11 AUGUST 1973, Page 5

Facts and pr6ofs

Sir: Martin Sullivan's article on ' Sym. bol and reality' (Society Today, August 4) requires some comment.

First, there is a great difference between the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo and that of present day evolution. Copernicus and Galileo demonstrated facts, whereas evolutionists present' an interpretation of facts which they cannot prove. It is a major axiom that " Facts are just facts, and how you interpret facts depends, on what you believe," and the best evolutionists state that the 'facts ' can be interpreted either way, but that they prefer to interpret them to ' Prove evolution. Evolution is merely a speculative theory. Secondly, it was not the Bible that taught a three-tiered universe and a flat earth, but the science of that day. Unfortunately, Christians, instead of carefully reading their Bible, the infallible word of God, fell in with the humanistic pagan theories of the day and then re-interpreted the Bible accordingly. And, as Martin Sullivan points out, it needed two Christians, Copernicus and Galileo to call the church back to facts. But the church having set its seal on the pagan theories of that da.y were unwilling to admit they were wrong.

As it was then, so is it today. 'Pagan theories of evolution quite unproved by scientific facts are taken as ' proved ' and many Christians accept them as fact and seek to re-interpret the Bible accordingly.

It is true the Bible and evolution are poles apart, but whereas the facts of science fit easily into the biblical story, evolution in order to bolster itself up not only suppresses certain discoveries which wreck their theories, but demands that everybody believe evolution is a fact, not on a scientific basis, but simply on the authority of the evolutionists who have set themselves up as the infallible interpreters of the facts of the universe.

Robert J. K. Law The Vicarage, Halwell, Tomes, Devon