As a biologist member of the AAPG with a special interest in organic evolution, I have a few words to offer on the evolution controversy. The troubling episodes are basically between Christian fundamentalists and a select few scientists who are theophobic. It need not be and has not always been so ...

Both warring factions have one thing in common: They have abandoned philosophy. For theophobians, philosophy is replaced by Gnostic speculation: for Christian fundamentaliss, it is replaced by sacred scripture.

Both factions harm science - the Protestant faction by ignoring it and the theophobic scientists who pervert it. The greatest harm to any institution is when it comes from within.

Our concern as scientists whould not be focused outside our ranks but rather within; science is in decline and it started years ago. It so disturbed the great geophysicist M. King Hubbert that it was the subject of his address as the retiring president of the Geological Society of America. His lecture needs reviewing: "Are We Retrogressing in Science?" (1963, GSA Bulletin, v. 74, p. 365-378).

John Morony
Del Rio, Texas