To the editor:

Addressing the teaching of evolution as a well-known theoretical ecologist, I find two issues: How we decide whether an idea is true, and the truth of evolution itself. The consequences of error are much more serious for the first issue than the second. If evolution is a lie, and we teach it, we anger God and receive His chastening. Perhaps our current drought, which began a few days after we voted out the anti-evolution school board, is such a consequence. This hypothesis might be tested if the new school board goes back to down-playing evolution. Then the drought would end.

But not loving the truth, not keeping the well-established rules for judging what is true and what is not, results in God sending out on us a “great spirit of delusion, so that we believe the lie.” In essence, we become a society in denial, deluded by God Himself, blind but not knowing it. The many who think that they are saved from hell, and those who believe that there is no threat of hell, both, as Jesus often observed, will receive a terrible surprise.

So, the one mistake might only cost us a billion or so dollars. But the other might cost infinite suffering for millions over an eternal span of time. Do the numbers. If that doesn’t make you want to learn and teach those rules, you’re not OK. You need to get help at once.

Stephen Fretwell,

Lawrence