Readers of this letters page will have seen the occasional missive from a young-Earth creationist: someone who thinks the universe is only a few thousand years old, and who denies the overwhelming evidence for evolution.
Evolution denial is an interesting phenomenon in itself, as are the typical accompanying suspicions about science more generally, e.g. climate-change denial, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, etc. (most recently in Elaine Elden's letter of March 3).
Since science is simply a particularly careful application of common-sense ways of finding things out, these paranoias amount to a deep denial of human beings' abilities to figure out the truth about anything.
If you're interested in how anyone could think we're in such dire straits, I would encourage you to attend the upcoming presentation by Tyrrell Museum paleontologist David Eberth at Kelowna's Rotary Centre, on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
Eberth will be speaking about the history of the evolution-creation "controversy."
He will no doubt make it clear that creationists are motivated by politics and religion, not evidence or common sense.
Dan Ryder,
Dept. of Philosophy, UBC Okanagan