a LOT. Frankly, I'm in my latter years, and I've never found it possible to close my mind as you would a safe, contents closed and defended against all comers. As I keep discovering new things with each successive year, in multitudes of investigative categories, I can only say my store of "knowledge" is more like a filing cabinet, open to the new, now and then culled of the blatantly inconsistent, and, when necessary to use in deciding things, scanned for utility as whatever its current contents may suggest. If this is too wishy washy for crusaders in science or religion, I say "nuts to you both."
The view that "science can explain just about everything, but not quite" I say bunkum; science has only got just a promising start as an "explainer" ... On page 424 in his "Ancestor's Tale," Dawkins copsout, in my opinion, on a point that the (current) facts of sexual reproduction in higher plants and animals is inconsistent with current evolutionary theory. Perhaps this is because there seems to be only two means of reproduction, and both insure offspring have the same number of chromosome pairs as its parents. So, maybe your magazine could look into whatever third mechanism of reproduction thrives to result in the wide variance of numbers of chromosome pairs in plants and critters from 2, on up to over 200, if life started from only one "seed?"
As to religions, boy do they brim with foolish inconsistencies! Yes, you can call me one of those hypocrites for attending church, but being inwardly wary of its purveyors of dogma, but I go to be withfamily and friends, enjoy it's myths (which I find interesting), and appreciate much of the teachings of Jesus, if only as a philosophy about the power of love ... (except for the dissing of women, and some other stuff.). Something very unusual must have happened to impress a simple fisherman (Peter) so much that he would venture out across his known world to risk all, including a horrible death, just to tell a story. That there is apparently an unbroken line of "popes" from the first who knew Peter through each of his successors as witness to the life and teachings of Jesus is enough to impress me as worth preserving ... but a ot of the rest of what revolves around and about it is, well ... "gangsterism."
In your article, the Punker Greg Graffin actually gets to what is the real "evil" in the world, that is, "the gangster mentality." The whole article seems to be about guys trying to get us to commit to one gang or another! Forget it! A better article would be to review the writings of Robert Ardrey! More than ever do his seem to have continuing relevancy to the present state of affairs. Was Darwin being too polite to refer to a mechanism of preservation as being the "survival of the fittest" as opposed to the "survival of the biggest, meanest, and most bullying?" Probably. But for how long? The dinosaurs were likely the epitome of the "fittest" for quite a while, but ... in the long run ... maybe "adaptability" wins the race. So ... here's to being wishy washy!
Molly BakerOhio, USA
