Web Letters | The Nation

What's the Matter With Creationism?

Primers on Intelligent Design

Suggested reading: The Edge of Evolution, Michael J. Behe, Free Press division of Simon & Schuster (2007). Further reading - a much easier read for my preference. “How Long Is A Day ? In the Bible, the word ‘day’ can refer to various periods of time. At Genesis 2:4, for example, the entire creative period of six ‘days’ is spoken of as ‘the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.’ Each day evidently involved a considerable length of time. Interestingly, while the Bible specifically mentions the end of each of the first six ‘days’, it makes no mention of the end of the seventh day. Why? That day is still in progress.—Genesis 2:3; Hebrews 4:4-6, 11" (Awake magazine, WTBTS November 2011, p9).

What's the Matter With Creationism?

Atheists homeschool too

Every time I get The Nation from the mailbox I eagerly look for my favorite writers. In the July 2/9 2012 edition I opened first to Katha Pollitt’s piece “Darwin, Still Losing After All These Years.” It was a wonderful look at why people still refuse to accept evolution, choosing instead to believe that human beings have descended from Adam and Eve.

She points out that for evolution to be false “almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it [would have to] involve every field” of science. She then goes on to say that such a fraud would have to be “so full of obvious holes that…a homeschooling parent with no degree at all” could see right through it. This characterization of homeschooling parents as uneducated and implicitly fundamentalist and anti-science is completely unfounded.

As a homeschooling parent, an atheist, a very big fan of Darwin and Thomas Huxley, and a woman with an advanced college degree I take great exception to being characterized in such a manner. We teach our three boys that people are diverse and have diverse beliefs. It is my hope that Ms. Pollitt and The Nation will present their opinions, whether I agree with them or not, in a way that respects the fact that we live in diverse country and that not everyone who homeschools is a religious fanatic who doesn’t believe in evolution.