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Letter: Tribune plays up fake compatibility between science and religion

(The Associated Press) In this July 1925 file photo, Clarence Darrow, left, and William Jennings Bryan speak with each other during the monkey trial in Dayton, Tenn. On Friday, July 13, 2017, at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, the public will behold a 10-foot statue of the rumpled skeptic Darrow, who argued for evolution in the 1925 trial. It will stand at a respectful distance on the opposite side of the courthouse from an equally huge statue of Bryan, the eloquent Christian defender of the biblical account of creation, which was installed in 2005.

The Salt Lake Tribune (Opinion, Nov. 5) rightly schools Utah Board of Education members Alisa Ellis and Lisa Cummins for their ignorance and illegal religious biases regarding teaching evolution.

Unfortunately, The Tribune undercuts its own lesson by offering a fake olive branch of compatibility between science and religion, forwarded from an LDS apostle.

A scientific “theory” is an explanation. Natural and supernatural explanations are inherently incompatible. Additionally, appropriate scientific education doesn’t depend on compatibility with religious beliefs. Deliberately distorting scientific education to avoid conflict with religion is dishonest.

The scientific explanation is that evolution an unplanned, unguided, natural process, devoid of intervention by an omnipotent deity who created people in His own image, directly or indirectly. It’s devoid of any supernatural factors at all.

That’s not “mainstream thinking” in Mormonism or conventional Christianity, The Tribune’s concluding remarks notwithstanding.

Yes, many Mormons accept the scientific observations that life on Earth evolved. But they reject the underlying scientific explanations, positing supernatural ones instead.

God-guided evolution is no more compatible with the scientific theory of evolution than illness from demonic possession is compatible with the germ theory of disease.

Simply agreeing that the patient is sick receives only partial credit, at best.

Gregory A. Clark, Salt Lake City