Biased headline was inflammatory

SCMP Education Mailbag - (Feb 21, 2009)

I object strongly to the biased framework of your evolution versus creationism issue in Hong Kong schools, as expressed in the headline of your article 'Scientists urge excluding God from biology'. While the article itself was unbiased, the headline was inflammatory in the sense that it allows no debate (how could anyone want to exclude God?) Different standards apply to neutrality as to scientific fact.

No reputable paper would treat the issue of smoking as worthy of 'debate' for the very good reason that there is a scientific consensus that smoking kills. Likewise, there exists a scientific consensus that there's no usable alternative to evolution. Without evolution, biology is merely pre-scientific taxidermy.

Furthermore, it is an insult to Teilhard de Chardin and other highly religious men who accepted both the existence of God and evolution to so question their integrity, even implicitly. It is also an insult to the intelligence of Hong Kong's students to prohibit them, in effect, from trying to reconcile the existence of God, if they choose to believe, with science. Einstein was able to do

this.

EDWARD G. NILGES,

Lamma Island