LETTER: Science supports evolution

Good grief! Reading the latest supposed refutation of the fact of evolution in the opinion page of the Nov. 18 Inter Lake, based on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, you would think the year is 1816 rather than 2016. Science advances with progress in our knowledge. Religion is stuck in the superstitious beliefs of primitive Middle Eastern tribes thousands of years ago and never matures even in the face of new evidence.

The proofs of evolution are not based on carbon dating alone. There are myriad confirmations of the theory from biology, physiology, geology, physics, paleontology, geography, etc. The fact of evolution is based on testable, observable and repeatable data. Humans share 98 percent of their genetic code with chimpanzees. How is that possible if we do not share common ancestors? “God did it” is a cop-out and purposely cannot be tested.

The “controversy” over evolution is social and political, not scientific. Christian religion relies on often-false, facts from a single book written many years after the circumstances described. We know from the molecular evidence that we all still contain fragments of DNA from cross-breeding with Neanderthals 200,000 years ago because our bodies still contain some of that DNA. We can date sediment layers to millions of years ago using the well-known dates of changes in the earth’s magnetic poles, we have dated rocks on Mars to over 100,000 years using potassium–argon dating.

Give me one proof, outside of the mythical Bible, for the exodus from Egypt, Adam and Eve, or the worldwide flood. Without science we would have no weather prediction, space travel, electric cars, computers, plastics, Super Glue, fossil fuels, modern medicine, batteries, cancer cures, moon landing and on and on. Without religion we would have... Well, you get the point. —LaVerne Sultz, Kalispell