To the editor:

Your March 23 article about the “Evolution Is A Fairy-Tale For Grown Ups” billboard on Interstate 35 brought interesting responses. Earlier, the 2005 Biohawk, the alumni newsletter of the Kansas University Division of Biological Sciences, had evolution as its main theme, sprinkled with quotes from Chancellor Hemenway and professors Leonard Krishtalka, Craig Martin and Erik Lundquist. Their quotes state that Darwinian evolution is the bedrock of science and of KU as an academic and research institution. They believe that any attack on evolution is unscientific (religious and political motives).

Frankly, there have been no public debates on the evolution “debate” in recent times, certainly not by any KU advocates of evolution. It is time for the university’s best scientists to defend evolution as science against its critics. On counterpoint, anti-evolutionists with strong scientific credentials can defend entropy, the antithesis of evolution, as the scientific law of change in the universe.

The real debate is science versus evolution. I suppose that the evolving religion of Darwin, whose only academic training was in religion, did play a vital part in his development of evolution. But the present-day evolutionist debaters will need much better arguments than crystal formation, refrigerators and closed systems to defend evolution against entropy. Undoubtedly, the religion of Darwin has become science. The frog turning into a prince is a fairy tale for children, but it has become science at Kansas University.

David Penny,

Lawrence